The strongest iron. The hardest metals in the world

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Metals accompany humanity almost all of its conscious life. This began, of course, with copper, since it is the most amenable to processing material and available in nature.

Evolution helped people develop significantly technically and over time they began to invent alloys that became stronger and stronger. In our time, experiments continue, and new durable alloys appear every year. Let's consider the best of them.

Titanium

Titanium is a high-strength material that is in high demand in many industries. The most common area of ​​application is aviation. It's all to blame good combination low weight and high strength. Also, the properties of titanium are high specific strength, resistance to physical influences, temperatures and corrosion.

Uranus

One of the most durable elements. IN natural conditions it is a weak radioactive metal. It can be found in a free state, is very heavy and is widely distributed everywhere due to its paramagnetic properties. Uranium is flexible, has high malleability and relative ductility.

Tungsten

Most refractory metal of the currently known ones. It has a silver-gray color and is a so-called transitional element. The properties of tungsten allow it to resist chemical attack and be forgeable. The most famous area of ​​application is used in incandescent lamps.

Rhenium

Silver-white metal. In nature it can be found in pure form, however, there is also molybdenum raw material in which it is also found. Distinctive feature rhenium refractoriness. It belongs to expensive metals, so its cost is also off the charts. Home area applications – electronics.

Osmium

Osmium is a silvery-white metal that has a slight blue tint. It belongs to the platinum group and has an unusually strong similarity to iridium in such properties as refractoriness, hardness and brittleness.

Beryllium

This metal is an element that has a light gray tint and is highly toxic. Having such unusual properties the material has found wide application in the field nuclear power and laser technology. The high strength of beryllium allows it to be used in the manufacture of alloying alloys.

Chromium

The bluish-white hue makes the chrome stand out from general list. It is resistant to alkalis and acids. In nature it can be found in its pure form. Chromium is often used to create various alloys, which are later used in the fields of medicine and chemical equipment.

It is worth noting that ferrochrome is an alloy of chromium and iron. It is used in the manufacture of metal cutting tools.

Tantalum

It is a silvery metal with high hardness and density. A lead tint on metal is formed due to the appearance of an oxide film on the surface. The metal lends itself well to processing.

Today, tantalum is successfully used in construction nuclear reactors and metallurgical production.

Ruthenium

A silvery metal that belongs to the platinum group. It has an unusual composition: it contains muscle living organisms. Another distinctive fact is that ruthenium is used as a catalyst for many chemical reactions.

Iridium

In our rating, this metal ranks first. It has a silvery white color. Iridium also belongs to the platinum group and has the highest hardness of the above metals. IN modern world it is used very often. It is mainly added to other metals to improve their resistance acidic environments. The metal itself is very expensive, since it is very poorly distributed in nature.

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A common belief about hardness is diamond or damask steel/damascus steel. If the first mineral surpasses everything simple substances, existing on Earth, which nature created, then the amazing properties of rare steel blades, they owe to the skill of blacksmiths-gunsmiths, additives from other metals. Many technical alloys, used, for example, for the production of super-hard cutters in the engineering industry, creating durable, reliable tools with unique properties, are associated with these additives in the usual symbiosis of iron with carbon, briefly, traditionally called steel - chromium, titanium, vanadium, molybdenum, nickel. When readers ask what the hardest metal in the world is, they are bombarded with a barrage of conflicting information on the pages of websites. In this role, according to the authors of various articles, either tungsten or chromium, or iridium with osmium, or titanium with tantalum.

In order to get through the jungle of not always correctly interpreted, albeit accurate facts, it is worth turning to the original source - the system of elements contained both in the composition and in other cosmic objects, left to humanity by the great Russian chemist and physicist D.I. Mendeleev. He had encyclopedic knowledge, made many scientific breakthroughs in knowledge about the structure, composition, interaction of substances, in addition to the famous table based on the fundamental periodic law, named after him.

