Not only does it rival the strength of diamond, grapheneHowever, it boasts 10 times the yield strength of Kevlar, which is famous for its use in bulletproof vests.
Researchers at Delft University of Technology, led by Assistant Professor Richard Nolte, have unveiled a remarkable new material, amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC), that has the potential to impact the world of materials science.
In addition to its exceptional strength, this material exhibits important mechanical properties for vibration isolation of microchips. Therefore, amorphous silicon carbide is particularly suitable for manufacturing ultrasensitive microchip sensors.
The range of potential applications is vast.From ultra-sensitive microchip sensors and advanced solar cells to pioneering space exploration and DNA Sequence technology. The strength and extensibility advantages of this material make it very promising.
10 medium-sized cars
“To better understand the important properties of ‘amorphous’, consider that most materials are made up of atoms arranged in regular patterns, like intricate Lego towers. Please,” Nolte explains. “These are called ‘crystalline’ materials, like diamond, for example. The carbon atoms are perfectly aligned, contributing to its famous hardness. ” But amorphous materials have no consistent arrangement of atoms, resembling a set of Lego stacked randomly. However, contrary to expectations, this randomization does not introduce any vulnerabilities. In fact, amorphous silicon carbide is a testament to the strength that comes from such randomness.
The new material has a tensile strength of 10 gigapascals (GPa). “To understand what this means, imagine you are trying to stretch a piece of duct tape until it breaks. If you want to simulate a tensile stress equivalent to 10 GPa, it will stretch about 10 GPa before it breaks. You have to hang a medium-sized car on that strip end to end,” Nolte said.
nano string
The researchers employed an innovative method to test the tensile strength of this material. Instead of traditional methods, which can introduce inaccuracies due to the way the material is fixed, they turned to microchip technology. By growing a film of amorphous silicon carbide on a silicon substrate and suspending it, the nanostring geometry was used to induce high tensile forces. By fabricating many such structures with increasing tension, they carefully observed the break point. This microchip-based approach not only ensures unprecedented precision, but also paves the way for future materials testing.
Why focus on nanostrings? “Nanostrings are fundamental building blocks, the very basis that can be used to build more complex suspended structures. Demonstrating high yield strength in nanostrings is , demonstrating strength in its most basic form.”
From micro to macro
And what ultimately sets this material apart is its scalability. Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms, is known for its incredible strength but is difficult to produce in large quantities. Diamonds are extremely strong, but they are either rare in nature or expensive to synthesize. Amorphous silicon carbide, on the other hand, can be manufactured at wafer scale, providing large sheets of this incredibly robust material.
“The advent of amorphous silicon carbide puts us on the threshold of microchip research full of technological possibilities,” concludes Nolte.
Reference: Minxing Xu, Dongil Shin, Paolo M. Sberna, Roald van der Kolk, Andrea Cupertino, Miguel A. Bessa, Richard A. Nolte, “High-strength amorphous silicon carbide for nanomechanics,” October 12, 2023. , advanced materials.
DOI: 10.1002/adma.202306513