Chinese Researchers Have Developed The World's Toughest Glassy Material

Scientists have developed a glass-like material that is around as hard as diamond and conducts electricity. Scientists from China, as well as the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Russia, outlined what they dubbed a 'ultrahard, ultrastrong, semiconducting' synthetic carbon in a pre-print research study.

The material, classified as an amorphous material (AM) and dubbed 'glassy' by the researchers, is the toughest of its kind yet identified, according to the researchers. The report was published in the National Science Review magazine on Thursday, August 5, and it was made publicly available in November 2020. It also stated that AM-III sample's extraordinary hardness permits it to scrape the surface of a synthetic diamond crystal with a Vickers hardness of 103 GPa.

The substance was made by smashing a carbon molecule known as buckminsterfullerene, or C60, under high pressures and subjecting it to extremely high temperatures, according to the researchers. While C60 samples were obtained and subjected to a pressure of 25 gigapascals (GPa). This is equivalent to over 246,000 times the pressure of normal air pressure. The objects were then heated to temperatures much above 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Three different kinds of substance were established at temperature milestones of 1,000, 1,100, and 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, dubbed AM-I, AM-II, and AM-III.

As per the researchers, a plane of genuine single crystaline diamond, for comparison, has a hardness of roughly 62 GPa and the hardness of the synthesised amorphous carbons could match that of diamond.

The fact yet to to be remembered is that it is not mandatory for all the diamonds and will not include the same toughness, thus while AM-III may be harder than other samples. The material's particular applications are unknown, but according to the earlier article, it is known that this could be beneficial in electronics that must endure harsh environments.

It's not uncommon to create super-hard materials, and compounds harder that diamond have been manufactured before. It is, however, more difficult to create hard materials that also have other important qualities, such as conductivity.

Meanwhile, the substance was formed by smashing bits of graphite together at 15,000 kilometres per hour for around a few nanoseconds.