Posted on 06/26/2017 7:20:50 AM PDT by Red Badger
Credit: Timothy Strobel
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Scientists have found a way to make carbon both very hard and very stretchy by heating it under high pressure. This "compressed glassy carbon", developed by researchers in China and the US, is also lightweight and could potentially be made in very large quantities. This means it might be a good fit for several sorts of applications, from bulletproof vests to new kinds of electronic devices.
Carbon is a special element because of the way its atoms can form different types of bonds with each other and so form different structures. For example, carbon atoms joined entirely by "sp³" bonds produce diamond, and those joined entirely by "sp²" bonds produce graphite, which can also be separated into single layers of atoms known as graphene. Another form of carbon, known as glassy carbon, is also made from sp² and has properties of both graphite and ceramics.
But the new compressed glassy carbon has a mix of sp³ and sp² bonds, which is what gives it its unusual properties. To make atomic bonds you need some additional energy. When the researchers squeezed several sheets of graphene together at high temperatures, they found certain carbon atoms were exactly in the right position to form sp³ bonds between the layers.
By studying the new material in detail, they found that just over one in five of all its bonds were sp³. This means that most of the atoms are still arranged in a graphene-like structure, but the new bonds make it look more like a large, interconnected network and give it greater strength. Over the small scale of individual graphene sheets, the atoms are arranged in an orderly, hexagonal pattern. But on a larger scale, the sheets are arranged in a disorderly fashion. This is probably what gives it the combined properties of hardness and flexibility.
Bond, sp³ bond. Credit: Timothy Strobel
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The researchers made the compressed glassy carbon using a relatively simple method that could be reproduced on a large scale easily and cheaply. In simple terms, they used a sort of machine press that applies high-pressure loads to the carbon. But this must have involved several tricks to control the pressure and temperature in exactly the right way. This would have been a time-consuming process but should still be achievable for other people replicate the results.
New surprises
Carbon materials are continually surprising us – and the emphasis of research has been to find or cook things in between its natural forms of diamond and graphite. This new form is the latest of what seem like limitless ways you can bond carbon atoms, following on from the discovery of graphene, cylindrical carbon nanotubes and spherical buckminsterfullerene molecules.
A material like this – that is strong, hard, lightweight and flexible – will be in high demand and could be used for all sorts of applications. For example, military uses could involve shields for jets and helicopters. In electronics, lightweight, cheaply manufactured materials with similar properties to silicon that could also have new abilities could provide a way to overcome the limitations of existing microchips.
The dream is to find a carbon material that could replace silicon altogether. What is needed is something that allows electrons to move through it quickly and whose electrons can easily be placed into an excited state to represent the on and off functions of a transistor. The researchers behind glassy carbon haven't studied these properties in the new material so we don't yet know how suitable it might be. But it might not be that long until another of carbon is found. So far, decades of hunting hasn't turned up what we need, but maybe we just have to look deep down to find it.
Explore further: New form of carbon that's hard as a rock, yet elastic, like rubber
More information: Compressed glassy carbon: An ultrastrong and elastic interpenetrating graphene network, Science Advances 09 Jun 2017: Vol. 3, no. 6, e1603213 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1603213 , http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/6/e1603213.full
Journal reference: Science Advances
Provided by: The Conversation
But carbon is creating climate change and we must eliminate all carbon before all life is obliterated.
“harder than diamond but flexible as rubber”
Sounds like a narcissistic and abusive classic dancer I once dated.
Bookmark
would like my zero-turn mower tires made of this! No more punctures.
Excellent! We could build a border wall out of it and get carbon sequestration at the same time!
BTT
Or a bad case of E.D.
LOL, that’s original and why I love this site. I just GET FReeper humor.
We could eliminate all the carbon from the eco-freaks ... use it to make some of this bonded graphene stuff.
ROTFL!
Very interesting article.
Seems like the smart people keep getting smarter. They need to invent something to make me as smart as they are. Come on, geniuses, carbon-up my brain with some new magic formula. LOL
LOL.
Welcome to FR.
5.56mm
But carbon is EVIL!
CO2 is killing the planet!
COAL is made of CARBON!..............
That might make a nice drill bit for oil fraking.
B^).......................drill around corners..............
You’re absolutely right! I need to make sure all the carbon atoms are removed from my person. Get rid of all the evil pollution that’s coursing through me.
It is hard to say if that is true or not. Certainly, they have more electronic computational and analytical tools available to them that make it possible to test their theories and the properties of the physical substances they produce more efficiently. But this does not indicate that they are necessarily any smarter than previous generations just that they have better and more tools available to them.
The article does not do the best job of explaining the properties of this new substance. What does it even mean when they say something is as hard as diamond yet as flexible as rubber. On it's surface at least that is a contradictory statement. A machine tool of alloy steel with an edge meant for cutting must be hard, if it is flexible it will not hold its edge when trying to cut another hard material.
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