Institute of Superhard Materials
named after V.M. Bakul, NAS of Ukraine
It took powerful natural cataclysms, colossal tectonic processes, gigantic pressures and temperatures for a diamond to form in the bowels of the earth. When people learned about this rare, amazingly beautiful and unsurpassed stone in properties, they could no longer rest from attempts to imitate nature and recreate it with their own hands.
Years passed, and people learned to synthesize synthetic diamonds in quantities that satisfied the demand of jewelers and the needs of industrial development. But the relentless advance of technological progress required other, perhaps not so beautiful, but no less useful materials. So, thanks to the painstaking work of scientists and deep laboratory research, a fairly wide range of materials, but united by one common name “superhard”, appeared in the world: cubic boron nitride, high-density technical ceramics, superconducting ceramics, hard alloys, etc. And our institute – the V.M. Bakul Institute of Superhard Materials of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine – has the honor of being involved in this man-made process. Because we have always stood at the intellectual forefront of world materials science, and today we remain one of the best European research centers, placing our minds and hearts on the altar of superhard materials science. Today, the institute’s activities are related to the implementation of promising research in the field of physics and chemistry of ultrahigh pressures and temperatures, mechanics of contact interaction, and are aimed at creating superhard materials and new-generation hard alloy tools, as well as finding new opportunities for their use in mechanical engineering, construction, mining, electronics, optics, medicine, etc.
