Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science

Scientists Identify Possible New Substance With Highest Melting Point 92

Posted by Soulskill from the new-hotness dept.
JoshuaZ writes: Researchers from Brown University have tentatively identified an alloy of hafnium, nitrogen and carbon as having an expected melting point of about 7,460 degrees Fahrenheit (4120 Celsius). This exceeds that of the previous record-breaker, tantalum hafnium carbide, which melts at 7,128 F (3942 C). Its record stood for almost a century. At this point, the new alloy is still hypothetical, based on simulations, so the new record has not yet been confirmed by experiment. The study was published in Physical Review B (abstract), and a lay-summary is available at the Washington Post. If the simulations turn out to be correct, the new alloy may be useful in parts like jet engines, and the door will be opened to using similar simulations to search for substances with even higher melting points or with other exotic properties.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Scientists Identify Possible New Substance With Highest Melting Point More

Scientists Identify Possible New Substance With Highest Melting Point

Comments Filter:

  • I want to make a boiling chamber out of this stuff for electrical generation.....

    • 700-1000C

    • This has been done before. Back in the 1980s people were able to drill into a pond of molten lava for some distance and boil water with it:
      https://books.google.com/books... [google.com]

      The interesting thing about doing such a thing that the high temperature is half the problem, the other one is that molten magma is highly corrosive.

  • Make the stuff (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @05:04PM (#50199731) Homepage
    Then publicize. Don't dream up a vaporware material and talk about that to the press.
    • I think you meant publish, publicising is exactly what they're doing! ;)

    • Re:Make the stuff (Score:5, Funny)

      by godrik ( 1287354 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @05:27PM (#50199861)

      Yeah right slashdot! Stop giving us hope for new fancy material with potential application in engineering! We only care about politics and social issues! This is slashdot, not a geek news website!

    • I posit that Unobtainium has a melting point of 15,775 Celsius, a freezing point of -500 Kelvin, and yo'Momma, there, dude. get back into the lab and prove me wrong.

    • Don't dream up a vaporware material

      I see what you didn't know you did there.

    • Don't dream up a vaporware material

      nono, it's about melting point, not sublimation.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )
      The purpose of the investigation was really the atomic-level computer simulation. Specifically, they were investigating whether they could properly simulate the entropy levels of an alloy in the solid and liquid phases, and the heat of fusion required to melt the substance, then extrapolate the melting point from that data. Ultimately, finding a material with a record-high melting point was the challenge used to develop the computation, not an end to itself.

      That said, now that they've identified the al

    • Then publicize. Don't dream up a vaporware material and talk about that to the press.

      No, need to patent it first!

  • Probably not useful (Score:5, Informative)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @05:16PM (#50199813) Homepage
    If the simulations turn out to be correct, the new alloy may be useful in parts like jet engines, and the door will be opened to using similar simulations to search for substances with even higher melting points or with other exotic properties.

    No, it won't. Materials for jet engines must be reasonably affordable, machinable or otherwise workable, and available in large quantities. I have about 4600 lbs [2086kg] of 422 stainless going through my shop right now for a single row of blades for one machine. They're big blades, but even for small blades, hundreds of pounds of material is common. An alloy of hafnium, nitrogen and carbon isn't going to be cheap enough for that to ever be feasible. It is probably a brittle material as well. Brittle materials and a high vibration environment don't mix.

    Maybe you could apply it as a coating, but I'm not sure how that would be possible. Almost all coatings of this type require you to liquify or vaporize the coating material. Plus, you run into the same problem as before- a thin coating won't protect the base metal, and a thick one would be prohibitively expensive.

    • Re:Probably not useful (Score:4, Interesting)

      by willworkforbeer ( 924558 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @05:27PM (#50199855)
      Hafnium is about a dollar / gram. Nitrogen and carbon are plentiful and relatively cheap. Is this dramatically more expensive than current high temp materials?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        4600lbs of this material would cost, at a price of $1/gram, a good 2.1 million dollars. Compared to, what I can only estimate, is maybe at max $100,000 of current 422 stainless steel.

      • Re:Probably not useful (Score:5, Informative)

        by EmperorArthur ( 1113223 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @05:52PM (#50199983)

        Hafnium is about a dollar / gram. Nitrogen and carbon are plentiful and relatively cheap. Is this dramatically more expensive than current high temp materials?

        442 stainless steel is US $1500.00 / Ton from Alibaba. Assuming metric, that works out to $1.5/kg, or $0.0015/g.
        Plus that $1/g is just for the raw Hafnium. Alloys like the one proposed here tend to be expensive, time consuming, and finicky to get right.

        Then you get into the fact that producing Hafnium leaves pure Zirconium. Which is typically used as cladding for nuclear fuel rods. Something that a fair portion of the world would freak out about, because anything that's good for nuclear must be bad. Plus there's this gem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • Rhenium, also used in turbine blades, goes for about $2500/kg... so, $1/gram for hafnium doesn't seem like much at all.

        • leaves pure Zirconium. Which is typically used as cladding for nuclear fuel rods. Something that a fair portion of the world would freak out about, because anything that's good for nuclear must be bad. Plus there's this gem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]...

          Well, they should get to the freaking out part because Zirconium isn't exactly uncommon or difficult to produce. Its a by product of all sorts of mining processes and fairly common within the Earths crust.

          And if you want to throw prices out there, $900/ton for Zirconium makes it cheaper than stainless, so if anyone was going to freak out about it ... they would have.