The planets closest to the Sun - Mercury, Venus, Mars, together with our planet, are considered one - earth group. There are reasons for this not only among astronomers, physicists and mathematicians, but also among geologists and chemists. The reason for such conclusions among the latter is, among other things, the fact that they all mainly consist of silicates, i.e. various derivatives of the element silicon, as well as numerous metal compounds from Dmitry Ivanovich’s table.

In particular, our planet for the most part(up to 99%) consists of ten elements:

But man, in addition to the iron and alloys based on it necessary for survival and development, has always been much more attracted to precious metals, often respectfully called noble metals - gold and silver, and later platinum.

According to the scientific classification adopted by chemists, the platinum group includes ruthenium, rhodium, palladium and osmium with iridium. All of them also belong to noble metals. Based on their atomic mass, they are conventionally divided into two subgroups:

The last two represent special interest for our pseudo-scientific investigation on the topic of who is the hardest here. This is due to the fact that the large atomic mass compared to other elements: 190.23 for osmium, 192.22 for iridium, according to the laws of physics, implies a huge specific density, and, consequently, the hardness of these metals.

If dense, heavy gold and lead are soft, plastic substances that are easy to process, then osmium and iridium, discovered in early XIX centuries turned out to be fragile. Here it is necessary to remember that the measure of this physical property is a diamond, which can be used without special effort inscribe on any other solid material, natural or artificial origin, is also extremely fragile, i.e. It's fairly easy to break. Although, at first glance, this seems almost impossible.

In addition, osmium and palladium have many more interesting properties:

• Very high refractoriness.
• Resistant to corrosion and oxidation even when heated to high temperatures.
• Resistant to concentrated acids and other aggressive compounds.

Therefore, along with platinum, including in the form of compounds with it, they are used in the production of catalysts for many chemical processes, high-precision instruments, equipment, instruments in the medical, scientific, military, and space sectors of human activity.

It is osmium and iridium, and scientists after research believe that this property is approximately equally given to them by nature, are the hardest metals in the world.



And everything would be fine, but not very good. The point is that as their presence in earth's crust, and, accordingly, the global production of these very useful minerals is negligible:

• 10 -11% is their content in the solid shell of the planet.
• The total amount of pure metal produced per year is within the following limits: 4 tons for iridium, 1 t for osmium.
• The price of osmium is approximately equal to the price of gold.

It is clear that these rare earth, expensive metals, despite their hardness, cannot even be used to a limited extent as raw materials for production; perhaps as additives to alloys, compounds with other metals to impart unique properties.

Who is for them?

But a person would not be himself if he had not found a replacement for iridium with osmium. Since it is impractical and too expensive to use them, attention was not unsuccessfully turned to other metals that have found their application in different situations, industries for the creation of new alloys, composite materials, production of equipment, machines and mechanisms for both civil and military use:

Although the hardest metal in the world, or rather, two of them - iridium and osmium, have shown their unique properties only in laboratory conditions, and also as negligible percentage additives in alloys, other compounds for creating new materials, necessary for a person, we should be grateful to nature and for this gift. At the same time, there is no doubt that the inquisitive minds of talented scientists and brilliant inventors will come up with new substances with unique properties, as has already happened with the synthesis of fullerenes, which turned out to be harder than diamond, which is already surprising.

From childhood we know that the strongest metal is steel. We associate everything iron with it.

Iron Man, The Iron Lady, steel character. When we pronounce these phrases, we mean incredible strength, strength, hardness.

For a long time, steel was the main material in production and armament. But steel is not metal. More precisely, it is not entirely pure metal. This is with carbon, in which other metal additives are present. By using additives, e.g. change its properties. After this, it is processed. Steelmaking is a whole science.

The strongest metal is obtained by introducing appropriate alloys into steel. This could be chromium, which imparts heat resistance, nickel, which makes the steel hard and elastic, etc.

In some areas, steel has begun to replace aluminum. Time passed, speeds increased. Aluminum couldn't stand it either. I had to turn to titanium.

Yes, yes, titanium is the strongest metal. To give steel high strength characteristics, titanium began to be added to it.

It was discovered in the 18th century. Due to its fragility, it was impossible to use. Over time, having obtained pure titanium, engineers and designers became interested in its high specific strength, low density, corrosion resistance and high temperatures. Its physical strength exceeds the strength of iron several times.

