As we learned recently, glass is neither a solid nor a liquid. Glass is a jumbled mess of atoms,  which makes it prone (easy) to distortion and cracking.

Recently, scientists have discovered how to arrange the atoms in glass to create a new type of it that can cause cracks in diamonds! And diamonds are one of the hardest materials on Earth.

What does the study say?

Scientists from China’s Yanshan University have created this new glass. It is a transparent, yellow-tinted glass, called AM-III. It has properties that won’t weaken under pressure. Moreover, it is so hard, it can even scratch diamonds. This glass is wholly made of carbon and it recorded 113 gigapascals (GPa) on the Vickers hardness test. Diamonds score between 50 and 70 on the GPa scale.

What is Vickers hardness test?

The Vickers hardness test is used to measure the hardness of the materials. It was developed in 1921.

The new AM-III glass

Scientists made it from carbon that was heated and cooled slowly. They created it by slowly increasing the pressure in an experimental chamber to 25 GPa and temperatures to 2,192 degrees Fahrenheit over 12 hours. Moreover, scientists also put a material called fullerene. This is a physical form of carbon (allotrope) in the chamber. Thus, they created the special glass under these conditions.

Scientists say that we could use AM-III to make solar cells and bulletproof windows.

 

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