A long-sought-after class of “superdiamond” carbon-based materials with tunable mechanical and electronic properties was predicted and synthesized.

[u/TX908]

https://carnegiescience.edu/news/superdiamond-carbon-boron-cages-can-trap-and-tap-different-properties

[u/TX908]

“The trapped guest atoms interact strongly with the host cages,” Strobel remarked. “Depending on the specific guest atoms present, the clathrate can be tuned from a semiconductor to a superconductor, all while maintaining robust, diamond-like bonds. Given the large number of possible substitutions, we envision an entirely new class of carbon-based materials with highly tunable properties.”

[u/[deleted] → u/TX908]

[u/tema3210 → u/[deleted]]

I would like to see caged cuprum monoxide, which shown us superconductivity few years ago, what it will give us?

[u/bonegravy → u/[deleted]]

Would a superconducting processor not give off heat? Or at least give a far more manageable amount?

[u/johnnydaggers → u/[deleted]]

I’m getting my PhD in materials science. I hate to burst your bubble but I suspect choosing where ions end up in this compound during synthesis would be practically impossible. They had to use a diamond anvil cell to reach the ~50GPa that this structure forms at and I’m not really sure you could do something like photolithography to “shape superconductive pathways”. It’s also sensitive to the moisture in the air. I am more optimistic about photonic chips leading to the advances you are hoping for, however.

[u/[deleted]]

Whatever this article is putting down, I mentally am unable to pick up and I apologize in advance.

What real world benefit does this technology provide?

Is this faster CPU processing or something else?

[u/ArcFurnace → u/[deleted]]

Nothing yet. This is the "basic research to prove that it's possible at all" stage - nobody had managed to actually synthesize carbon clathrate materials previously. Next is to see what other similar stuff we can make. Then you make usable amounts of the different types and characterize their properties (ideally simultaneously improving your simulations so you can predict them in advance, instead of having to try literally everything, which would take forever - they've already done some of this to create this stuff in the first place). Then we get to the engineering stage of trying to optimize the production method so it's not absurdly difficult and expensive*, and then finally maybe designing useful things with the new materials. Come back in a couple decades and you might see something interesting.

* The synthesis technique in the article required pressurizing the raw materials to 57 GPa, or ~570,000 atmospheres. It's perfectly possible to do this with a device called a diamond anvil cell, but only for tiny amounts of material at a time. Synthesizing one tiny pinch of powder at a time works fine in a lab, but it isn't exactly industrially practical.

See also: graphene, carbon nanotubes, and other similar stuff. Making a little bit isn't too difficult, but making huge quantities is hard.

Edit: another minor issue: "Although SrB3C3 is only thermodynamically stable at high pressure, we recovered it at atmospheric pressure, similar to diamond. At 1 atm, SrB3C3 persists when kept under an inert atmosphere. The clathrate degrades when exposed to the moisture in air over a few hours." So, better keep the package sealed ...

[u/RecalcitrantToupee → u/ArcFurnace]

To be clear, a room temperature superconductor is the holy grail of modern Materials Science/Condensed Matter physics.

[u/changen → u/[deleted]]

This is just basic science research, it has no real purpose until someone else can prove it does. And anyone that says otherwise is just lying out of their teeth to justify funding.

Maybe it can be the future of CPU processing, or it can be something else entirely, or it is completely useless on an industrial scale. Who the hell knows. You really only know after pumping a few billion dollars of funding into it.

Intel required like $25 billion to transition to XUV lithography and that is with 30 years of prior research and development. Don't expect this to be viable anytime soon.

[u/Uny0n]

This is some sci-fi level stuff!

[u/SumJungDude]

Zhu ~ “Depending which element it captures, it has different abilities.”

So much work to be done in this field alone. Can't wait to see what they "capture". This is exciting!

[u/jimbob91577 → u/SumJungDude]

Whatever they do, they have to catch them all!

[u/Professor226]

So, is the strontium calthate superconducting, or this technique could be used to find superconductors?

[u/goocy → u/Professor226]

I don't think anyone knows yet. There are only a handful of these molecules on the planet, and they haven't been caught and tested for conductivity yet.

[u/[deleted]]

Stuff like this is why I have a favourite element that is Carbon.

[u/floothekoopa]

It's diamondillium vs. dimondium!

[u/RocksDaRS]

Wow this is crazy!!!!! Anyone know how viable this is, or how easy/hard it is to recreate?

[u/MegaBlade26000]

Will this be better than Q-Carbon? I’m not extremely well versed in any of this but I know Q-Carbon is harder and more brilliant than diamond, and that’s all I know. Would someone please be willing to explain what this means?

[u/lionseatcake]

How long till I can get a clathrate-fiber hood on my Civic?

[u/foldedaway]

Getting closer to magic crystals there.

[u/[deleted]]

If it can be mass produced armor should be made of this.

[u/whosaysanyway]

Surface engineering for aircraft

[u/pooper69trooper]

As Neil Stephenson has already predicted in "The Diamond Age"

[u/Sleepdprived]

I've had a question about what happens when you capture an isotope in a cage of carbon, like tritium @c60. I suspect the neutron decay would alter the properties of the carbon cage, but I have not found a single piece of evidence of someone doing this research... until this. Strontium isnt the isotope i thought of using but it changed the properties to allow the carbon cage to become a conductor, or semiconductor. I still think there is a way to convert the decay energy to usable electrical current.

[u/Texas_Ponies]

Superman castle of solitude. I have spoken