Published on 24 Jun 2019

World’s hardest material, diamond, is flexible

An international team of scientists, led by NTU President Prof Subra Suresh, has discovered that diamond can be stretched substantially without breaking.

Diamond, the world’s hardest material, turns out to be flexible. Scientists from NTU Singapore, MIT, City University of Hong Kong and South Korea made the surprising discovery and found that diamonds can be stretched by up to 9% without breaking. This could lead to new applications in computing, healthcare and materials engineering.