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Transparent Aluminium
(theconstructor.org)
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this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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Technology
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3 times as tough as steel and they're making bulletproof glass out of it...
There's a low budget pc game about colonizing Mars and this was one of the things in the tech tree
Crazy to see it as a real thing now.
Like OG aluminum, this is going to be crazy expensive at first, but in a century it'll likely be cheap and we'll see it replacing glass in the most mundane uses.
We'll see it replace phone screens pretty quickly tho. A few mm's of this and we'll have legitimately unbreakable screens, and even if a scratch happens, you should be able to just buff it out. They're probably wrap entire phones it honestly. One solid piece that makes repair impossible on your own.
Might be hard to assemble the functional part of a phone inside of a crystal, and you can't bake the whole thing because silicon isn't surviving 2000oC for 2 days.
Yeah, but it was a lot harder to make regular aluminum back in the day as well.
Increasing ductility isn't impossible, but it probably is unlikely in this case.
But two halves that get glued/sealed together permanently would be possible.
Why do you think this would be more durable than tempered glass?
That, yes, and and I’m pretty sure we’ll not be polishing scratches out either.
wouldnt that stop the radio waves from reaching the phone, like a faraday cage?
Good question. This new material is technically a ceramic, not a metal, so I'd be inclined to say no. But we'd need more information on its electrical properties to say for sure.
I doubt that it's ever going to be super affordable, or be used in something as common as a phone. The price constraints on aluminum were due to the amount of energy it takes to produce. The transparent aluminum is a bit more complicated.
From the article it appears the fabrication is mold dependent, which always increases production cost. So you have to fabricate a mold for any new component. You then have to then pressurize the powder at 15k pounds per square inch, and then heat aluminum powders at 2000 degrees Celsius for 2 days.
wouldnt that stop the radio waves from reaching the phone, like a faraday cage?