A kind of "frozen smoke" made of diamonds -- the lightest form of diamond known -- could find use within electronics and sensors in everywhere from the human body to outer space.
The substances known as aerogels are the world's lightest solids, with some made up of as much as 99.8 percent air. Their hazy appearance earned them the nickname of "frozen smoke," but these airy materials can be surprisingly strong, holding up to thousands of times their own weight.
An aerogel is derived from a gel that had its liquid component replaced with a gas, leaving behind solid tangles of microscopic bead necklaces. These spongy materials often have excellent thermal, acoustic and electrical insulating qualities. The high surface area of these porous substances can also make them very useful as sensors, which need as much surface area as possible to detect their targets.
To create diamond aerogel, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories started with a precursor aerogel made from regular carbon whose pores were suffused with neon to help keep it from collapsing. They next blasted it with a laser and subjected it to high pressures in a diamond-lined cell. This combination of extraordinary heat and pressure changed the regular carbon in the aerogel into crystalline diamond.
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