If you thought that diamonds were the hardest objects of all, think again
— is only slightly less in hardness than diamonds. A chemical mix of silicon and carbon, which occupy the same family in the periodic table as one another, silicon carbide grains have been mass produced since 1893. They can be bonded together through a high-pressure but low-temperature process known as sintering to create extremely hard ceramic materials.
Self-assembly is an incredibly powerful tool in nature, but biological materials are weak compared to synthetic ones. These self-assembling nanoparticleswith applications from better water purifiers to more efficient solar cells, from faster catalysts to next-generation electronics. The dream technology of these self-assembling nanospheres, though, is printable body armor, custom to the user's specifications.
The last of these forms is both extremely rare, but also extremely hard. Formed during volcanic eruptions, it's only ever been discovered in minute quantities, which means that we've never tested its hardness properties experimentally. However, it forms a different kind of crystal lattice — a tetrahedral one instead of a face-centered cubic one —Two diamonds from Popigai crater, a crater formed with the known cause of a meteor strike.
Micrograph of deformed notch in palladium-based metallic glass shows extensive plastic shielding of an initially sharp crack. Inset is a magnified view of a shear offset developed during plastic sliding before the crack opened. Palladium microalloys have the highest combined strength and toughness of any known material..
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