Engineers began adding titanium to steel. The result is the most durable metal, which has found application in ultra-high temperature environments. At that time, no other alloy could withstand them.

If you imagine an airplane flying three times faster than you can imagine how the covering metal heats up. Sheet metal The skin of the aircraft in such conditions heats up to +3000C.

Today, titanium is used unlimitedly in all areas of production. These are medicine, aircraft manufacturing, ship production.

It is clear that titanium will have to move in the near future.

Scientists from the USA, in the laboratories of the University of Texas in Austin, discovered the thinnest and most durable material on Earth. They called it graphene.

Imagine a plate whose thickness is equal to the thickness of one atom. But such a plate is stronger than diamond and transmits a hundred times better electricity, how computer chips from silicon.

Graphene is a material with damaging properties. It will soon leave the laboratory and rightfully take its place among the most durable materials in the Universe.

It is even impossible to imagine that a few grams of graphene would be enough to cover a football field. This is metal. Pipes made of such material can be laid manually without the use of lifting and transport mechanisms.

Graphene, like diamond, is the purest carbon. Its flexibility is amazing. This material bends easily, folds perfectly and rolls perfectly.

Manufacturers of touch screens have already begun to take a closer look at it, solar panels, cell phones, and finally, super-fast computer chips.

The first metal that humanity began to use for economic purposes was copper: it is easy to process, it is found quite often in nature, so it is not surprising that it served as the material for the first metal knives and axes. A little later, people discovered that by adding tin to copper, they could get a much stronger alloy - bronze. And when they mastered iron, it turned out that in its pure form it is not much stronger than copper, but when combined with carbon it acquires much better strength properties. Medieval alchemists, in addition to searching for the philosopher's stone, also experimented with alloys, trying to determine what the hardest metal in the world was, but all experiments confirmed: alloys are stronger than pure metal, no matter what it is. But what is the situation today?

The hardest

All the most durable “pure” metals were discovered by man quite late. The reason is simple: they are much less common than the iron or copper we are used to. There are several methods for determining the hardness of materials: Mohs, Vickers, Brinell and Rockwell, the data of which differ slightly. On the Mohs scale, for example, iron has a value of only 4, and the highest hardness of diamond is 10. And a dozen metals whose hardness is 5 units or higher look like this:

• iridium – 5;
• ruthenium – 5;
• tantalum – 5;
• technetium – 5;
• chromium – 5;
• beryllium – 5.5;
• osmium – 5.5;
• rhenium – 5.5;
• tungsten – 6;
• uranium – 6.

Most of this “magnificent ten” are extremely rare in nature (for example, the annual production of ruthenium in the world is about 18 tons, and rhenium is about 40 tons) or have radioactivity, making their use in everyday life difficult. And all of them have a very significant cost, with the possible exception of chromium. It is the high hardness and relatively low price on this metal made it popular in the manufacture of durable alloys.

Use of the hardest metals

Due to the fact that most of the hardest metals are very rare in nature, their strength qualities remain unclaimed or are in extremely limited demand, for example, for coating components and parts of mechanisms exposed to heaviest load. But to use in production tool steel or armor additives made of rhenium or ruthenium, you see, it’s stupid. There simply aren’t enough of these metals for everything. Therefore, chromium turned out to be in great demand. It is the most important alloying additive, improving both strength and corrosion resistance alloys

Some of the solid metals are used in very small quantities in medicine, in the creation of space technology, as catalysts and in some other areas. In these cases, it was not their hardness that was in demand, but other accompanying qualities. Tungsten, for example, as the most refractory metal on the planet (melting point +3422 Celsius), has found application in the creation of incandescent filaments for lighting devices. It is added in small quantities to alloys that must withstand high temperatures. long time– for example, in the metallurgical industry.

Uranus

Uranium, like tungsten, is the hardest metal on Earth, but uranium is much more common on our planet, and therefore has found much wider application. And its radioactivity did not interfere with this. The best known use of uranium is as a “fuel” in nuclear power plants. It is also used in geology to determine age rocks and in chemical industry.

