Glass is a type of transparent, amorphous solid material that is made from silica (silicon dioxide). It is often made by melting silica sand, soda ash, and limestone at very high temperatures. Once cooled, the resulting material is highly transparent and has a smooth, non-porous surface.
Glass is an excellent material for a wide variety of applications because it is strong, durable, and resistant to chemical corrosion. It is commonly used to make windows, bottles, and other containers, as well as in the construction of buildings and other structures. Glass can also be made in a variety of colours by adding different metallic oxides to the molten mixture.
A New Kind of “Glass” That is Stronger Than Diamonds
A report from South China Morning Post says that a group of scientists in northern China made AM-III, a transparent yellow glass that is the world’s hardest. It can leave a deep scratch on the surface of a diamond.
On the Vickers hardness test, the material, which is made of only carbon, got a score of 113 gigapascals (GPa). As a point of comparison, most natural diamonds have a GPa score between 50 and 70.
The results of the study, which was led by Professor Tian Yongjun of Yanshan University in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, were published in the journal National Science Review. Tian and his team made the world’s hardest material that can be seen with the naked eye in 2013. It is a boron nitride crystal that is 200 GPa hard, which is twice as hard as a diamond.
Even though AM-III is yellow, it’s not going to replace diamonds as the most popular material for jewellery. However, researchers say that because of how hard it is, it could be used to make a bulletproof window that is 20 to 100 times stronger than some commercially available versions.
Future Weapons for Extreme Situations
Before that can happen, though, the team needs to do more tests on their material, which is also a semiconductor and works as well as silicon. The researchers said that this means it could also be used in photoelectric devices, like weapons that need to work in harsh conditions.
Tian and his team raised the pressure and temperature in an experiment chamber to 25 GPa and 1,200°C, respectively, in order to make the material (2,192 degrees Fahrenheit). They used something called fullerene, which is an allotrope of carbon that looks like a football and would usually turn into a diamond in these conditions. But they really turned up the heat slowly and then cooled the material slowly, which led to the results they wanted.
Tian says that AM-III is, in a technical sense, a glass with crystals inside. The atoms in the material are scattered enough to make it semiconducting, but there are also places where the atoms are lined up, which gives the material its strength.
This mix of chaos and structure could be used in many ways that haven’t been thought of yet. For example, it could have stopped Tesla from making a PR mistake in 2019 when the windows of its newly unveiled Cybertruck broke during a famous demonstration.
Final Words:
In this post, we have discussed a new type of glass stronger than diamonds. There have been several news reports in recent years about the development of new types of glass that are claimed to be stronger than diamonds.
However, it’s important to note that these materials are not “glass” in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, they are more accurately described as “glass ceramics,” a type of glass that has been modified to have the properties of a ceramic.
These materials are tough and strong and often used in high-strength applications such as bulletproof and spacecraft windows. While they may be more resistant to breaking than traditional glass, it is not clear if they are tougher than diamonds.
