A visualization of the different types of diamond-like linkages (red spheres) formed at curved surfaces or between the layers of graphene (black spheres) in this new type of compressed glassy carbon. Images are provided courtesy of Timothy Strobel.
A team including several Carnegie scientists has developed a form of ultrastrong, lightweight carbon that is also elastic and electrically conductive. A material with such a unique combination of properties could serve a wide variety of applications from aerospace engineering to military armor.
Carbon is an element of seemingly infinite possibilities. This is because the configuration of its electrons allows for numerous self-bonding combinations that give rise to a range of materials with varying properties. For example, transparent, superhard diamonds, and opaque graphite, which is used for both pencils and industrial lubricant, are comprised solely of carbon.
In this international collaboration between Yanshan University and Carnegie—which included Carnegie’s Zhisheng Zhao, Timothy Strobel, Yoshio Kono, Jinfu Shu, Ho-kwang “Dave” Mao, Yingwei Fei, and Guoyin Shen— scientists pressurized and heated a structurally disordered form of carbon called glassy carbon. The glassy carbon starting material was brought to about 250,000 times normal atmospheric pressure and heated to approximately 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit to create the new strong and elastic carbon. Their findings are published by Science Advances.
Scientists had previously tried subjecting glassy carbon to high pressures at both room temperature (referred to as cold compression) and extremely high temperatures. But the so-called cold-synthesized material could not maintain its structure when brought back to ambient pressure, and under the extremely hot conditions, nanocrystalline diamonds were formed.
The newly created carbon is comprised of both graphite-like and diamond-like bonding motifs, which gives rise to the unique combination of properties. Under the high-pressure synthesis conditions, disordered layers within the glassy carbon buckle, merge, and connect in various ways. This process creates an overall structure that lacks a long-range spatial order, but has a short-range spatial organization on the nanometer scale.
“Light materials with high strength and robust elasticity like this are very desirable for applications where weight savings are of the utmost importance, even more than material cost,” explained Zhisheng Zhao a former Carnegie fellow, who is now a Yanshan University professor. “What’s more, we believe that this synthesis method could be honed to create other extraordinary forms of carbon and entirely different classes of materials.”
Learn more: NEW FORM OF CARBON THAT’S HARD AS A ROCK, YET ELASTIC, LIKE RUBBER
[osd_subscribe categories=’material discovery’ placeholder=’Email Address’ button_text=’Subscribe Now for any new posts on the topic “MATERIAL DISCOVERY’]
The Latest on: Ultrastrong lightweight carbon
- PPG ENVIROCRON LUM Retroreflective Coating Illuminates New Lyft E-bikeson May 19, 2022 at 7:30 am
PPG (NYSE:PPG) today announced that it is providing the world’s first commercial retroreflective powder coating to Lyft for use on e-bikes in the company’s DIVVY bike-share program in an effort to ...
- Renewable Bio-Photovoltaic Cell Createdon May 12, 2022 at 2:30 pm
“Our photosynthetic device doesn’t run down the way a battery does because it’s continually using light as the energy source.” In the experiments, the team’s device was used to power an ...
- Novel metalens shows up in UV lighton May 12, 2022 at 2:05 am
By precisely etching hundreds of tiny triangles on the surface of a microscopic film of zinc oxide, nanophotonics pioneer Naomi Halas and colleagues created a ‘metalens’ that can transform incoming ...
- Comic-book science and science comic bookson May 6, 2022 at 4:03 pm
Castro’s own research investigates ultrastrong nanoceramics. Kevlar beats titanium’s strength-to-weight ratio by a factor of more than 30, and carbon nanostructures are among the strongest ...
- Scientists Use Curcumin to Create Highly Efficient Electrodeon April 19, 2022 at 1:08 pm
“Fuel cells widely use platinum as a catalyst. But platinum suffers from poisoning because of reaction intermediates such as carbon monoxide. It is also costly. We used gold as a catalyst,” Dr ...
via Google News and Bing News