Self-healing behaviour in a nanotwinned diamond composite, at room temperature, has been quantitatively evaluated through tensile testing. The phenomenon is shown to arise from a transition of atomic interactions from repulsion to attraction and the formation of nanoscale diamond ‘osteoblasts’, in analogy to the process of bone healing in living organisms.
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References
Huang, Q. et al. Nanotwinned diamond with unprecedented hardness and stability. Nature 510, 250–253 (2014). This paper reports that nanotwinned diamond with an average twin thickness of approximately 5 nm has unprecedented hardness (approximately 200 GPa) and thermal stability.
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This is a summary of: Qiu, K. et al. Self-healing of fractured diamond. Nat. Mater. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01656-4 (2023).
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Fractured diamond can heal itself at room temperature. Nat. Mater. 22, 1292–1293 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01665-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01665-3
