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I'm looking up materials for worldbuilding, specifically for keeping metallic hydrogen in containment in zero gees. Are there any materials that have more tensile strength than a diamond anvil cell? Diamond anvil cells, from my research, have a compressive strength of about 7*10^7 atmospheres. I looked at https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/compression-tension-strength-d_1352.html, http://www-mdp.eng.cam.ac.uk/web/library/enginfo/cueddatabooks/materials.pdf, and other websites, but none gave me materials with high strengths.

Pyrania
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    If the material is going to contain something inside, then it will be under tension as the material inside tries to get out. That is different than the case of a diamond anvil cell where the diamonds are resisting being crushed (while they themselves crush the sample). – Jon Custer Sep 05 '18 at 21:10
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    Note that a material with high compressive strength does not always have high tensile strength. For example, concrete has a high compressive strength, but breaks easily under tension (a problem that is often solved with rebar in modern construction, ensuring that the concrete is always under compressive load). – probably_someone Sep 05 '18 at 21:31
  • @probably_someone Yeah, I realized that when looking at diamond. – Pyrania Sep 05 '18 at 21:34

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Carbon nanotubes have a theoretically extreme tensile strength, one over a thousand times the strength of diamond. Even in practice, these still have a high strengh. However, three million atmospheres of strength is the minimum pressure needed to create metallic hydrogen. This website would give you info about it1.

Pyrania
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