The strength properties and high specific gravity of uranium (it is 19 times heavier than water) were useful in the creation of armor-piercing ammunition. In this case, it is not pure metal that is used, but its depleted version, almost entirely consisting of the weakly radioactive isotope uranium-238. Heavy cores made of this metal perfectly penetrate even well-armored targets. How much residual effects the use of such ammunition is harmful environment and to humans, is not yet known for certain, since too little statistical material has been accumulated on this issue.

There are many metals in the world that are identical in terms of hardness, but not all of them are widely used in industry. There may be several reasons for this: rarity and therefore high cost, or radioactivity, which prevents use for human needs. Among the hardest metals, there are 6 leaders that have conquered the world with their features.

The hardness of metals is usually measured using the Mohs scale. The hardness measurement method is based on assessing the scratch resistance of other metals. Thus, it was determined that uranium and tungsten have the highest hardness. However, there are metals that are more used in different areas life, although their hardness is not the highest on the Mohs scale. Therefore, when discussing the topic of the hardest metals, it would be wrong not to mention the well-known titanium, chromium, osmium and iridium.

When asked what the hardest metal is, any person studying chemistry and physics at school will answer: “Titanium.” Of course, there are alloys and even pure nuggets that surpass it in strength. But among those used in everyday life and production, titanium has no equal.

Pure titanium was first obtained in 1925 and was then declared the hardest metal on Earth. It immediately began to be actively used in completely different areas of production - from rocket parts and air transport to dental implants. The popularity of the metal is due to several of its main properties: high mechanical strength, resistance to corrosion and high temperatures, and low density. On the Mohs scale of metal hardness, titanium has a degree of 4.5, which is not the highest level. However, its popularity and involvement in various industries makes it first in hardness among the frequently used ones.

Titanium is the hardest metal commonly used in manufacturing.

More details about the use of titanium in industry. This metal has wide range uses:

• Aviation industry - aircraft airframe parts, gas turbines, skins, strength elements, chassis parts, rivets, etc.;
• Space technology – casings, parts;
• Shipbuilding - ship hulls, pump and pipeline parts, navigation instruments, turbine engines, steam boilers;
• Mechanical engineering – turbine condensers, pipes, wear-resistant elements;
• Oil and gas industry – drilling pipes, pumps, vessels high pressure;
• Automotive industry - in the mechanisms of valves and exhaust systems, transmission shafts, bolts, springs;
• Construction – external and internal cladding of buildings, roofing materials, light fastening devices and even monuments;
• Medicine – surgical instruments, prostheses, implants, housings for cardiac devices;
• Sports – sports equipment, travel accessories, bicycle parts.
• Common consumption goods - Jewelry, decorative items, garden tools, wrist watch, kitchenware, electronics housings and even bells, and are also added to paints, whitewash, plastic and paper.

You can see that titanium is in demand in completely different areas of industry due to its physical and chemical properties. Although it is not the hardest metal in the world on the Mohs scale, products made from it are much stronger and lighter than steel, wear less and are more resistant to irritants.

Titanium is considered the hardest among actively consumed metals

The hardest metal in its natural form is considered to be a bluish-white color - chromium. It was discovered at the end of the 18th century and has been widely used in production since then. On the Mohs scale, the hardness of chromium is 5. And for good reason - it can cut glass, and when combined with iron, it can even cut metal. Chromium is also actively used in metallurgy - it is added to steel to improve it. physical properties. The range of uses of chromium is very diverse. Trunks are made from it firearms, medical and chemical technological equipment, household items - kitchen utensils, metal parts of furniture and even submarine hulls.

The highest hardness in its pure form - chromium

Chromium is used in various fields, for example, for production of stainless steel, or for coating surfaces - chrome plating (equipment, cars, parts, dishes). This metal is often used in the manufacture of firearm barrels. This metal can also often be found in the production of dyes and pigments. Another area of ​​its use that may seem surprising is the production of dietary supplements, and in the creation technological equipment For chemical and medical laboratories, chromium cannot be used without chromium.

