Dry Ice Made Into Glass; Are Diamonds Next?

Italian scientists have made a glass-like substance from dry ice. Ordinary dry ice is made from carbon dioxide, carbon and oxygen, which is a gas at room temperature. Other closely-related elements, like silicon, when combined with oxygen, are hard and solid at room temperature, and can form into amorphous silica glass, the main ingredient in window glass. The silicon and oxygen atoms are a "disordered network" in silica glass.

The Italian scientists subjected normal dry ice to very high pressures, nearly 500,000 atmospheres, to convert the discrete molecules of dry ice into the disordered network structure of amorphous carbon dioxide, a scientific first. The scientists see future uses in combining amorphous silica and amorphous carbon dioxide into very hard and stiff glasses stable at room temperatures. The ultra-hard glass will be close to diamond hardness, the scientists predict.

There are possible interplanetary applications, too, in developing understanding of the interiors of gas-giant planets like Jupiter, which hold carbon dioxide under extremely high pressures. The Italian scientists plan to increase the pressures used in their experiments at the University of Florence.

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