Glass History
The first glass known to Stone Age people over 2 million years ago was Obsidian, a black volcanic glass. Obsidian forms when lava extrudes from a volcano then cools quickly with minimal crystal growth. It was used for making decorative objects and weapons, like arrowheads. Pre-Columbian Mesoamericans made a type of sword, called a macuahuitl, with obsidian blades mounted in a wooden body.
The earliest known man-made glass objects, mainly glass beads, dates back to around 3500BC. The oldest finds are in Eastern Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Egypt. The discovery of glassblowing around the 1st Century BC was a significant breakthrough in glassmaking. Glassblowing is a glass-forming technique involving a blowpipe to inflate melted glass into a bubble, creating objects.
The Roman Empire extensively used the blowpipe from the 1st Century BC for 500 years. Glass making continued to develop. Eventually, the ability to produce transparent glass and other novel techniques were invented. As a result, the process became quicker, cheaper, and available to the masses.
Today, researchers have created a new kind of glass that is so strong; it can scratch a diamond!
Strongest Glass In The World
The novel glass, named AM-III, was created by an international team of scientists led by researchers from Yanshan University, China. The team claims that AM-III is about as hard as diamonds and sturdier than most other materials, thanks to its intense manufacturing process and bizarre chemical structure.
The team wrote in the study:
Our measurements demonstrate that the AM-III material is comparable in strength to diamond and superior to the other known strongest materials.
Potential Applications
Besides being an impressive engineering accomplishment, AM-III has ideal mechanical and electronic properties to make sturdier solar panels and other semiconductors. The Independent points out that the ultra-hard glass could potentially add a new tool in the drive to clean our energy infrastructure.
How Is The Glass Made?
Interestingly, AM-III’s hardiness comes from a bit of disorder at the molecular level, compared to a diamond’s crystal framework. To produce the glass, the scientists began with hollow, ovoidal carbon molecules known as fullerenes. These molecules were then heated and crushed for hours under intense pressure. However, the disorder was significant. The glass would weaken and lose its semiconducting properties if the scientists pushed the carbon into too organized of an arrangement by taking the process too far.
The resulting glass scored higher than natural diamonds on a hardiness test and could even scratch a diamond’s surface — a remarkable achievement for a material associated with shattering. The Chinese researchers published their findings on August 5, 2021, in the journal National Science Review.
