Super glue was an accident, too. |
Along with graphene ( here and here), the creation of, "what may be one of the most thermally stable materials ever discovered", by Australian researchers may change our future for the better. Interestingly, this discovery is similar to many other great findings... it was uncovered by accident. Here's the story...
"A new material could find applications in aerospace components and medical implants."
"Australian researchers have created what may be one of the most thermally stable materials ever discovered. This new zero thermal expansion (ZTE) material made of scandium, aluminum, tungsten and oxygen did not change in volume at temperatures ranging from 4 to 1400 Kelvin (-269 to 1126 °C, -452 to 2059 °F)."
"That's a wider range of temperatures, say scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), than any other material demonstrated to date, and it could make orthorhombic Sc1.5Al0.5W3O12 (catchy name, eh?) a very handy tool for anyone engineering something that needs to work in extremely varied thermal environments."
"Examples of where this might come in handy include things like aerospace design, where components are exposed to extreme cold in space and extreme heat at launch or on re-entry. Famously, the SR-71 Blackbird was designed to expand so much at its Mach 3.4 top speed that it would liberally drizzle fuel on the runway at ground temperatures; the fuel tanks wouldn't even fully seal until they heated up. This new material stays exactly the same volume from close to absolute zero all the way up to comfortably over the heat you'd expect to get on the wing of a hypersonic aircraft traveling at Mach 5."
Advanced material has zero thermal expansion, 9 June 2021
ANSTO News
A/Prof Neeraj Sharma of UNSW and Dr Helen Maynard-Casely of ANSTO explain their research on advanced materials that does not expand or contract over a wide temperature range.