What is the Strongest Known Material?
The answer to this question depends on how you define “strong,” but the hardest, or least compressible, known material as of this writing (December 2007) are aggregated diamond nanorods (ADNRs), an allotrope (variety) of carbon consisting of highly compressed and interlinked nanotubes. Aggregated diamond nanorods have a bulk modulus, or hardness measure, of 491 gigapascals (GPa), whereas conventional diamond only has a modulus of 442 GPa. Aggregated diamond nanorods can scratch both diamond and ultrahard fullerite, another allotrope of carbon which was the previous record-holder for hardness. Aggregated diamond nanorods were first synthesized by physicists in 2005 at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. The team, led by Natalia Dubrovinskaia, used a custom-designed 5000-metric-ton (5 million kilogram) anvil press on a sample consisting of conventional fullerenes (also known as buckyballs, the element C60). By compressing these buckyballs and heating them to 2500 degrees Kelvin, it wa
The answer to this question depends on how you define “strong,†but the hardest, or least compressible, known material as of this writing (December 2007) are aggregated diamond nanorods (ADNRs), an allotrope (variety) of carbon consisting of highly compressed and interlinked nanotubes. Aggregated diamond nanorods have a bulk modulus, or hardness measure, of 491 gigapascals (GPa), whereas conventional diamond only has a modulus of 442 GPa. Aggregated diamond nanorods can scratch both diamond and ultrahard fullerite, another allotrope of carbon which was the previous record-holder for hardness. Aggregated diamond nanorods were first synthesized by physicists in 2005 at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. The team, led by Natalia Dubrovinskaia, used a custom-designed 5000-metric-ton (5 million kilogram) anvil press on a sample consisting of conventional fullerenes (also known as buckyballs, the element C60). By compressing these buckyballs and heating them to 2500 degrees Kelvin, it
