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Ultra-strong glass harder than diamond

16.08.2021

Chinese scientists have created a new type of glass that is harder than diamond. Diamond is one of the hardest known materials and is often used to cut harder materials. Normally a diamond can cut glass, but a new glass developed by researchers in northern China can itself scratch a diamond.

The product is currently called AM-III, but the name may change in the future. According to the description, the glass has a yellowish tint and consists entirely of carbon. The Vickers hardness of AM-III glass is 113 GPa. In comparison, the Vickers hardness of natural diamond is between 50 and 70 GPa, while man-made diamonds can reach a hardness of 100 GPa.

The new type of glass has potential applications in several industries, although mass production is likely many years away. For example, the material can be used to make bulletproof glass 20 to 100 times stronger than currently used materials. Potentially, this material can also find application in the technological industry.

AM-III is a semiconductor that is almost as efficient as silicon. Due to its high efficiency, this material can be used in the construction of extremely durable solar panels that can withstand large hail and other impacts. AM-III is structurally different from conventional glass pieces. When viewed under a microscope, the material has an ordered structure similar to a crystal.

However, at a lower magnification, the structure looks extremely disordered. The researchers say the combination of order and disorder gives the material unusual properties. The scientists of the project claim that their creation has the largest proportion of ordered atoms and molecules compared to other materials with which they experimented, which gives AM-III unprecedented strength.

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Electrons flow like a liquid 20.09.2017

In their latest experiments, scientists from the Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester have discovered conditions under which electrons moving through graphene behave in a very unusual way. This specific movement of electrons gives scientists a better understanding of the physical processes in electrically conductive materials, and in the near future, these same processes can be used to develop nanoelectronic circuits for fast and high-performance next-generation computer chips.

In most metals, electrical conductivity is limited by the number of defects in their crystal lattice, which cause electrons to scatter, hitting them like billiard balls. Therefore, graphene, due to its "two-dimensional" structure, conducts electricity much better than any metal. In addition, in some pure metals and other materials with an ordered crystal structure, including graphene, electrons can overcome distances of microns without scattering due to the so-called ballistic motion. The parameters of such motion determine the maximum possible electrical conductivity of the material, which is called Landauer's fundamental limit.

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The field of electron fluid dynamics emerged just last year after scientists from the University of Manchester and other scientific organizations showed that at a certain temperature of a material, electrons moving in it begin to collide with each other so often that the flow of electrons begins to flow like a liquid flow, having not the smallest coefficient of viscosity. And in new research, scientists have shown that the presence of this viscous "e-liquid" gives the material a higher electrical conductivity than the ballistic movement of electrons.

The phenomenon discovered by scientists is rather paradoxical. Indeed, during collisions of electrons, they interact and scatter, which, in theory, should weaken the electrical conductivity of the material. But the increase in the conductivity of the material occurs due to the fact that the electrons are divided into two conditional parts, like a stream of water flowing in a river. Those electrons that move in close proximity to the edges of the crystal lattice lose their momentum and slow down. But, at the same time, they act as a protection against collisions of electrons moving in the middle of the stream. And these electrons are already moving along a super-ballistic trajectory inside the "channel" created by the extreme electrons.

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The scientists conducted a series of experiments in which the conductivity of graphene was measured at various temperatures. Comparison of the conductivity of pure graphene and doped graphene, which has clear metallic conductive properties, allowed scientists to calculate with high accuracy a new physical quantity called viscous conductivity. And what is most remarkable, the collected experimental data practically coincided with the data obtained in the course of calculations of the corresponding mathematical models.

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