Whilst diamond has been synthesized in lab environments for over 50 years, there is still much that is not understood about how diamonds form, particularly at room temperature and without catalysts. In this talk I will detail our recent work on the highpressure phases of carbon leading to a new route for the formation of diamond. We have used amorphous carbon precursors and highshear and high-pressure environments to create two forms of diamond at room temperature. In addition to the regular cubic phase of diamond, a hexagonal structure of carbon, so-called Lonsdaleite, was also observed. Both diamond phases were found to form together after compression at room temperature and form a unique core-shell structure.

Prof. Jodie Bradby holds a B. Appl. Sci (Physics) from RMIT in Melbourne, and completed a PhD on ‘Nanoindentation-induced deformation of semiconductors’ at ANU in 2003. After completing her doctorate, Jodie was awarded a Sir Keith Murdoch American-Australian Education Fellowship which funded a project based at Case Western Reserve University in the USA. On her return to Australia, she commenced an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship and then an QEII fellowship followed by a Future Fellowship (2014-2017). She has held several ARC grants including Linkage Projects with a start-up company which was formed as a result of her doctoral work. In 2015 she was the Australian Institute of Physics, Women in Physics Lecturer. Jodie is the immediate Past President of the Australian Institute of Physics (2019-2020).

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