On the quest for the strongest materials

The strength of a material is a measure of its ability to withstand a load without breaking. Scientists in search of the strongest materials have recently turned their attention to nanomaterials, which have few of the defects that typically reduce a material's strength. On page 300 of this issue, Banerjee et al. (1) show that when nanoscale single-crystal diamond needles are elastically deformed, they fail at a maximum local tensile stress of ∼89 to 98 GPa, which is very close to the theoretical limit for this material.