Easy-to-Make Material Scratches Diamond

holy_calamity writes "A material tough enough to scratch diamond that can be made without resorting to massive pressure has been developed at UCLA. A regular furnace and a zap of current is enough to meld boron with the metal rhenium." Sound familiar? This is the other new material tougher than diamond, but no word yet on how they rate against each other.

Comments

Nice.

[EveryNickIsTaken]

In the unlikely event that my sworn enemy is wearing a suit of diamond armor, I can now SLOWLY scratch him to death.

Sweet.

If this sounds familiar...

[HangingChad]

A regular furnace and a zap of current is enough to meld boron with the metal rhenium....Sound familiar?

If this sounds familiar you need to get out more. Seriously.

When keying someone's car isn't enough

[Eudial]

When keying someone's car isn't enough to say I hate you, make a key out of this material and key their jewelery.

Hardness, stiffness, and toughness

[Dr. Stavros]

Again, we mustn't conflate hardness, stiffness, and toughness!

I've been studying diamond for a while now, and have a fairly prominent webpage about diamond's material properties, and on three separate occasions I have been contacted in the following way:

A budding fantasy author is writing a book in which the protagonist has a sword made out of diamond, "because diamond is the hardest material of all!", and they wanted to run the idea past me first.

So I point out that, despite being very hard (i.e. resistant to indentation), diamond is in fact very brittle (i.e. not very tough), and indeed the very first time that our hero hits something with his diamond sword, it will shatter.

In one case, the author said that I had basically ruined his life by wrecking the whole concept of the book that he had been writing for the last few years. In subsequent emails, he was begging me to come up with a solution (e.g. diamond sword, coated with steel, etc.?)...

Re:Hardness, stiffness, and toughness

[Quixadhal]

He's a writer... he should come up with something.

The sword was crafted by an Uber Death Mage, who used the blood of the last virgin to scream "first post!" on slashdot to cast a technobabble spell, which caused the entire blade to form as a single facet of diamond. Thus having no stress points, the blade would be nearly perfect, as long as the victim didn't use a Google shield to find previous postings and block it.

That took me a whole 15 seconds.... surely he's had a bit more time to ponder?

what?

[nanosquid]

Chuck Norris's toe nail clippings?

Re:Move over DeBeers

[inviolet]

rhenium diboride is a girls best friend

You laugh, but as a female geek I would be Seriously Impressed by a marriage proposal which featured a ring made from something exotic like that. Assuming that I was sufficiently insane to consent to marriage, I would forever after wear that ring and smirk at the Normals with their plain old diamonds.