The World's Smallest Diamond Ring

The World's Smallest Diamond Ring

Buying a diamond ring to wear is not as easy as you buy a bread in a store. But that was before. Why? Men around the world can now start celebrating the creation of the world's smallest diamond ring! Now everybody can afford a diamond ring.

The only problem is, it's only 5 millionths of a meter in diameter and bears five-billionths of a carat of diamond, this meaning it can only be viewed through a microscope. The smallest diamond ring was invented by the University of Melbourne. Previously, Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Hitachi High-Technologies held the record for the smallest diamond ring by creating one, through a process routinely used to create semiconductor computer chips.

On 2004, Yasushi Kuroda of Hitachi Science Systems, manufactured a device in order to demonstrate the capabilities of the company's equipment to make micro-machines. With the help of a gallium ion beam which helped inspect semiconductor chips, Kuroda managed to create a ring of tungsten – widely used as wire filaments for classic light bulbs – and diamond only 0.02 millimeter in diameter. It is said that the diamond material was collected from diamond polishing powder as claimed by the company's officials.

According to Hitachi, the microscope picture of the ring was awarded the gold medal at the Asia-Pacific Conference on Electron Microscopy in 2004. The new diamond ring was presented this month at the American Physical Society in New Orleans, by University of Melbourne researchers.