Transparent Aluminum Is "New State of Matter"

Professor_Quail writes with this interesting excerpt: "Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world's most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminum' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion."

"Tansparent"

[4D6963]

If I got TFA right, it's only transparent to ultraviolets, through a tiny hole, and for a few femtoseconds. I'm sure it's great news but it's a bit over my head, and it's definitely nothing as cool as I was picturing.

Temporary

[drunken_boxer777]

Not to diminish their accomplishments, but from TFA:

This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.
Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period - an estimated 40 femtoseconds - it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.

So this doesn't quite have as broad a nerd appeal as the summary would lead us to believe.

Doesn't look that way.

[Sj0]

Nothing in the article makes it sound very transparent in the way we'd imagine transparency. Extreme ultra-violet? Maybe, but it sure looks from the image like that transparent aluminium is at best translucent for visible spectrum light -- look at how much that laser is diffused.

Al2O3 is transparent

[OrangeTide]

Sapphire glass has been common place for many decades. It is by weight a little more than half Aluminum and very transparent.

Repost?

[Fry-kun]

How is this different from http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/23/1141217 [slashdot.org] ?

this is proof

[prgrmr]

That the slashdot editors do not RTFA either.

Re:Adjectives and YOU!

[Anonymous Coward]

Soft refers to frequency.
Powerful refers to power.

As it turns out, I can toast you with microwave radiation, or use UV so weak I can power visible light for lamps from it.

Re:"Tansparent"

[furby076]

Typically, in research, the first hurdle is to get a repeatable and reliable test case that has almost no practical use (ala this situation). Once they accomplish that hurdle (also sometimes referred to as proof of concept) they can proceed to make it last longer (e.g. make it permenant), make it work better (e.g. invisible to the visible spectrum), make it cheaper for mass production (e.g. so we can build large versions of these) and then continue other improvements.

Basically this was a HUGE hurdle - they were able to show this is possible. Now they will get more funding and they can continue...hopefully we will see (or in this case not see) invisible alumnimum in the future and eventually other items.

BTW - similar systems (recent article) was the Green diode laser. Now with green diode lasers we will eventually have TVs using lasers to draw our images.

Re:Repost?

[Shatrat]

Because Aluminum is an element, Alumina is a compound.
The previous story was about a ceramic, this seems to be more of a particle physics experiment which yielded something neat for 40 femtoseconds.

Article wrong, we already had transparent aluminum

[gurps_npc]

Typically, it is an oxide, called corundum (AL2O3). It exists naturally, although is rare and therefore expensive.

If it has blue impurities, we call it a sapphire. Red impurities we call it a ruby.

Morevoer, we know how to make artificial rubies and sapphires, so this is not even the first man made transparent aluminum.

Re:This is a great breakthrough...

[mcgrew]

I saw this at New Scientist [newscientist.com] yesterday and almost submitted it, until I actually read the article. The bombardment that makes it transparent only lasts for fractions of a nanosecond before the foil is comlpetely destroyed. A few commenters there pointed to some wikipedia articles with other transparent metals. One commenter said

I always thought the "transparent aluminum" of Startrek was a tongue-in-cheek thing - on the basis that it has existed both naturally and man-made for donkeys years. Ok, it is aluminium OXIDE (sapphire) instead of JUST aluminium - but it is transparent, incredibly strong, extremely hard and is made out of nowt more exotic than aluminium and oxygen.

Ruby the same of course but with a few chromium atoms bunged in for good measure and a nice red tint.

Then there's Aluminium oxynitride [wikipedia.org] which comes far closer to the Star Trek windows:

Aluminium oxynitride (AlON) is a transparent ceramic composed of aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen. It is marketed under the name ALON and described in U.S. Patent 4,520,116. The material remains solid up to 1,200 C (2,190 F), and is harder than glass. When formed and polished as a window, the material currently (2005) costs about US$10 to US$15 per square inch (~ US$20,000/m).

It is currently the crucial outer layer of experimental transparent armor being considered by the US Air Force for the windows of armored vehicles. Other applications include semiconductors and retail fixtures.

Transparent ceramics: [wikipedia.org]

Most ceramic materials, such as alumina and its compounds, are formed from fine powders, yielding a fine grained polycrystalline microstructure which is filled with scattering centers comparable to the wavelength of visible light. Thus, they are generally opaque materials, as opposed to transparent materials. Recent nanoscale technology has, however, made possible the production of polycrystalline transparent ceramics such as transparent alumina.

The value of the work described in TFA isn't that they made transparent aluminum, but

for an instant, Wark and his team can create a new state of matter that is as dense as ordinary solid matter, but extremely hot. "That is the sort of matter you would get towards the centre of a giant planet," says Wark.

The team hopes to study the properties of this hot, dense matter using new, more powerful lasers such as the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford, California. These lasers produce higher-energy X-rays that could probe the structure of the new material and measure its properties - perhaps providing some insight into the heart of Jupiter and the other giant planets.

Re:Al2O3 is transparent

[gurps_npc]

Also ruby. Same thing as sapphire, but with slightly different impurities. Oh and we already know how to artificially make both.

How many times now?

[mseeger]

Hi,

please tell me: How many time has transparent aluminium been discovered by now?
I think about five to six times... E.g. in 2005 [arstechnica.com]

Please don't wake me up the next time someone discovers it :-).

