TURNING ONIONS INTO DIAMONDS. Nano-diamonds can be created without high pressure by squeezing carbon "onions" (nested buckyball-like structures) with ion beams. Graphite material can be made into diamond the hard way, with the use of high pressure (above 10⁶ atmospheres), high temperature, and the use of catalysts. But recently scientists have been able to bombard carbon onions with electron beams and now ion beams as well, and have been able to convert the onions almost completely into diamonds, up to 100 nm in size. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart (Florian Banhart, banhart@wselix.mpi-stuttgart.mpg.de) use a beam of neon ions to pelt the onions, which act like miniature pressure cells. With larger ion accelerators, one should be able to make macroscopic amounts of irradiation-induced diamond. (Experimental work: Wesolowski et al., Applied Physics Letters, 6 Oct. 1997; theory paper (Zaiser and Banhart) upcoming in Physical Review Letters; figure at Physics News Graphics.)