Besides being beautiful, diamonds are also useful for a wide variety of applications.
Because diamonds are incredibly hard, durable, and heat-resistant, they are quite useful for a variety of industrial purposes. Although size, color, and clarity are unimportant in an industrial diamond, nonetheless the demand for these stones completely outstrips the supply and companies have been creating synthetic diamonds for industrial use since the 1950s. Here are some of the non-jewelry uses for diamonds that have been driving this trend.
Filling Cavities
You probably never thought going to the dentist was very glamorous. But did you realize that most dentists use tools tipped with diamonds to drill our cavities and polish dental work? These tools feature tiny bits of diamond bonded to the surface of the tool as an abrasive, and they even look a tiny bit sparkly if you look closely.
Drilling for Oil
Another place you might not expect to find diamonds is out in the dirty, dangerous territory of the oilfield roughneck. Yet the massive drill bits that are used to bore miles under the earth’s surface depend on diamond abrasives to do their job. Only diamond is hard enough to wear away at the layers of rock trapping oil and gas effectively.
Engraving
Any time that hard stones such as granite or quartz need to be engraved, a diamond-tipped tool is needed. Any other type of tool would be likely to wear out before the engraving had been completed. People have known this since ancient times as the Bible reference to “a pen of iron” and “a point of a diamond” indicates.
Speakers
You may very well find diamond inside high-end speakers. When made into a thin dome, diamond can vibrate rapidly without suffering any deformation that would degrade sound quality.
Spray Tans
Kim Kardashian recently brought the diamond-flecked spray tan to popular attention when she had this treatment before her wedding to Kanye West. This use of diamond is a type of adornment, so it is similar to jewelry with the difference being that no one would let their diamond jewelry just wear off and disappear over time!
Supercomputers
Diamonds have many possible applications for electronics and computers. First of all, they have extremely high heat conductivity, making them an excellent heat sink to protect microelectronics from overheating. Also, researchers are exploring various properties of diamond wire as well as designs for a quantum supercomputer that uses sheets of diamonds patterned with small nitrogen-filled holes. A computer with this type of diamond processors could store millions of times more information than silicon processors.
