Silicon carbide or moissanite is useful for commercial and industrial applications due to its hardness, optical properties and thermal conductivity.

The mineral moissanite was discovered by Henri Moissan while examining rock samples from what is now called Meteor Crater located near Canyon Diablo, Arizona, in 1893.

Then, in 1958, moissanite was found in the upper mantle Green River Formation in Wyoming and, the following year, as inclusions in the ultramafic rock kimberlite from a diamond mine in Yakutia in the Russian Far East.

[14] The discovery of silicon carbide in the Canyon Diablo meteorite and other places was delayed for a long time as carborundum (SiC) contamination had occurred from man-made abrasive tools.

[12] The crystalline structure is held together with strong covalent bonding similar to diamonds,[6] that allows moissanite to withstand high pressures up to 52.1 gigapascals.

[17] In 1891, Edward Goodrich Acheson produced viable minerals that could substitute for diamond as an abrasive and cutting material.

Pure synthetic moissanite can also be made from thermal decomposition of the preceramic polymer poly(methylsilyne), requiring no binding matrix, e.g., cobalt metal powder.

Charles & Colvard was the first company to produce and sell synthetic moissanite under U.S. patent US5723391 A, first filed by C3 Inc. in North Carolina.

Moissanite is birefringent (i.e., light sent through the material splits into separate beams that depend on the source polarization), which can be easily seen, and diamond is not.