Scientists have fixed a decades-long puzzle and revealed a near solid compound that might match diamond, as the hardest material on earth, a study says.Researchers found that when carbon and nitrogen precursors were subjected to severe heat and pressure, the resulting materials– understood as carbon nitrides– were harder than cubic boron nitride, the second hardest material after diamond.Unlocking the Potential of Carbon NitridesThe breakthrough opens doors for multifunctional products to be used for commercial purposes including protective finishes for cars and spaceships, high-endurance cutting tools, solar panels, and photodetectors, experts say.Materials researchers have actually tried to unlock the capacity of carbon nitrides considering that the 1980s, when researchers first noticed their exceptional properties, including high resistance to heat.Yet after more than 3 years of research and multiple attempts to manufacture them, no reputable outcomes were reported.International Collaboration Leads to SuccessNow, an international group of scientists– led by researchers from the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions at the University of Edinburgh and professionals from the University of Bayreuth, Germany and the University of Linköping, Sweden– have actually lastly achieved a breakthrough.The team subjected numerous types of carbon-nitrogen precursors to pressures of between 70 and 135 gigapascals– around one million times our climatic pressure– while heating it to temperature levels of more than one and a half thousand degrees Celsius.To identify the atomic arrangement of the compounds under these conditions, the samples were brightened by an intense X-ray beam at 3 particle accelerators– the European Synchrotron Research Facility in France, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Germany, and the Advanced Photon Source based in the United States.Implications of the New DiscoveryResearchers found that three carbon nitride compounds were discovered to have the required building blocks for super-hardness. Incredibly, all 3 substances maintained their diamond-like qualities when they returned to ambient pressure and temperature conditions.Further calculations and experiments recommend the brand-new materials contain extra properties including photoluminescence and high energy density, where a large quantity of energy can be stored in a small quantity of mass.Researchers state the potential applications of these ultra-incompressible carbon nitrides are vast, potentially placing them as supreme engineering products to rival diamonds.The research, published in Advanced Materials, was moneyed by the UKRI FLF scheme and European research grants.Dr. Dominique Laniel, Future Leaders Fellow, Institute for Condensed Matter Physics and Complex Systems, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, said: “Upon the discovery of the first of these brand-new carbon nitride products, we were incredulous to have produced materials scientists have actually been dreaming of for the last three years.
