A team of researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science, U.S. have discovered a way to synthesize a new ultra-hard form of carbon glass – possibly the hardest-known type of glass with the highest thermal conductivity properties in its class.
In the team's findings (now published in the journal Nature), they said that they managed to create the incredible material by smashing what is known as a fully-carbon "soccer ball" (called a soccer ball due to the shape of the molecule) called fullerene C60 under an anvil press.
The method's result is similar in practice to how graphite is converted into diamond under high pressures, and thus how the new carbon glass maintains such hardness.
The team led by Bingbing Liu from Jilin University, China and former Carnegie visiting scholar Mingguang Yao explained that while an extremely high-melting point meant it was impossible to use diamonds as a starting point to create diamond-like glass, they managed to instead use fullerence C60 in the shape of a soccer ball and collapse it under the giant anvil press.
The versatility of carbon as a material has allowed it to be used in numerous types of products, like carbon fiber (strong yet light) or silicon carbide (extremely resistant to high temperatures). Incidentally, it's also one of the reasons diamonds are so hard.
However, this new discovery is the first time that a glass-like material with such hardness and thermal conductivity has been synthesized in such a way.
“The synthesis of an amorphous carbon material with three-dimensional bonds has been a long-standing goal,” said team member Yingwei Fei. “The trick is to find the right starting material to transform with the application of pressure.”
It could be super useful.
While the new material may cause many to compare it to diamonds, its molecular structure is actually deemed amorphous (no clearly defined shape or form), which makes it more similar to glass than diamonds (which have a very regular structure), and potentially useable in plenty of other applications.
For starters, the glass makes for a good semiconductor, which means it can be used in solar-energy creation, or in space-age weaponry.
Closer to reality than science fiction, the glass can be also used to perhaps replace current bulletproof glass technology, considering that it's rated between 20 to 100 times stronger than what's currently available.
“The creation of a glass with such superior properties will open the door to new applications,” Fei said. “The use of new glass materials hinges on making large pieces, which has posed a challenge in the past."
"The comparatively lower temperature at which we were able to synthesize this new ultrahard diamond glass makes mass production more practical.”
Pretty damn cool.
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Cover image sourced from Advanced Science News and Erik Mclean on Pexels.
