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Material Tougher Than Diamond Developed

Posted by Zonk on from the diamond-is-so-20th-century dept.

sporkme has handed us a link to a New Scientist article. The piece outlines the development of a new substance reported to be stiffer than diamond. A team of scientists from Washington, Wisconsin, and Germany combined the ceramic barium titanate and white-hot molten tin with an ultrasonic probe. The new material was, in some tests, almost 10x more resistant to bending than diamond. Composite materials researcher Mark Spearing of Southampton University comments on the result: "The material's stiffness results from the properties of the barium titanate pieces, Spearing says. As the material cools, its crystal structure changes, causing its volume to expand. 'Because they are held inside the tin matrix, strain builds up inside the barium titanate,' Spearing explains, 'at a particular temperature that energy is released to oppose a bending force.'"

10 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Space flight by Ekhymosis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Will this material be light enough for future space exploration, such as space stations and colony materials? Or is the cost associated with making it too prohibitive? How about the melting temperature/pressure resistance for deep earth exploration?

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    1. Re:Space flight by Myrcutio · · Score: 3, Interesting

      one application i can think of for space travel is to use it in the hull of a ship to deflect particles traveling at high speeds. You could use an electrical current to heat this material to 58 degrees celsius in a short amount of time, all you would need is a method of detection that could locate the particles a few seconds before impact, and you've got a barrier 10x harder than diamond in between you and vacuum. As far as costs go, i think NASA can afford it, isn't all the wiring on the shuttle solid gold?

  2. Re:Ah misleading Slashdot article titles... by topical_surfactant · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...and within that narrow temperature window, only some samples proved to be significantly stiffer than diamond. I agree - article title gets an F, but experiment maintains interesting factor.

  3. Re:Bah by robbiethefett · · Score: 1, Interesting

    well, if you want to get techical.. Wikipedia != Fact but seriously.. it seems whenever some new material is concocted, they use misleading terminology to try and hype it up. although i may just find it confusing, because i'm a layman. all that aside, i'm always excited about these types of breakthroughs.. the possible applications of new materials is really limitless and as a student of mechanical engineering, i'm sure i'll get to discuss this tomorrow in class. cheers -rob

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    "Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer, what's wrong?"
  4. resistant to bending .... by Ace905 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's so many ways to measure the qualities of a material, I don't think anybody would be surprised to know steel is more than 7 times denser than water. But some people would be amazed to find Mercury is almost twice as dense as steel.

    This, "resistant to bending" terminology seems like a real stretch of imagination to me. When do we, as average people ever consider the force involved in -bending- a diamond? It really doesn't sound like a practical thought experiment, and therefore doesn't sound even mildly interesting.

    Spider's Silk is 'stronger' than steel - we've all heard. But there's about 1000 reasons you can't build a ship, or a building or even a walking-cane out of spider's silk.

    This just sounds like bad hype to me ; what I want to know, and what I think everybody wants to know is - will you be able to CUT THE DIAMOND with this material. Diamonds have been the upper-limit of our prowess with cutting-wheels ; do you have a better material for grinding and cutting? Don't confuse the issue.

    Unfortunately I couldn't read the article (slashdotted? what the hell) so I'm going based on the write-up available. don't hate me if the article answers my question.

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    Ace
    1. Re:resistant to bending .... by Falladir · · Score: 5, Interesting

      will you be able to CUT THE DIAMOND with this material

      No, you will not. The material is only stiffer than diamond in a narrow temperature range. If you tried to cut with it, it would heat up and lose this stiffness.

      The article does a lousy job of explaining this temperature-dependent stiffness to non-experts. From what I understand, this is how it works: one of the two components is like a framework of tinkertoys, and the other is like a bunch of water balloons filling up the gaps in the tinkertoy structure. Both the tinkertoys and the water expand as the material's temperature is increased, possibly at varying rates. In that small range at 58 degrees F, the water baloons fit very tightly in the structure. They strain the tinkertoys, but don't break them. The tinkertoys flex as they usually would because the water balloons are holding them in place, so the entire assembly is very stiff.

    2. Re:resistant to bending .... by jd · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Diamond (hardness of 10) is the hardest naturally-occuring mineral, but it is not the hardest material. Ultrahard fullerite is close to twice as hard as diamond. Boron-carbide, tungsten-carbide and silicon-carbide (hardness of 9 each) are only marginally softer. Osmium (as well as being the most expensive metal and the densest metal) is as close to diamond as pure metals get (hardness 7), but doesn't quite cut it. (Pun intended.)

      The hardest known material, at present, would be aggregated diamond nanorods. (These are apparently produced by crushing buckyballs at extreme pressures. What "Get Fuzzy" makes of this is currently unknown.)

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  5. Re:Bah by Falladir · · Score: 1, Interesting

    These wikipedia articles are 100% correct. Toughness and hardness are very simple concepts. Wikipedia might be unreliable for soft sciences, but for physics and materials science it's a great source of information and very rarely in need of correction.

    Your other posts don't make you look like a troll, but I suspect you might be prone to flippant comments like this one. Try to restrain yourself.

  6. Re:That's impossible! by fatphil · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In English, rather than American English, the words are almost exactly reversed.
    Nerds are smarties, geeks are asocial gimps.

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  7. My "(equal 'hard 'tough) => nil" story by 2901 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I needed an Allen Key in a small size that I didn't have.

    I took a nail and filed one end to make a hexagon of the correct size.

    I bent it to the traditional L shape. Nails are "tough as nails" so it bent without breaking.

    I attempted to undo the socket cap screw. The edges of my hexagon got squished. Nails are "hard as nails"? Wood thinks so, but socket cap screws are unimpressed.

    Plan B: file a hexagon on the end of a piece of "silver" steel. Heat to cherry red on gas stove. Quench. Bake at gas mark 9 for twenty minutes to anneal. Use on socket cap screw. Success!

    If "hard" is what you need, "hard" is what you have to get, "tough" will not unscrew it.