Carnegie and Its Inventors Awarded New Patent for Diamond Work

Washington, D.C. - The Carnegie Institution announced today that the United States Patent Office has recently granted a patent for the work of three inventors--Russell Hemley, Ho-kwang Mao, and Chih-Shiue Yan--related to the manufacture of a hard, single-crystal diamond. The patent, No. 7,115,241, "Ultrahard diamonds and method of making thereof," is one of a series that have been, or will shortly be, granted in the United States and elsewhere for inventions that relate to production using a Microwave Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition (MPCVD). These series of inventions have led to the production of diamonds of increased hardness and enhanced optical characteristics when compared to other methods and processes for producing synthetic diamonds.

The three inventors work at Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory and are members of a high-pressure research team. They and their colleagues subject matter to intense pressures and temperatures and have discovered previously unknown fundamental properties and structures of matter, while creating entirely new substances along the way. Their work has shed light on the conditions in planetary interiors and has advanced materials science.

More information concerning this patent is available from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's website at http://www.uspto.gov/.

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The Carnegie Institution of Washington (http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/), a private nonprofit organization, has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research since 1902. It has six research departments: the Geophysical Laboratory and the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, both located in Washington, D.C.; The Observatories, in Pasadena, California, and Chile; the Department of Plant Biology and the Department of Global Ecology, in Stanford, California; and the Department of Embryology, in Baltimore, Maryland.