It’s more or less a Science Fiction question, really…We’ve all read of “futuristic” materials like “Transparent Aluminum” that, according to the experts, simply couldn’t exist under the immutable laws of physics.
So, in the interest of fiction: Are there any materials or metals that are physically possible to create, but that can’t actually be made yet, with current technology?
Materials that are just way-too-damned-hard-and-expensive to create today could count, too.
I seem to recall that Buckminster Fuller had a few ideas involving Carbon molecules…I think.
COMPLETELY MAGNETIZED IRON or ALLOYS
100% magnetized iron (i.e. all domains completely aligned) would phenomenally stronger magnets than our fanciest current room-temp alloys. Then again, our best current rare-earth metal alloys would be even better if they were more 100% magnetized
LARGE SCALE FULLERENES
While we do make fullerene balls and tubes, the tubes are very short (microns to mm, though I believe individual cm-scale fibers have been made in labs) All current work with macro-scale (cm in length) fibers have been done with composites: masses of short oriented fibers in an epoxy matrix – more like the straw in in the Biblical mudbricks of the Israelites in Egypt than the organized rebar in reinforced concrete or the long graphite fibers in todays graphite epoxy composites.
The Holy Grail is long fullerene fibers – meters or even kilometers.
ENGINEERED OR DESIGNER FULLERENES
Also it would be physically possible to have concentric fibers (tubes within tubes) and even more complex structures where (for example) certain bonds in the tubes are broken, and reconnected between concentric fibers.
Chemists have also been discussing buckyballs with captive ions, etc. to create special chemical properties, but the last I checked, this could not be done, except (essentially) by rare accident/
In general, fullerenes offer a wealth of possibilities
ULTRADENSE MATTER
There are a number of ultradense states that are believed to exist in collapsed stars (e.g. the neuronium in neutron stars, and a hypothetical collapsed quark state whose properties and conditions of formation were recently described)
We may be able to find them, or even measure their properties, but I doubt we’d be able to retrieve them. We certainly can’t make them
Square trees.
If trees were not round they could be processed into lumber with less waste.
I know they’re working on it, but, IIRC they gave up.
Too difficult…
Spider silk. We know it’s possible because spiders make it, but we can’t, at least not in industrial quantities.
Also, something I always wondered: they say metals have grain structures, and the size and shape (?) of the grains affect strength. If we could make a metal component out of single-crystal metal, would that be significantly stronger than the alloys we have now?
I know there’s been some work done recently on materials with a negative thermal expansion coefficient, so they contract when you heat them. Or, mixed properly with other alloys, would not expand or contract over a large temperature range.
Possibly getting away from the OP, there are lots of challenges in biochemistry with manufacturing complex molecules like DNA which would be very slow and complex with current technology.
This ain’t my specialty, but I do know that single crystal materials are used to make turbine blades for various applications (here’s a commercial manufacturer, for example). Apparently single crystals perform well in combinations of high temperature and high stress. I’m aware of a few other single crystal materials (piezoelectric ceramics, for instance, outperform multi-crystal piezos) that are available, also.
As another example for the OP, there is a small research field known as biomimetics, where the goal is to study how materials (among other things) have formed in nature (millions of years of evolution produce high-performance materials!) and try to duplicate these materials artificially. One example, mentioned offhand in a seminar, is the layered grain structure of a clam shell. These shells are made of calcium, which ought to be very brittle. However, the shells are built up using a “brick-like” layering of cells, which resist crack propagation, turning brittle calcium into a relatively tough material. This idea could be used to make metals, which are relatively tough, even tougher. It’s hard to construct this complicated microscale structure, though.
Single-crystal supernickel alloys are already used for lots of things.
I’m looking forward to using synthetic diamond as a heat-shielding material: just bake it on as a somewhat thick film over existing heat-shield tech, and make reentry vehicles all that much more robust (I say “reentry vehicles” generically, not just in the missile sense).
We’ve seen diamond, we know its properties… we just can’t crank it out. Maybe the guy at Gemesis will crack the code.
The oxygenated fluorocarbons that they use in ‘The Abyss’ actually exist and can be used as artificial blood but I think they cause allergic reactions in too many people to be widely used.
I think there is some practical application to be had with strange matter. As I recall, you can tuck a large number of strange quarks into an ordinary atomic nucleus, increasing the mass of the particle without significantly altering its chemical properties.
Buckyballs are fairly easy to make. Basically, all you have to do is zap graphite with a laser. The problem–and the expense–comes with seperating the species, as you get not only C60 but also C70 and C80 and probably others as well. These are all very chemically similar, which makes it difficult to do any sort of seperation. I can’t get the prices from Aldrich online, but I could get my hands on an Aldrich catalog and look it up later today. Fisher wants $150.10 for 99.9% 250 mg of C60 through Arcos and $530 for 99.9+% 100 mg of C60. While buckyballs are not the most expensive compound you can buy, they’re pretty high.
None that I know of, but I haven’t been paying attention for awhile. Last I checked various ceramic conductors where being tried and were actually successfully demonstrated at say -150C which is a lot better than -270 something. Still imagine the problems in bending a ceramic anything.
