According to the phys website on September 22, if you put an aluminum spoon in a tank filled with water, the spoon will sink to the bottom. Alexander Boldyrev, a chemist at Utah State University, said that this is because conventional aluminum metals are denser than water.
However, if the structure of ordinary household metals can be redesigned at the molecular level (as Boldyrev and his colleagues did with computer modeling), ultralight crystalline aluminum with a density smaller than that of water can be produced. Boldyrev and scientists ILIYA getmanskii, Vitaly Koval, Russian minyaev and Vladimir Minkin from the Southern Federal University of rostovtang state in Russia published their research findings and results on the online edition of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C on September 18, 2017. The team's research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Russian Ministry of science and education.
Boldyrev, a professor in the Department of chemistry and biochemistry of Utah State University in the United States, said: "the challenge proposed by my colleagues is very innovative. They started with diamond, a known lattice type material, and used aluminum atoms to replace each carbon atom in the diamond lattice to obtain a new tetrahedron."
Through the simulation calculation of the team, it can be proved that this structure has a new, metastable and light aluminum crystal form. Moreover, it is surprising that the density of the aluminum material having this structure is only 0.61 g / cc compared to the conventional aluminum having a density of 2.7 g / cc.
"This means that the material obtained by crystallization in this form will be able to float on water because the density of water is 1 g / cc."
Boldyrev said.
This characteristic will make the application of non-magnetic metals, corrosion-resistant metals, high-yield metals, relatively low-cost and easy to produce metals and other materials to a new height.
BodyRev said: "the space shuttle, medicine, wiring and more light and fuel-efficient automobile parts are some of the application fields that I think of at present. Of course, it is too early to consider the use of this material. There are still many unknown points to study about this material, for example, we know nothing about its strength."
However, BodyRev also said that this breakthrough discovery still marks the emergence of a new material design method. Boldyrev said: "the most exciting aspect of this research is that it has obtained a new design method: using a known structure to design new materials. This method will pave the way for further discoveries in the future."
