Diamonds are prized for their hardness. In jewelry, it can last for generations and withstand scratches from everyday wear. As a blade or drill bit, it can penetrate almost anything without breaking. Diamonds are used as a powder to polish gemstones, metals, and other materials.
So, is there anything harder than diamond? As it turns out, the answer is a little difficult to find.
For most practical purposes, diamond remains the hardest material. Richard Keiner, a materials chemist at the University of California, Los Angeles. There are ways to create diamonds that are harder than standard gem diamonds. And while there are other materials that could theoretically be harder than diamond, they don’t exist in a form that can be held or widely used.
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While anyone who wears a diamond ring can attest to the durability of the crystal, he said it’s important to understand that “hardness” has a very specific meaning to scientists. Ta. paul asimou, a geochemist at the California Institute of Technology. It is often confused with other properties such as stiffness and strength. These factors can, but not always, correlate with hardness.
For example, diamond is very hard, but only moderately hard. And it breaks surprisingly easily. It breaks easily along the crystal planes. This allows gem cutters to create beautiful, multi-faceted diamonds.
Scientists measure hardness in several different ways. Geologists often rely on a comparative index called the Mohs hardness scale. This is a method of identifying minerals in the field based on whether they scratch each other. Diamond is a 10 (top of the scale), meaning it can scratch almost anything. Talc is soft and brittle.1.
In the lab, materials scientists utilize a more accurate measurement called the Vickers hardness test. This measurement determines the hardness of a material based on the force required to indent the material with a sharp point. (To visualize this, imagine hitting a pencil into an eraser.)
A diamond is made up of carbon Atoms arranged in a cubic lattice are held together by short, strong chemical bonds. This construction gives it its famous hardness. Most materials that claim to be harder than diamond are made by slightly modifying the classic diamond crystal structure or replacing some of the carbon atoms with atoms such as boron or nitrogen.
The best candidate for a material harder than diamond is lonsdellite. Like diamond, lonsdellite is made up of carbon atoms, but they are arranged in a hexagonal crystal structure rather than a cubic system.
“Lonsdale stone is very puzzling,” Asimou told Live Science. Until recently, it was mainly found in very small amounts inside meteorites, so it wasn’t clear whether it counted as a separate substance or was just a substance. Standard diamond crystal structure defects.
A team of scientists recently discovered Micron-sized lonsdellite crystals in a meteorite — Still small, but much larger crystals than previously discovered. This gives the mineral even more credibility, Asimou said.Other scientists have also reported Make Lons Delight in the Labhowever, the crystal was only present for a moment.
So, while lonsdellite is interesting, it won’t soon replace diamond in applications such as cutting, drilling, and polishing.
By manipulating diamond’s nanoscale structure, it is also possible to create materials that are harder than regular diamond. Materials made of many small diamond crystals are harder than single-crystal, gem-quality diamonds because the nanoscale particles are locked together rather than passing through each other. ‘Nanotwin’ diamonds, where the particles form mirror image patterns of each other, reportedly Twice as hard as regular diamonds.
But at the end of the day, most scientists aren’t pursuing superhard materials just to set records, they’re trying to make something useful.
“Materials scientists spend a lot of time inventing superhard materials that can be manufactured at scale,” Asimou says. “And for many purposes, being harder than diamond is not a design criterion.” Scientists want something that is about as hard as diamond, but cheaper or easier to make in the lab. It may be.
For example, Kaner’s lab has created a variety of cemented carbide metals that can be used in place of diamond for industrial applications.One is that currently on the market is Combination of tungsten and boronThe shape of the crystal gives the material different properties in different directions, so holding it in the right orientation can scratch the diamond, Keiner told Live Science. It also does not require the high-pressure conditions used to produce diamonds in the lab, making production more affordable, he noted.
So while diamonds in their various forms still reign supreme in terms of hardness, this classic material will face challenges to its throne in the future.