Whether new tungsten carbide superhard materials appear, will it replace the status of tungsten carbide

Recently, the internationally renowned team reported a new type of superhard material that can be used in drilling, machine building and other applications. They found that the performance of the new tungsten boride material is much better than the widely used pobedit, a composite of tungsten carbide and cobalt interspersed with synthetic diamonds. Their findings are published in the famous scientific journal Physical Chemistry Letters. Superhard materials are widely used in many fields such as drilling, machinery manufacturing, metal processing, defense industry, and medicine. The hardest material known, diamond, is too costly for many applications. The material that can be compared with one of the higher hardness-pobedit has been in an unparalleled position for 80 years in application. It was developed in the 1930s and was used to make anti-tank shells during World War II ("pobedit" actually derived from Russian "pobeda", meaning "victory"), which has been used for decades afterwards. Drill bit for the rig. Such stronger materials either require higher synthetic pressures or have much lower fracture toughness. A team of scientists led by Professor Artem Oganov of Skoltech and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) used the USPEX evolutionary algorithm to predict a new material, WB5, which can be synthesized under normal pressure and on two important parameters ( Hardness and fracture toughness can be 50% higher and 20% lower than pobedit. The new material is a previously unknown compound that can be easily obtained under normal conditions. Skoltech scientists conducted their research within the framework of Gazprom Neft's large project, which aims to create new materials for drilling applications. “Research leader Artem Oganov said:” Before we discovered new materials, we studied a large number of systems to predict stable compounds and calculate their performance. In a way, we have good reason to believe that we will never find a material that can beat pobedit that has been in place for nearly a century. But all of a sudden, we saw a glimmer of hope and quickly found a unique compound, WB5. "The first author of the study, Dr. Alexander Kvashnin, said that the tungsten-boron system has been the subject of many experimental and theoretical studies, but it has been surprising that this compound has not yet been discovered.