Diamond-coated Steel

An anonymous reader writes "A Dutch chemist has successfully coated steel with a layer of diamond, opening the possibility for insanely strong tools that almost never wear out -- not to mention armor tough as, well, diamond-coated nails. From Science Blog."

Comments

Tools?

[PD]

How about engine parts? They might make an engine that would run for a half million miles with normal oil changes.

Re:Tools?

[NanoGator]

"How about engine parts? They might make an engine that would run for a half million miles with normal oil changes."

Yeah, I'm sure the car industry will hop all over the ability to provide cars that last longer. ;)

Re:Tools?

[stefanlasiewski]

Platinum Spark Plugs, Diamond coated steel, is this a machine or a wedding ring?

Re:Tools?

[Smidge204]

They do... typically deisel engines can last up to and over a million miles with typical (and scheduled) maintainance. Take care of your car's engine and you might get more than a lifetime's worth of use out of it, too.

I'm more interested in the bonding issue. If heat can effect the bonding (because steel and diamond have very different thermal expansion coefficients), then how useful would this really be for, say, cutting tools?

Also, I can't see armor plating as being all that impressive. diamond coated steel might have excellent wear characteristics, but since the layer is just atoms thick (I'm assuming, article didn't say... maye you could build it up with repeated coatings?) it wouldn't offer much to resist bending or puncture... thus not being a big improvement for armor. Diamond is also brittle, meaning it'll be easy to crack if you bend or chip it.

Heat transfer properties, however, are very interesting. If they can build up layers, you could start with a thin wire forms and make diamond heat sinks... and diamond is a very good heat conductor. (based on the process they describe to make it, doesn't sound too expensive either... heating up hydrogen and methane gas? Pfft!)
=Smidge=

Re:Tools?

[elphkotm]

Seems to have worked for Honda...

Re:Tools?

[photon317]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of diamond-coated fractal blades! :)

Re:Tools?

[Tony Tastey]

I'm more interested in the bonding issue. If heat can effect the bonding (because steel and diamond have very different thermal expansion coefficients), then how useful would this really be for, say, cutting tools?

well, they did mention that the initial use of chromium nitride was discarded specifically for that problem. they go on to mention that a surface treatment of boron causes the expansion coefficient to be much more similar to that of diamond, and that the effect fades as you get deeper down into the steel.

Re:Tools?

[DarthWiggle]

Oooo, now a woman can buy me a new car to propose instead of me buying a damn ring... Finally a way to get THEM to do some of the proposing work without sticking us with the awkward decision of whether to wear an engagement ring.

Re:Tools?

[Sherloqq]

What would the point be, though? Yeah, sure, so you buy a car ever 25 years, instead of every 5-10 -- how much more expensive would a diamond-coated-engine-equipped car be compared to a regular one? I'm sure that this innovation would cost us, consumers, a pretty penny.

Plus, what good is a diamond-coated engine if the paint fades after 15 years or the body rusts through? Not to mention what happens when you get bored with the car you have -- those of us, who get cars for the purpose of driving them to the ground would have to wait much longer before being able to justify getting a newer model.

For now, I'm pretty happy with the car I have (knock on wood) -- it's got 113k miles so far, and I hope it will last at least another 100k (which for me would be 4 more years). Like someone said about diesels: with regular maintenance and care, you can make these things go a long time.

Re:Tools?

[xtal]

A well cared for car (engine and all) should last half a million miles. You should be able to get 250,000 miles or so on a properly maintained engine. There are a lot of Hondas (my experience is limited to Honda) with 500,000+ km on them in my area.

What a lot of people don't realize about engines is that it is possible to rebuild and swap in new ones for a reasonable fee. You need to replace your piston rings, you usually need new pistons and a bore job done on the cylinder. The connecting rods should be fine, and the only other wear item is the bearings on the crankshaft. Valve guides can wear, but those are also replaceable.

The level of care required is signifigant, though, and most people want a shiney new car (tm) eventually. I drive manual transmission cars only, the primary wear item there at the synchronizing rings, and again, those are replaceable.

ha!

[Tumbleweed]

Transparent Aluminum is for wusses! :)

and I'd like to use this for

[7-Vodka]

Being the first to play a prank on someone with the indestructable pepsi can.

armor?

[isj]

... not to mention armor tough as, well, diamond-coated nails

And 2 days after that the first diamond-tipped projectiles will be available.

Re:armor?

[maxume]

If you are in the business of 'stopping' something, you wouldn't really want diamond coated projectiles. When you fire a projectile at something, you want the energy of the projectile transferred to the object you are firing at. This means that you generally want your projectile to expand at impact. This also has the side effect of causing greater damage to the target, which is also sometimes an objective. A diamond coated projectile is going to tend to just pass on through, which is counter to both of the objectives.

I guess there might be some applications as far as armor piercing goes, but that is generally done by increasing caliber, which pretty much just adds energy to the projectile, hence its increased stopping power.

Re:armor?

[GigsVT]

For armor piercing, lately the goal has been to keep the caliber down, and increase mass and/or hardness with depleted uranium or tungsten, which are very dense and harder than lead.

In the civilian area, teflon tipped bullets (so-called cop-killer) made a big splash a while back, but it was mostly anti-gun hype, they were designed for law enforcement use, and never available to the public. They were designed to penetrate things like car doors, not kevlar.

