ALL THAT GLITTERS MAY NOT BE GOLD, BUT ONIONS, RESEARCHERS FIND.

Byline: Alexandra Witze Dallas Morning News

Scientists are getting better at making diamonds from onions.

That's ``onions made of carbon, of course, with shells of carbon atoms nestled inside one another like the layers of an onion.

Scientists already have squeezed carbon onions to make diamonds at high pressures, just as natural diamonds are formed deep in the Earth under crushing pressure. Researchers also have zapped the onions with beams of electrons to produce tiny quantities of diamonds. Now, it seems that diamonds can be produced just by zapping carbon onions with charged atoms, or ions.

In new research, a team of German scientists pointed a narrow beam of neon ions at a carbon onion. The ions apparently slammed into the onion with enough force to crush the carbon shells in on themselves. In the center of the onion, at the place of highest pressure, a tiny diamond began to grow, the researchers reported recently in Applied Physics Letters.

Using a beam of ions produces much more diamond than using an electron beam, the scientists wrote. Tiny diamonds made in large ion accelerators could be used as miniature grinders or in other industrial tools, they said.

A second paper, describing the theory behind the recent experiments, is scheduled to appear this month in Physical Review Letters.