New Material Turns as Hard as a Diamond
Researchers from the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) at The City University of New York (CUNY) have created a new material “which promisies to be flexible as tin foil but hard enough to stop a bullet,” IFLScience.com reported.
The study, published in Nature Nanotechnology showed how two one-atom thick layers of graphene “could be used to make a diamond-like material upon impact at room temperature.” This material, called diamene, “is soft and pliable until pressure is applied…. So if the diamene is shot by a bullet, for example, it would prevent it passing through.”
“This is the thinnest film with the stiffness and hardness of diamond ever created,” said the project’s lead researcher Elisa Riedo. “Previously, when we tested graphite or a single atomic layer of graphene, we would apply pressure and feed a very soft film. But when the graphite film was exactly two-layers thich, all of a sudden we realized that the material under pressure was becoing extremely hard and as stiff, or stiffer, than bulk diamond.”
Read more about the potential uses for this material here.
