The new ultrahard glass has a wealth of potential applications for electronic devices.
When it comes to comprehending the properties of materials, function follows form. How a material’s atoms are chemically bonded, and their resulting structure, determines its physical qualities. This applies both to properties observable to the naked eye and those more subtle qualities only revealed by probing with specialist instrumentation.
Carbon has unrivalled versatility when it comes to forming stable structures, both alone and in combination with other elements. Some carbon-based materials have highly organised structures (e.g. diamond structure) with repeating crystalline lattices while others are more disordered or amorphous. Glass is a non-crystalline, amorphous material typically formed by rapid cooling, such as after lightning strikes sand.
The nature of the bonds holding a carbon-based material together determine its hardness. For example, soft graphite...