The British "Daily Mail" website reported on November 25 that it may soon be time to throw away the bulky mobile phone cases, because scientists have created a super-hard glass that is harder than natural diamonds. The so-called carbon glass, which also has the highest thermal conductivity of any known glass, was developed by researchers at Jilin University in China. The material achieves a hardness of approximately 102 GPa, making it one of the hardest glasses currently known, second only to the recently synthesized AM-III carbon with a hardness of approximately 113 GPa.
Fei Yingwei, one of the authors of the study report and a geochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, USA, said: "Developing a glass with such excellent properties will open the door to new applications."
He also said: "We are able to synthesize this new super-hard diamond glass at relatively low temperatures, making mass production more feasible."
Carbon can take on a variety of stable forms, which differ because of their different molecular structures. Some structures are highly ordered (such as graphite and diamond), while others are disordered, or "amorphous" (such as ordinary glass).
The hardness of each form depends on the chemical bonds within it.
Dr. Fei Yingwei explained: "Synthesizing an amorphous carbon material with three-dimensional bonding has been a long-term goal." He said: "The key is to find suitable starting materials and convert them by applying pressure.