New Inorganic Material Discovered With Lowest Thermal Conductivity Ever Reported:
A collaborative research team, led by the University of Liverpool, has discovered a new inorganic material with the lowest thermal conductivity ever reported.
[...] The research team, led by Professor Matt Rosseinsky at the University’s Department of Chemistry and Materials Innovation Factory and Dr. Jon Alaria at the University’s Department of Physics and Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy, designed and synthesized the new material so that it combined two different arrangements of atoms that were each found to slow down the speed at which heat moves through the structure of a solid.
[...] Combining these mechanisms in a single material is difficult, because the researchers have to control exactly how the atoms are arranged within it. Intuitively, scientists would expect to get an average of the physical properties of the two components. By choosing favourable chemical interfaces between each of these different atomic arrangements, the team experimentally synthesized a material that combines them both (represented as the yellow and blue slabs in the image).
This new material, with two combined arrangements, has a much lower thermal conductivity than either of the parent materials with just one arrangement. This unexpected result shows the synergic effect of the chemical control of atomic locations in the structure, and is the reason why the properties of the whole structure are superior to those of the two individual parts.
If we take the thermal conductivity of steel as 1, then a titanium bar is 0.1, water and a construction brick is 0.01, the new material is 0.001 and air is 0.0005.
Journal Reference:
Quinn D. Gibson, Tianqi Zhao, Luke M. Daniels, et al. Low thermal conductivity in a modular inorganic material with bonding anisotropy and mismatch [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abh1619)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:18PM (17 children)
>> If we take the thermal conductivity of steel as 1, then a titanium bar is 0.1, water and a construction brick is 0.01, the new material is 0.001 and air is 0.0005.
Seems to me that this "air" stuff is lower... and where do aerogels fit on the list? Looks like what we have here is another science journalist fail.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:24PM (5 children)
Wow, you're really fuckin' smart, man. I can hardly wait for all the other 3 or 4 or so non-comments to pour in!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:26PM
I think your mother's calling you for lunch... time to leave the basement for a few minutes.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:33PM
3 or 4? Sad times when that's all the enthusiasm we can muster from the ACs.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 22 2021, @07:38PM (2 children)
They said this had the lowest conductivity for inorganic stuff.
Must I conclude that air is organic?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @08:25PM (1 child)
Air is a gas and not a material...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @08:29PM
well, mixture of gases...
(Score: 5, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 22 2021, @05:05PM (1 child)
For Infrared sensing devices in e.g. space telescopes keeping the sensing element cold is a hard problem. You can tote your own liquid helium/hydrogen refrigerant, but it's a fixed supply that can't be replaced once its used up. You can also use a cryocooler to chill the element, but in a space telescope that's not ideal. The tiny vibration of the device reduces the image quality for the long exposures used for deep imaging.
As a data point, the WISE telescope, the best all-sky IR instrument we've ever built, had its primary mission end because it ran out of hydrogen coolant.
Materials with extremely low thermal conductivity help with this greatly. You use a bigass sunshade to block the sun's light, and then thermally isolate that from the rest of the telescope to slow the speed that heat can creep down to your imager. A 10x improvement over titanium isn't something to scoff at. Air, being a gas, is not an ideal thermal isolation material for this application.
* Actually I'm a little dubious on if we could use this in space. Chlorates are a chemically reactive species, so it'd be a bit premature to arbitrarily assume it could be usable in that environment. Thermal isolation structures are usually built very long and very thin**, so there is a question of mechanical property suitability as well. If it's super fragile then it wouldn't survive launch shock. Still, it's interesting.
Space isn't the only application for this though. Thermal isolation between the hot and cold end is a primary coefficient for the efficiency of Stirling engines, so (again depending on mechanical properties) there may be an application there too.
** Thermal conductivity through a structure is a product of the cross section, length, and the thermal conductivity of the underlying material. To visualize this, picture heat as a liquid and the thermal conductivity of the material as the viscosity of the liquid. Using this model, it's intuitive that long skinny straws will carry less water (heat) than short large diameter pipes. In this analogy the "pressure" would be roughly equivalent to the difference in temperatures between the two ends of the structure.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 22 2021, @11:02PM
Stability of its properties in vacuum and cryogenic conditions would be the first things to consider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Informative) by richtopia on Thursday July 22 2021, @05:10PM
From the original publication's summary (I'm not paying for access), the conductivity is 0.1 W K−1 m−1. Here is the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity [wikipedia.org]
Material Thermal conductivity [W·m−1·K−1]
Silica aerogel 0.02
Polyurethane foam 0.03
Expanded polystyrene 0.033–0.046
Fiberglass or foam-glass 0.045
Alcohols, oils 0.100
Snow (dry) 0.050–0.250
Acrylic glass (Plexiglas V045i) 0.170–0.200
Teflon 0.250
Water 0.5918
Marble 2.070–2.940
Manganese 7.810 Lowest thermal conductivity of any pure metal.
Alumina 30
Beryllia 209-330
Aluminium 237
Copper (pure) 401
Diamond 1000
Boron arsenide 1300
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @06:04PM
0.5% Carbon steel = 54 W/m K
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-metals-d_858.html [engineeringtoolbox.com]
Aerogel 0.013 to 0.018 W/m·K
If steel = 1, aerogel= 0.0002 to 0.0003
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @09:47PM
That is a good point. (despite the negative comments)
From looking at the diagram, it would appear that the material itself is providing that score.