CU, Martin

Re: TFA

[The Rizz]

The last time I checked, the colloquail definition of "transparent" means "passes visible light".Glad to know those scientists can see in the UV range - sounds like evolution is moving apace.

UV light borders the "visible light" spectrum (much like IR light does), and any material that blocks one of those ranges almost always blocks the others. Transparency in a normally non-transparent material in any one of these ranges is important for 3 reasons:

1. The general "visible light spectrum" term is based on the average human eye. Some animals see into the UV or IR. We can also make cameras that can pick up in the UV/IR ranges. A state of UV-only transparency would have many applications that this could be used for:
   • The obvious one is use in the security/spying industry. Place a UV camera behind something like this - nobody can see the camera, and might not have any idea it's even there if the material flows naturally into the design of the walls/whatever.
   • There are excellent applications for military/safety - a one-way mirror, without the mirror, mixed with bulletproof glass? Modify some of the IR night-vision goggles to see UV instead, and you've got the perfect windows for tanks and other armored vehicles, shield walls for riot police, etc. Or mix cameras and projectors to display an overlay of what's happening on the other side of a wall - this would be excellent for military checkpoints, prisons, etc.
2. If we find ways of making a material transparent to one range, we are that much closer to expanding it to make the other ranges transparent, as well as figuring out how to make other materials transparent - and those might be transparent to the "visible light" spectrum as well.
3. If we can adapt this and find different materials that become transparent only to certain ranges of light, the uses start to increase greatly. There would be applications for everything from sculpture to architecture to gardening to sunbathing.

Re:Al2O3 is transparent

[Solandri]

Aluminum oxide (corundum) is a ceramic (as are all glasses) and is rather brittle. It doesn't have the malleability, ductility, and fracture toughness (plastic deformation beyond the yield strength instead of complete failure) which makes metals a desirable structural material. Currently, when we need a transparent material with these properties we use plastics, but they tend to be lower strength and much more flexible (bendy) than metals. A transparent metal would be awesome because it could serve the same function with less volume of material and less need for structural stiffening.

Re:Al2O3 is transparent

[Artraze]

My guess would be that the recipe is based on Aluminum Hydroxide [wikipedia.org]. It melts at the fairly modest temperature of 300C and can be dissolved in acidic or strongly basic solutions. Because it is basically hydrated alumina (it's sometimes called that) it's not too hard to believe that with the right additives you could have the alumina 'condense' on to a seed crystal. For color, you'll probably also want to add chromium hydroxide.

If you're looking to experiment, ceramic stores (i.e. pottery craft supply stores) will carry the aluminum hydroxide. They only carry chromium oxide, but that dissolves in acid to from essentially the same products as the hydroxide. Keep the acid as week as possible (just enough to dissolve the products, I think; you don't want it to fume). Good luck.

Why I do remember crap like this?

[Allicorn]

Dupe!

"Transparent Aluminum a Reality!"
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/18/0337213 [slashdot.org]

From Tuesday October 18 2005.

Re:Al2O3 is transparent

[vlm]

The voiceover said they couldn't give away the recipe since it would tank the ruby market. I've googled for this magic recipe, but nothing's come up.

Sounds like the kind of BS you'd see advertised in spam.

http://www.answers.com/topic/synthetic-ruby [answers.com]

The "ruby market" was tanked (at least the first time) in 1885.

Re:It didn't need to be transparent!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the walls were made of plexiglass, and that Scotty gave the formula for transparent aluminum as payment. There is a quick conversation between Scotty and the rep about material strength, thickness, and that the glass they needed was in stock. The rep said it would take years to figure out the new formula, I doubt they made it right away.

Re:This is a great breakthrough...

[jd]

It requires a [CENSORED BY NSA] number of alternating layers to be effective.

Re:"Tansparent"

[PatrickThomson]

See, your comment is a perfect example of the cancer that is "science" journalism. This experimental result is in no way something that could ever be made into windows or body armour. This was a misconception due to certain words (like transparent) having rigorous meanings in the scientific community.

A suitable analogy: Journalist reads wikipedia page on the stanford Z-Machine, sees "wires move fast". Could this be the next step in automatic cheese-slicing technology? No.

Another analogy: The superheated plasma in the core of the sun is so dense/electromagnetically active that photons of light are randomly reflected on a squiggly path. Could nuclear fusion lead to portable full-length mirrors? No.

Re:This is a great breakthrough...

[Scrameustache]

A "keyboard"... how quaint.

So why was he so good with it?

Because he's Scotty.

Punch cards are quaint from my perspective but I wouldn't know where to start with them.

You, sir, are no Scotty.

Is he also proficient with using a morse code transmitter?

Yes. The Starfleet Engineering program is a thorough motherfucker.

Re:This is a great breakthrough...

[raodin]

Go back and watch the scene again when you have a chance. He's learning how to type as he goes - he gets faster and faster as the scene progresses. You might not know where to start with punch cards, but they still speak and write English in Star Trek, and keyboards are conveniently labeled.

Re:This is a great breakthrough...

[Phroggy]

He's right; researchers at MIT confirmed [mit.edu] that aluminum foil actually amplifies, rather than blocks, the government's mind control rays.