Material Tougher Than Diamond Developed

A team of scientists from Washington, Wisconsin, and Germany combined a ceramic barium titanate and white-hot molten tin with an ultrasonic probe. The new material was, in some tests, almost 10x more resistant to bending than diamond. As the material cools, its crystal structure changes, causing its volume to expand. Because they are held inside the tin matrix, strain builds up inside the barium titanate, at a particular temperature that energy is released to oppose a bending force