Aero-gels are sort of 'cheating', since the insulation is at least partly due to the air.
One could imagine two layers of this stuff with an air/vacuum between to achieve near perfect insulation.
A new brand of Thermos? :)
A bigger weakness of the article (unless I missed it in my skim read) was there was no word on how cheap/difficult it would be to manufacture.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday July 22 2021, @10:02PM (3 children)
aerogels don't fit on this list, because first, this appears to be an aerogel, and second, it's inorganic. As far as I'm aware, and my science on the topic is a couple of decades out of date, the aerogels used so far are organic, such as SiOCH3, because I think they're usually made by injecting carbon dioxide.
so looks like a high school chemistry fail, not a journalist fail. but I may be wrong - you possibly got a c- or a d+. no, those are not ions.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 22 2021, @10:57PM (2 children)
While they may start from organic precursors, many of them are inorganic.
From times when you get the itch to update your general knowledge on aerogels: https://aerogel.org [aerogel.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Redundant) by fakefuck39 on Thursday July 22 2021, @11:43PM (1 child)
So, without me spending more than the 5 minutes on that site that I did, can you just tell me the chemical formula for some inorganic ones? Because yes, I am interested, but not 6 minutes of time interested, and since you already seem to know, why not just give an example instead of "go read this book."
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Friday July 23 2021, @12:13AM
In general, the name of aerogel will tell you what they are made of. Aerogel is just a structural (that is: physical presentation) property of the material.
Silica aerogel is just silica (SiO2), with a decent amount of terminal oxygen atoms bound to hydrogen when dried in supercritical CO2. If one uses critical methanol for drying, some of the terminal oxygens will be bound to methyl groups (and the gel will be hydrophobic and whitish-opaque).
There are carbon aerogels (usually derived from organic gels by carbonisation in inert gases [aerogel.org]), metal oxides aerogels (silica, alumina, iron oxide, chromia, vanadia, etc), metal aerogels [aerogel.org] (also named open nanofoams), metal chalcogenides aerogels [aerogel.org] (semiconducting ones are interesting, apparently)
Yes, there are organic aerogels too,mainly polymers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday July 22 2021, @10:48PM
Thermal conductivity (W·m-1·K-1) [sciencedirect.com]:
- mild steel : 50
- water : 0.58
- air : 0.24
- carbon dioxide : 0.015
Aerogel [nih.gov]
This one - from TFAbstract [sciencemag.org] (with my emphasis)
And no, TFSciA does not make a claim of being "the lowest ever", that's indeed the sci pseudo-journo fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @07:28AM
Air is ~0.026 Watts per meter-Kelvin at sea level and standard temperature and pressure. Their steel measurement is around 50, which is in the range of values. Aerogels start at 0.03 and the lowest I am aware of is 0.0089. But, aerogels are not considered to be a single material and neither is air.
(Score: 4, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:43PM (8 children)
From TFAbstract...
This is a fun one; With very dedicated effort you can make it yourself out of Pepto Bismol, Selsun Blue shampoo, and household bleach.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:47PM
-1 to me for not putting the <sub> tags in that. :(
BiOCl, Bi2O2Se
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:52PM (6 children)
How exactly would you synthesize it?
That's like saying that I can make VP racing fuel out of flushwater and the pile of shit I just dropped in my toilet.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 22 2021, @05:28PM (5 children)
Very carefully, of course! :)
Making your shit into racing fuel would actually be more straightforward. Thermally decompose it at high pressure in a closed environment to produce CO and convert that to methanol over a copper catalyst.
To make the Bismuth Oxychloride you'd extract the Bismuth from Pepto Bismol (or buy it, it's not controlled or expensive), dissolve the bismuth with nitric acid to make bismuth nitrate, then a substitution reaction with a chloride salt e.g. table salt to yield BiOCl. It's insoluble, and will fall right out of solution.
For the selenium compound, I don't know. There are a bunch of papers on making Bi(OCl)x(some metal) catalysts, I assume the process is the same for tacking on Selenium. Selenium is well known for making stinky stuff, and my spouse has forbidden me from playing with it (again) until I have a place far (miles) from any neighbors to do it. :)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 22 2021, @06:09PM (3 children)
I'm pretty sure that's how they make gunpowder and yet for some reason, I wouldn't recommend one try that at home.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @06:38PM
Oh I dunno, I can think of several people who should try it at home.
No-one here, of course (cough cough).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @06:42PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @01:30AM
Well I did.
And for the record, temperature control when making nitroglycerin is very important. If you let it get too warm while adding the acid you get a runaway reaction that produces a big brown mushroom cloud of NO2 gas. (That's the nasty one, not the nice NO gas the dentist uses.)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Opportunist on Thursday July 22 2021, @08:12PM
I have this hunch that there is a story hidden in this simple sentence.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by UncleSlacky on Thursday July 22 2021, @08:16PM (2 children)
Anyone remember this stuff?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 22 2021, @11:08PM
Thermal conductivity and flame retarding are two different things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday July 23 2021, @02:35PM
A chap on YouTube believes he may have reverse engineered Starlite. With no remaining samples to compare we can't be sure, but it seems reasonably credible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IbWampaEcM [youtube.com]