The teflon was actually mostly to prevent excess wear on the barrel of the gun, since the bullet was made almost entirely from brass. No cop has ever been killed by the bullets so named (As far as anyone can tell). I'd imagine a diamond coated bullet would tear up a barrel in short order, and would be totally impractical.

An interesting factoid regarding expansion: hollow and soft tipped bullets are mostly banned in engagements of war by the Hague Peace Conferences, which the US didn't technically sign on to, but they follow this part anyway. The Geneva convention also bans "weapons that cause superfluous injury". I guess the point of war is to maim, not to kill.

Re:armor?

[photon317]

You're perpetuating the "stopping-power" myth perpetuated by companies with a vested interest in larger slower calibers. You want to "stop" the person you're shooting at, no doubt, but that has little to do with the ft/lbs of energy transferred to the target - the greater determinant is the extent of the damage the wound does to the body, and how quickly and severly this causes shock, rendering the target useless and usually dying. The "side effect of causing greater damage" is not "also sometimes an objective" - it is the primary objective. "Stopping power" (ft/lbs of force delivered) is a side effect and sometimes an objective - but you can make up for a lot of ft/lbs with better wounds.

Also, armor piercing is not done by increasing the caliber. You pierce armor by making either the jacket of the bullet or the whole bullet of a stronger material that the usual lead. The most common/cheap/effective method is full metal jacket rounds using a steel jacket over lead. The FMJ rounds used at target ranges have a jacket made of copper or another similarly soft metal, hence FMJ != armor pierce in general, but certain jackets do. Generally to pierce armor you want to get as many ft/lbs of energy as you can into the smallest caliber you can with the strongest outer jacket.

Re:armor?

[Wyatt Earp]

Federal Machine Gun licenses are for required for the seller, maker and the buyer. In addition many states also have registration for machine guns.

Machine Guns are under TITLE II : Machine Guns, Destructive Devices, and Certain other Firearms of the National Firearms Act - Title 26, U.S. Code, Section 5801-5872

"On 1st engaging in business and thereafter on or before July 1 of each year, every importer, manufacturer, and dealer in firearms shall pay a special (occupational) tax for each place of business at the following rates:

http://www.nraila.org/GunLaws.asp?FormMode=Detai l& ID=60

"It is illegal to manufacture or sell armor-piercing handgun ammunition.

Fuel cell application?

[spumoni_fettuccini]

I know one of the issues was storage. Store it cold/under extreme pressure [while allowing more hydrogen] a very thick walled tank is needed which adds serious weight. If it was stored in a thinner walled tank the amount of hydrogen capacity was cut down to a point of not really being feasible as a fuel alternative. Seems like this might help.

Re:Fuel cell application?

[Old Wolf]

I saw a thing on 20/20 with a clever solution to this problem. A GM prototype car uses the chassis as the fuel cell: the chassis looks like a big skateboard (with a wheel near each corner), the skateboard is strong and the hydrogen is stored inside it. Then you can bolt seats on top of it, put a bodyshell over the top, etc.

Re:Fuel cell application?

[adolf]

One issue:

Diamonds aren't particularly strong; the only meaningful industrial aspect of them is that they're very, very hard.

Hardness != strength.

A diamond-coated fuel cell, I might surmise, would perform about as well at the application as the same fuel cell would without diamonds.

Images

[Pall Agamemnides]

This page has highly-magnified images of what this process does to steel. Here are direct links to the images:

Not wanted: graphite on tool steel
Wanted : a good-adhering diamond layer on tool steel with an intermediate layer of chromium nitride

Heh.. Armor indeed!

[Randolpho]

Anyone else have late-teen AD&D flashbacks? You know... doing everything you could to finagle your DM into letting you have that diamond armor that lets you cast spells but with an AC of like -10?

What, just me? Come on, there must be at least *one* other munchkin on slashdot! Admit it... you twinked out when you were a kid! We all did. It's ok, you're among friends! We won't judge you.

Re:Heh.. Armor indeed!

[zaren]

Actually, I was thinking about Shadowrun... this *is* Dikote that they're talking about, after all :)

Knight Rider did this already....

[malakai]

Kit had a diamond coating over his entire (car) body. I think they called it OmniCoating or something 80's high-tech sounding like that.

In one episode, i think they discovered an achillies heal where part of Kit was not properly protected... we almost lost him on that one.

Anyhow, this is soooo 80s...

Didn't Neil Stephenson teach us not to coat with diamonds, but build with them? Molecule ([begin debate now on whether diamond is a moleclue or not]) by molecule. I want 4inch think diamond windows. I don't care if their brittle, the matricies will be built in a fault redundant manner...

-Malakai

Brittle

[DrBobcf]

Diamond is a lot like ceramics, very herd but also very brittle. Hit it the wrong way and you have diamond dust. I loved the RPG diamond armor - one the other guy! One swing and my opponent is naked. It would make a terrific corrosion prevention coating, if the piece doesn't flex outside of the specs.

Cool

[mindstrm]

Anyone else thinking what I'm thinking?

Finally, a nice, heavy frying pan that won't scratch.

Re:Aerospace: shuttle tiles, NASP

[anubi]

Yes, it may melt at these exhorbitantly high temperatures, but does it burn?

Diamond is carbon. So is charcoal.

I betcha it takes a helluva temperature to melt charcoal briquettes too. But they really don't get all that hot in the barbeque.

since when is this new?

[Magius_AR]

Many of the nastier japanese swords that I've seen had diamond coats or something to make them sharper.