Diamonds are one of the hardest substances that we lie with of , so trying tobend a snatch of onemight sound like attempting the impossible . Yet that is exactly what a team over at MIT have just managed to do .
The telling new body of work has find that when diamond are grown into nanoneedles , the structures can be bent and stretched before snapping back into physical body , not unlike rubber . Publishing their outcome in the journalScience , the researchers hope that the findings could allow for diamonds to be used in a whole server of new engineering science , from drug rescue and data storage to detection and optoelectronics .
We think of diamonds as a solid structure that forms the hardest know natural material , but researchers can grow the mineral into other shapes . The research worker of this latest work get the diamond to form midget needles like in cast to the rubber tips on the back of some toothbrushes , just a hell of a lot smaller .
They then test the intensity level of these minuscular ejection by pushing down on them with an evenly small shaft . Amazingly , they found that the ball field spike were not as solid or brickly as you might expect , but could instead be flexed and stretched by as much as 9 percent without snapping , before then returning to their original soma .
infield in their traditional bulk signifier can only flex below 1 percent , meaning that the team manage to modify radically the properties of the hard cloth . “ It was very surprising to see the amount of elastic deformation the nanoscale rhombus could sustain,”explainsco - author Daniel Bernoulli .
This newfound bendiness could have all sorts of import . The deformation of the lechatelierite can change the mechanical properties , as well as the thermic , opthalmic , electrical , and chemical substance response of the substance , potentially amplify what the nanostructured diamonds can be used for .
“ The surprise determination of ultralarge elastic deformation in a hard and brickly material – diamond – open up unprecedented possibilities for tuning its optical , optomechanical , magnetic , phononic , and catalytic properties through pliant breed engineering,”saysYonggang Huang , a professor of civil and environmental engine room and mechanically skillful engineering at Northwestern University , but who was not actually involved in the study .
Hopefully , this study can go on to be used in a whole range of Modern technology at some point in the future .
