It’s mind-boggling to think many inventions that shape the world as we know it, are actually accidental.
Penicillin, anaesthesia, chewing gum, and even the microwave that you use to heat your favourite comfort foods, are all serendipitous discoveries!
A couple of months ago, Australian scientists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) were routinely performing their research on advanced batteries, when they stumbled upon what may be the most thermally stable material ever – all by chance!
Heat-resistant wonder material.
What the group, led by Associate Professor Neeraj Sharma, invented was Sc1.5 Al0.5 W3 O12.
Catchy eh? Welcome to the world of chemistry!
It’s a composite material – a combination of two or more constituent materials, that results in a new merged material that has properties dissimilar to the individual original materials (think concrete or fibreglass). The new product has a formidable resistance to heat, as noted in their paper published in Chemistry of Materials in May of 2021.
A myriad of materials that we come in contact with daily are actually quite sensitive to heat – concrete, steel, glass and aluminium. They all expand or contract by millimetres and even inches when temperatures fluctuate.
This phenomenon is called thermal expansion.
But this new zero thermal expansion (ZTE) material, made of scandium, aluminium, tungsten and oxygen, did not change in volume even when it was heated from -269 to 1126 degrees Celsius (-452 to 2059 degrees Fahrenheit)!
With only minute changes in the bonds and rotations of the atoms in Sc1.5 Al0.5 W3 O12, the material retained its shape and form perfectly at low temperatures, where atoms stop moving (absolute zero), and at searing temperatures, where glass starts to melt.
Far-reaching applications.
ZTE wonder materials such as, Sc1.5 Al0.5 W3 O12, are highly sought after in modern industries where high precision is absolutely crucial.
An example of where this material technology might come in handy is aerospace engineering. Incorporating this thermally-stable product into spacecraft bodies or components might make them more resilient to extreme temperatures such as those experienced during rocket ignition or in the utter chill of space. And maybe one day, it might even render space launch systems as reusable as modern-day aircraft.
The material can have amazing applications in our human bodies as well. Medical implants, for example, don’t experience a wide range of temperature fluctuations such as spacecraft, but even a small degree of thermal expansion might be devastating to the patient. This is where the ultra-stable material can effectively prevent that from happening.
After their exciting ‘aha’ moment, the researchers are now going full steam ahead in trying to ascertain the exact mechanisms behind this incredible degree of thermal stability.
“Which part’s acting at which temperature, well, that’s the next question,” says Dr Sharma, who adds, “the scandium is rarer and more costly, but we are experimenting with other elements that might be substituted, and the stability retained.”
Writing this article also had our Science Writer questioning when was the last time he discovered something by accident… Hmm…
Have you ever made an exciting discovery by chance? We’d love to know!
