White sapphire
From apm
Advantages:
- very hard material (Mohs 9 – defining mineral), very high heat conductivity
- made out of the extremely common element aluminum (more common than carbon)
- thermodynamically stable not just metastable thus very heat resistant
- Crystal structure: trigonal
It is of slightly less high symmetry than other interesting base materials.
Maybe look at metastable polymorphs at the eventual cost of somewhat less heat resistance?
Terminology
Note: The page uses the term "leukosapphire" instead of just "sapphire" because
just sapphire is often associated with a blue to black variant where the color is caused by metal impurities.
A base material for gemstone metamaterial technology would be perfectly impurity free and colorless clear though.
Like a leukosapphire. Just even more clear.
Related
- Tistarite Ti2O3 has the same structure. => neo-polymorph series?
- Gemstone like compounds with high potential – Gemstone like compounds
- Corundum structure – Simple crystal structures of especial interest
- Aluminum oxides
- Moissanite is also an extremely heat resistant base material.
- Diamond is much less heat and oxidation resistant.
- Both diamond and moissanite have higher crystal structure symmetry than leukosapphire
Polymorphs
Deltalumite Al2O3 (δ form of corundum, polymorph of sapphire) – tetragonal – Mohs ? –
Paper: "Deltalumite, a new natural modification of alumina with spinel-type structure"
- Researchgate Jannuary 2019 [1]
- Researchgate December 2020 [2]
- (semanticscholar) << Images!
How to spell this ??
- Delt-alumite?
- Delta-lumite?
- Delta-alumite?
