Topic
Field studying materials' structure, properties, and performance across metals, ceramics, polymers, and thin films for electronics and energy uses.
Kyoto University researchers report an Fe-4Ni-0.6C steel with nearly 140% uniform elongation, reached by activating twinning and martensite in sequence. The study suggests metals have much greater capacity for uniform deformation than previously believed, Phys.org reported.
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Tohoku University researchers formed crystalline beta-SiC at 800 degrees Celsius by soaking Mn5SiC in molten bismuth. The step also left an interconnected network of nanoscale plates, in a ceramic that usually needs much hotter processing.
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Group IV-V bcc refractory alloys show no apparent ductile-to-brittle transition down to 20 K, according to a Nature paper. The authors credit twinning and an omega-phase transformation for the flat curves.
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TU Wien researchers say a 24-nanometer platinum coating on titanium bipolar plates could cut platinum use in PEM electrolyzers by about 88%. The saving is measured against the 200-nanometer coating used in industry, and the team cautions that the best thickness depends on how the coating is made.
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NTU researchers report aerogels as light as 0.004 g/cm3, made by sublimating ice templates and depositing polymer from vapor. The same route embedded living stem cells and stored gases in the material, so the open questions are viability, capacity and scale.
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Natalia Seliutina's new paper in the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics describes the microstructure of pounamu at grain sizes thinner than a hair, and she says the cause of its toughness is still an open question.
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NC State's Jun Liu says the azobenzene lead iodine film is 700 to 10,000 times stiffer than silicone and five times the insulator. The lowest-conductivity claim in the announcement applies to dense, nonporous materials only.
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Researchers put the azobenzene ethyl ammonium lead iodine film at roughly 0.04 watts per metre-kelvin and 700 to 10,000 times silicone's stiffness. Without a thickness figure an engineer cannot specify it.
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Yuval Paz, Jay Fineberg and colleagues watched two-dimensional broken patches creep for at least three quarters of a fracture event, a slow stage classical fracture mechanics was never built to describe.
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Korean researchers ordered platinum and nickel into a fixed lattice and ran it for four months. The result is a replacement-cost input, but the operating point behind it is missing.
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