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New Material Harder Than Diamond
h4x0r-3l337 writes "Diamond is no longer the hardest substance known to man. Scientists have created a new material, called "aggregated diamond nanorods" by compressing carbon-60 under high heat. From the article: 'The hardness of a material is measured by its isothermal bulk modulus. Aggregated diamond nanorods have a modulus of 491 gigapascals (GPa), compared with 442 GPa for conventional diamond.'"
A butter knife made entirely out of THAT!
So I guess this is what she's going to want on her finger now.
So when are we going to see a General Products hull constructed out of this?
--
BMO - Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Kzinti
Long time ago, when I was student, I bought a very good russian thermodynamics book (Kirillin) where they said Borazon synthetic material be harder than diamond. It is a pity Wikipedia does not agree with that fact.
Of course, the thermodynamic process to achieve it was far expensive. Required very high pressure and temperatures.
Why'd you marry such shallow, pathetic women?
What -- you mean there's some other kind?
It is, after all, a measure of strength in compression, which is completely different from hardness.
How about giving us figures for hardness? Like the Brinell Hardness Number or the results of the Rockwell hardness test?
-Shaunak
491 gigapascals.... Wow!!! WTF is a gigapascal?
:= 0 := giga + 1;
program gigapascal(output);
procedure WriteResponseHeader;
begin
writeln('content-type: text/html');
writeln
end;
begin
WriteResponseHeader;
writeln('[HTML]');
writeln('[HEAD]');
writeln('[TITLE]GigaPascal[/TITLE>');
writeln('[/HEAD]');
writeln('[BODY]');
giga
while [ i [less than] 1000000000 ] DO:
giga
writeln('[BIG] This is a Gigapascal! How the hell are you? [/BIG]');
endfor;
writeln('[/BODY]');
writeln('[/HTML]')
end.
[edit requires to get slashdot to accept this]
Any questions?
"OK, so obviously this could be used as "better-than-diamonds" for industrial purposes - grinding and such. But it seems to me that the improvement is only modest"
Uhm, don't underestimate the profit-increasing abilities of new materials.
Borazon, for example, is a synthetic material that is used in abrasives and cutting tools. The value isn't in the material itself, but in what one can do with it.
If it's about as expensive as synthetic diamond (an oxymoron - synthetic diamond is just as real as "real" diamonds) or borazon, expect this to wind up in concrete saws, grinding wheels, end mills, drills (masonry, metal, oil industry) and a whole zoo of tools.
It's not a "modest improvement". It's a technological leap comparable to synthesizing diamonds and superabrasives, which revolutionized a lot of industries.
--
BMO
if their wives' rings costs $300:
a) your friends aren't rich
b) you can scratch up the rings with normal sandpaper
There's no way these guys can claim priority here. It completely stretches all notions of credulity. I mean, Superman has been transforming coal into diamonds with his bare hands for nearly 60 years now (first mention Action Comics #115; 1947). Together with his optical super-powers, in this case I'm of course referring to what is simplistically referred to as his "heat vision", it's clear that Superman could generate the required pressure and heat with almost no effort. He probably discovered this new diamond stuff by accident when he was like 8 or something. Jeez, I can't believe the crap that makes it through peer review these days.
In some googling on this, I've become confused. "ultrahard fullerene" is C-60 buckyballs compressed at high temperature also. I see many different values quoted for UHF hardness and diamond. This Russian paper gives a value of 1 TPa in 1988!
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I guess a pretty simple way to put it would be like this:
butter and ice cream are both essentially different forms of milk, but you don't see people walking around with cones full of butter do you?
If you do, that's pretty gross.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
Someone give this guy a wedgie. He remembers how to program in Pascal.
cat
"Most (if not all) of the diamond in diamond coated drills are produced through this process"
You were OK, sortof. It's not the GE process, but something entirely new (relatively).
Diamond coatings are done through a process called Vapor Deposition. It's a low pressure process, done at Standard Pressure, using a hot carbon rich gas, a reducing atmosphere, and a cold substrate (the thing you're coating).
It's an entirely new process, discovered entirely by accident by someone trying to figure out why certain welds were a bitch to grind smooth. It turned out that there were microscopic diamonds in the welds, and that was why.
--
BMO
> Why'd you marry such shallow, pathetic women?
What -- you mean there's some other kind?
I think the AC was suggesting that people should broaden their horizons.
Carbon is the most electronegative element with a valence of 4. Electronegativity increases on the periodic table going right and up, and it is a measure of how strongly an atom holds onto electrons. This means that carbon can form four extremely strong atomic bonds with other carbon atoms. Because the bonds are strong, they will make a structure extremely hard if the bonds are arranged into inflexible shapes. Repeating triangles make diamond. Hexagons and Pentagons folding back on each other make buckminsterfullerene (buckyballs). Hexagons rolled into cylinders make nanotubes. The fact that it can make 4 bonds allows all these repeating shapes (polymers) to come about.
Carbon is the only element that has these properties (valence 4, high electronegativity) that allow it to form the structures it does. Under extreme pressure and temperature, it's believed that silicon could be coaxed into some kind of polymerization. I remember reading once that a research group managed to polymerize pure nitrogen under megabars of pressure and thousands of degrees F. The result had 3 times the energy density of TNT, and violently decomposed when the pressure was let off - can anyone elaborate or corroborate?
Anyway, hope this helps!
.....
Wow, I didn't know Comic Book Guy lurked on Slashdot.....
Finally, I'll be able to drill into that 10ft diamond I found in the garden.
I'm sure there's gold in the center of it!
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
I'm not googling for "ultrahard" anything at work
The group created the ADNRs by compressing the carbon-60 molecules to 20 GPa, which is nearly 200 times atmospheric pressure
200 atmospheres? That's not much pressure. SCUBA divers regularly put more pressure than that in tanks they wear strapped to their backs.
According to the "units" program on my laptop, 20 GPa is 197,384.65 atmospheres. 200 *thousand* atomospheres... that makes more sense.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yes.
Clearly, they are the same.
I often try to pick up girls by handing them large chunks of coal since it's a diamond, but in a different state. For some reason, they don't seem to go for it. Odd.
Strangely enough, no one will eat my burgers cooked over graphite (and quite frankly, graphite fires are a bit difficult to keep lit).
Carbon is one of the most versitile elements on the planet either alone or combined with other elements. Its quite worthwhile to consider a different state of it a completely different thing.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!