          • Honestly the freaking out thing isn't that bad, but the issue isn't Zirconium in general. For most applications, when they use Zirconium they don't bother to extract the Hafnium. It has most of the same properties, and it's expensive to remove. It just happens to be that one of the main applications that requires pure Zirconium involves the word nuclear. Which, is something no politician wants to touch with a ten foot pole.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dargaud ( 518470 )

          Plus there's this gem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          The possibility to manipulate gamma ray coherence, even to a small degree, would be interesting

          You don't say... A friggin' gamma ray laser and scientists aren't jumping on it like maggots on peanut butter ?!?

      • Crucible 422 steel is a high alloy steel, which while expensive, looks like it should sell for about the same as some of the high-end knife steels, which go for about $.06/gm retail. Even if the price didn't go up with demand, which is practically an axiom of economics, that's a pretty significant difference. We'd probably switch to titanium or zirconium alloys first, or even tungsten, they all have very high melting points, plus have known reserves and stockpiles, and are relatively common, and while more

      • A bit expensive to start making filaments for incandescent bulbs out of it then . Pity.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In the combustion chamber it is all about how hot you can get the hotter the more efficient the engine (at a close approximation). Superalloys are the norm now, and the engines already routinely operate at very close to the melting point of the blade material. To achieve this effective cooling design and incredibly sophisticated metallurgy are used.

      An alloy that is significantly higher in melting point is of interest.

    • Re:Probably not useful (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Plazmid ( 1132467 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @06:00PM (#50200041)

      Current jet turbine blades(at least the first stage ones) are made of some of the most exotic materials we know of using some pretty expensive manufacturing processes. First stage jet turbine blades are almost always made of single crystalline super alloy. Oh and they're hollow, so they have to be made from a crazy investment mold. Oh and tiny holes have to be EDM'd into them.

      It's a pretty expensive to make them, but it's worth it. All this crazy manufacturing is to done so that jet turbines can burn hotter, so that by Carnot they're more efficient. Even small changes in efficiency can be worth millions of dollars in fuel savings.

      So as long as this material isn't as hard to process as ceramics(and it exists), it will probably find some use in a jet engine.

      • Re:Probably not useful (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bob the Super Hamste ( 1152367 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @06:17PM (#50200135) Homepage
        Those blades also have exotic coatings and actually operate at a temperature above the melting point of the metal in them. A couple of weeks ago I heard the BBC Elements program on nickel [bbc.co.uk] and they were bringing up its use in jet engines. Jet turbines use the vast majority of the very limited supply (about 70% of 40 tons) of rhenium produced each year and it is one of the most expensive metals so I doubt the cost is an issue.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Most current single crystal alloy development is focused on the elimination of Hf because of cost and difficulty in maintaining consistent supply. The other very expensive raw material we use is Platinum for oxidation/corrosion coatings. There's also significant focus into reducing and eliminating platinum use. Pratt & Whitney got away from Platinum coating years ago. GE and Rolls still use a lot of platinum but are working on reducing the amount.

          Raw material cost is a significant part of gas turbine ai

    • Re:Probably not useful (Score:4, Funny)

      by TimothyDavis ( 1124707 ) <tumuchspaam@hotmail.com> on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @06:18PM (#50200139)

      You could always use it to make a smelting crucible to melt tantalum hafnium carbide into.

      :)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Threni ( 635302 )

      So, a hypothetical argument against a hypothetical substance. My simulations suggest it's too close to call.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by weav ( 158099 )

      The "Workable" (as in bendable, malleable, etc) part is a big question... how in heck would you work this stuff? If the melting point is over 4000C, what does it take to make it mushy enough to work?

  • Practical concerns (Score:3)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @06:06PM (#50200073)
    Is this kind of liking finding an acid that will dissolve any substance -- what do you store it in? Exactly what do you use as a cauldron for forging parts with the substance with the highest melting point ever? (Yeah, probably magnetic containment.) Regardless, it seems rather difficult to make anything out of this stuff; if it was easy, they have produced a working sample, instead of a theoretical substance based on a computer simulation.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • made out of that stuff.

  • Sounds like a useful material for building core catchers.
    • Core catchers? As in the jamming sleeve that stops your core from sliding out of the bottom of the core barrel, after you've cut it?

      I've seen dozens of them when I've been catching core (and I just had the lovely news that I'll probably be catching my next series of cores in breathing apparatus. Oh joy!), but I've never seen one that had significant signs of heat damage.

      What sort of coring do you do that burns out catchers?

      • Core catchers? As in the jamming sleeve that stops your core from sliding out of the bottom of the core barrel, after you've cut it?

        Kind of, only that the core is several thousand degrees hot, and if it burns through the bottom of the building, the whole incident gets upgraded a few steps on the INES scale.

        • Ah, a rather different sort of core. For catching yours, you'll probably need a bit more than breathing apparatus.

          But hang on a few seconds - your cores are already a happening event, so what have you got to achieve? Stop it going anywhere ; stop any nuclear reactions ; minimise venting of volatiles ; cool it down. For stopping the nuclear reactions, you need either boron by the tonne or cadmium (and of the two, cadmium is a poisonous heavy metal and boron a bio-not-particularly-nasty ; easy choice) ; IIRC

  • Our drills melt at 8 miles. We really don't know what's beneath that, we only speculate on the mantle and the core.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Money is the root of all money." -- the moving finger

Close