[time-nuts] Better quartz crystals with single isotope ?

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

Silicon comes in a number of isotopes but 95% of it is Silicon-28.

When you make pure mono-crystaline silicon, you get 50-60% better
thermal conductivity if you only use Silicon-28 atoms.

Yes, you read that right:  50-60% improvement for removing the
remaining 5% other silicon isotopes, and for this and other reasons,
sorting silicon atoms by isotope is now a thing, which amongst other
side effects have made the Advogardo Project possible.

I can't help wonder if there may be similar interesting effects in
quartz crystals, if they were monoisotopic ?

Several relevant mechanisms can be imagined, lower internal damping,
higher stiffness etc. etc.

We know a LOT about quartz and have a very good theory for its
behaviours, but i find no signs anybody has ever touched monoisotopic
Quartz.

The obvious experiment is not rocket-science, nor does it demand
inordinate resources for amateurs, see for instance from 03:35:

	https://archive.org/details/59554KrystallosCF

But it is clearly beyond what I have time to persue.

Do we know anybody in the quartz business who needs a really cool
research project ?

Poul-Henning

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