Osmium and iridium are representatives of the platinum group metals and have almost the same density. In their pure form they are incredibly rare in nature, and most often they are alloyed with each other. Iridium by its nature has high hardness, which is why it is difficult to work with metal, both mechanical and chemical.

Osmium and iridium have highest density

Iridium began to be actively used in industry relatively recently. Previously, it was used with caution, since its physicochemical characteristics were not fully understood. Iridium is now even used in jewelry (as inlays or alloyed with platinum), surgical instruments, and parts for cardiac stimulators. In medicine, metal is simply irreplaceable: its biological products can help fight cancer, and its irradiation radioactive isotope can stop the growth process cancer cells.

Two thirds of the iridium mined in the world goes into the chemical industry, and the rest is distributed among other industries - sputtering in the metallurgical industry, goods popular use(elements fountain pens, jewelry), medicine in the production of electrodes, pacemaker elements and surgical instruments, as well as to improve the physicochemical and mechanical properties metals.

The hardness of iridium on the Moss scale is 5

Osmium is a silvery-white metal with a bluish tint. It was discovered a year later than iridium, and now it is often found in iron meteorites. In addition to its high hardness, osmium is distinguished by its high cost - 1 gram of pure metal is estimated at 10 thousand dollars. Another feature of it is its weight - 1 liter of molten osmium is equal to 10 liters of water. However, scientists have not yet found a use for this property.

Because of its rarity and high cost, osmium is used only where no other metal can be used. It has never been widely used, and there is no point in searching until supplies of the metal become regular. Osmium is now used to make instruments that require high precision. Products made from it hardly wear out and have significant strength.

Osmium hardness index reaches 5.5

One of the most famous elements, which is one of the hardest metals in the world, is uranium. It is a light gray metal with weak radioactivity. Uranium is considered one of the heaviest metals - its specific gravity is 19 times that of water. It also has relative ductility, malleability and flexibility, and paramagnetic properties. On the Moss scale, the hardness of the metal is 6, which is considered very high.

Previously, uranium was almost never used, but was found only as ore waste during the extraction of other metals - radium and vanadium. Today, uranium is mined in deposits, the main sources being the US Rocky Mountains, the Republic of Congo, Canada and the Union of South Africa.

Despite its radioactivity, uranium is actively consumed by humanity. It is most in demand in nuclear energy - it is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. Uranium is also used in the chemical industry and in geology to determine the age of rocks.

Military engineering also did not miss the incredible specific gravity indicators. Uranium is regularly used to create the cores of armor-piercing projectiles, which, due to their high strength, do an excellent job of the task.

Uranium is the hardest metal, but it is radioactive

Topping off our list of the hardest metals on Earth is the brilliant silver-gray tungsten. On the Mohs scale, tungsten has a hardness of 6, like uranium, but, unlike the latter, it is not radioactive. Its natural hardness, however, does not deprive it of its flexibility, which is why tungsten is ideal for forging various metal products, and its resistance to high temperatures allows it to be used in lighting devices and electronics. Tungsten consumption does not reach high speeds, and main thing the reason is its limited quantity in deposits.

Due to its high density, tungsten is widely used in the weapons industry for the production of heavyweights and artillery shells. In general, tungsten is actively used in military engineering - bullets, counterweights, ballistic missiles. The next most popular use of this metal is aviation. Engines and parts of electric vacuum devices are made from it. Tungsten cutting tools are used in construction. It is also an indispensable element in the production of varnishes and light-resistant paints, fire-resistant and waterproof fabrics.

Tungsten is considered the most refractory and durable

Having studied the properties and areas of consumption of each metal, it is difficult to say unambiguously which is the hardest metal in the world, if we take into account not only the Mohs scale indicators. Each of the representatives has a number of advantages. For example, titanium, which does not have ultra-high hardness, has firmly taken first place among the most used metals. But uranium, the hardness of which reaches the highest level among metals, is not so popular due to its weak radioactivity. But tungsten, which does not emit radiation and has the highest strength and very good flexibility, cannot be actively used due to limited resources.