A crystal of tridimitis from the Wannenköpfe quarry in Germany
A unique hybrid material, found in meteorites with centuries of age and Mars, which conducts heat in an extraordinary way, maintains constant thermal conductivity through variable temperatures – an unprecedented behavior in any other known substance.
The material, a special form of silicon dioxide called tridimiteit represents an advance in understanding how atomic structure affects heat flow.
Unlike typical crystalswhere thermal conductivity decreases with increasing temperature, or glasswhere it increases with heat, this substance derived from meteorite maintains constant properties of heat conduction regardless of temperature changes.
Recently, a team of researchers led by Michele SimoncelliAssistant Professor at Columbia Engineering, in the United States, conducted a theoretical study, using quantum mechanics and machine learningto try predict the existence of this material.
His team collaborated with researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne and Sapienza University of Rome to develop Equations that explain thermal behavior of materials with structures between completely crystalline and completely vitreous states.
O, whose results were presented in an article published in July in PNASwas based on a conducted previously by the Simoncelli team and published in 2019 in the Nature Physics.
During this research, the team had derived a unified equation allowed describe thermal conductivity in both crystals and glassesas well as intermediate materials used in thermoelectric, solar cells and thermal barrier coatings.
To verify their theoretical predictions, researchers at Sorbonne University in Paris have obtained special permission from the National Museum of Natural History to Test a tridimite sample collected from a meteorite which fell in Steinbach, Germany, in 1724.
Your experiences confirmed the unique properties of the materialat temperatures ranging from 80 k to 380 k (-193 ° C to 107 ° C).
A atomic structure of tridimitis meteoric is precisely between the Orded Crystals and Disordered Glasscreating your unusual thermal behavior. This phenomenon resembles Invar effect on thermal expansionworth the Nobel Prize of Physics in 1920.
The investigation has significant implications for technology modern, particularly in steel production. The team provides that similar materials can form through thermal aging in refractory bricks used in steel ovens.
As steel production generates approximately 1.3 kg of carbon dioxide per kg of steel, representing about 7 % of US carbon emissions, tridimitis materials could help control intense heat More efficiently, potentially reducing the carbon footprint of the industry.
