US made material harder than diamonds

US researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (UCLA) have created a material that is roughly equivalent to diamonds but does not require high pressure to produce: rhenium diboride. According to study author Richard Kaner and colleagues, the material is made up of two rhenium and boron alloys that outperform diamonds in hardness.

In all known materials, diamonds are considered to be the hardest. Other materials, especially metals, are durable but not always rigid: in some cases, when there is a force acting in a precise angle, they are deformed.

Researchers have created the rhenium diboride material (black powder left) after depositing the ingredients on high temperatures. (Photo: Nouvelobs.com)

Diamonds are particularly hard because of the arrangement of carbon atoms. Each atom shares an electron with its neighboring atoms, forming strong covalent bonds. The only weakness of diamonds is that they can not affect steel: the chemical reaction dulls the diamond's sharpness.

In order to meet the needs of the industry, synthetic diamonds are synthesized under high pressure as well as super-hard materials, including cubic boron nitride (CBN), which allows steel to be cut. The goal of the researchers is to create a diamond-like material without costly high-pressure technology.

They combined rhenium, a metal known to be durable, with boron atoms to easily make strong cationic bonds. Formed under normal pressure, this mixture forms rhenium diboride, with the same hardness as CBN.

VN