Chinese Scientists Create Unbreakable Diamond Material
Researchers developed a diamond with internal support structures that boasts six times the toughness without losing hardness.
En resumen
Chinese scientists have developed a new diamond material using multi-walled carbon nanotubes that is six times tougher than natural diamonds while maintaining its hardness, preventing it from shattering under sharp blows.
Resumen generado por IA
Por qué importa
Natural diamonds are extremely hard but brittle and prone to shattering under sharp impacts.
Chinese scientists have created a diamond with no Achilles’ heel – one that cannot be broken, even by a hard knock with a hammer – according to a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Synthesis.
While a diamond is the hardest natural material on Earth, it has a major weakness. It is brittle, like glass, and a sharp blow can shatter it. For years, scientists have tried to make diamonds tougher without losing their legendary hardness.
Typically, increasing one characteristic has meant sacrificing the other – seen as a reasonable trade-off for most applications, which include industrial uses such as in cutting and polishing tools.
The team – from the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beihang University – found a way around this limitation, building an internal support structure to boost a diamond’s toughness by six times while leaving its hardness unchanged.
The breakthrough material is even tougher than the tungsten alloys used in armour-piercing ammunition, according to the paper, which was published online on July 9.
The secret lies in multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) – ultra-strong carbon fibre “cords” that are incredibly thin, about one 10,000th of the width of a human hair, yet dozens of times stronger than steel, the paper said.
Preguntas abiertas
- What are the commercial production costs?
- When will this material be available for industrial use?
