Harder than Diamonds
Hat tip to
Slashdot.
From
Carnnegie/DOE High Pressure Lab comes this Press Release:
bq.
Compressed Carbon Nanotubes Produce a Phase with a Higher Bulk Modulus than Diamond
Cold compression of carbon nanotubes at 75 GPa results in the formation of a superhard hexagonal carbon polymorph that has a different structure than hexagonal diamond [Wang, et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci 101, 38, 13699 (2004]. This new phase is quenchable to ambient pressure and has an experimentally determined bulk modulus of 447 GPa, slightly higher than that of cubic diamond (440-442 GPa).
In plain Engrish, this means that the material is harder than a diamond, and when it was created (with a diamond hammer and anvil under intense pressures), it cracked and indented the diamond anvil used in its creation.
This just goes to show us that new stuff keeps cropping up every day. It's not just the quantum world, it's the physical one as well. I posted about another one on Sept. 25th when i wrote about a
liquid that freezes when it is heated. A fun time to be alive -- I remember when keeping a single electron in a bottle was considered very very cool. This was done at
UW in Seattle and I had the pleasure of
visitng that lab and seeing the bottle with the electron.
Posted by DaveH at October 8, 2004 10:45 PM