Glass That Is Tougher Than Diamond
The incredible material named AM-III is a carbon-based glass, transparent with an amorphous structure. At this time it is the strongest and the hardest amorphous material in the world. Even tougher than diamonds.
Image by Artur Pawlak from Pixabay
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When you imagine glass, you will likely imagine a transparent material made by melting sand. And while reasonably hard it is far from being the strongest or the hardest. Now, the research of Chinese scientists completely flips these ideas on their heads. The team from Yanshan University played with various materials from carbon and discovered an incredible transparent material with several unique properties.
This new carbon-based glass is so strong and so hard it can scratch diamonds. And at the same time, it is a semiconductor making it a very promising material for various applications such as photovoltaic technologies. The carbon-glass electrical properties are close to amorphous silicon. The new material was named AM-III and just like diamonds it is made from carbon atoms. But compared to the perfect crystals of diamond it doesn’t have exactly an organized structure as it’s more similar to glass.
The researchers created the carbon glass from fullerenes – ball-shaped molecules made from carbon atoms. Fullerenes are previously used in material research to develop flammable nanoparticles or solar cells. In this case, the scientists exposed the fullerenes to rising temperatures and pressure. This destroyed the atoms and mixed them together. This eventually created the AM-III material.
The Chinese team has concluded – through experimentation – that the hardness of the carbon glass is 113 GPa. For a bit of comparison, lead has a hardness of about 9 GPa, and naturally existing diamonds range from 70 to 100 GPa. When the scientists tested the mechanical properties of the carbon glass they found out that not only can it scratch diamonds but it actually is the strongest and the hardest amorphous material we met to this data. Now, we just have to hope it will find some cool practical applications.
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