Principal Properties of Diamond

Choose virtually any characteristic of a material - electronic, structural, or optical - and the value associated with diamond will almost always be the most extreme: Diamond is invariably 'the biggest and the best'. The following is a table of the properties of diamond that render it so potentially useful across many fields of science.

Property Value Units
Hardness 10,000 kg mm-2
Strength, tensile >1.2 GPa
Strength, compressive >110 GPa
Sound velocity 18,000 m s-1
Density 3.52 g cm-3
Young's modulus 1.22 GPa
Poisson's ratio 0.2 Dimensionless
Thermal expansion coefficient 0.0000011 K-1
Thermal conductivity 20.0 W cm-1K-1
Thermal shock parameter 30,000,000 W m-1
Debye temperature 2,200 K
Optical index of refraction (at 591 nm) 2.41 Dimensionless
Optical transmissivity (from nm to far IR) 225 Dimensionless
Loss tangent at 40 Hz 0.0006 Dimensionless
Dielectric constant 5.7 Dimensionless
Dielectric strength 10,000,000 V cm-1
Electron mobility 2,200 cm2 V-1 s-1
Hole mobility 1,600 cm2 V-1 s-1
Electron saturated velocity 27,000,000 cm s-1
Hole saturated velocity 10,000,000 cm s-1
Work function small and negative On [111] surface
Bandgap 5.45 eV
Resistivity 1013 - 1016 W cm

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