All articles tagged with #materials science
Researchers at SLAC used the MeV-UED electron camera to image copper as it was heated with laser pulses, revealing a gradual melt and maintained lattice order past the predicted superheating limit under dynamic pressure — a result that upends older models and improves fusion-material simulations.
A Princeton sophomore, Rishika Porandla, retracted her high-school paper on PVC biodegradability after uncovering two methodological errors during replication; Wiley’s Macromolecular Materials and Engineering retracted it in May, highlighting her honesty and scientific integrity. Porandla plans a corrected, more rigorous follow-up manuscript, turning the retraction into a starting point for a stronger study.
A grain of sand from Hiroshima Bay contains a microscopic glass bead called hiroshimaite that traps a previously unrecorded multicomponent alloy—an almost uniform mix of iron, chromium, nickel, manganese, molybdenum, silicon, and aluminum—frozen in an ordered structure by the blast’s rapid cooling, a nonequilibrium phase formed in the atomic fireball.
Scientists analyzing fallout droplets from Hiroshima Bay uncovered a new multicomponent iron-based alloy with an atomic structure not seen in conventional materials. The alloy formed under extreme, rapid cooling during the 1945 blast, and researchers say anthropogenic events can create previously unknown materials. The finding could inspire lighter, more heat-resistant materials and enhance understanding of nuclear fallout chemistry.
Nature News & Views summarizes Gupta et al.'s finding that a thin-film ferroelectric couples vertical polarization to in-plane polarization, enabling small voltages to switch and stabilize large polarization using standard device geometry and potentially overcoming surface-polarization instability in ultrathin films for chip-compatible memories.
Researchers analyzing microscopic debris from Hiroshima Bay identified a previously unseen alloy consisting of iron, chromium, nickel, manganese, molybdenum, silicon, aluminum and other elements arranged in a complex cubic lattice. forged by the explosion’s extreme, rapid heating and cooling, these microdroplets act as tiny laboratories, preserving a record of conditions that existed for fractions of a second. The finding, published in Science Advances, broadens understanding of how extreme events can create novel materials and may shed light on related structures like quasicrystals.
Researchers analyzing debris from the 1945 Hiroshima bombing have identified a previously unseen metallic alloy formed under the explosion’s extreme conditions. The alloy, consisting of iron, chromium, nickel, manganese, molybdenum, silicon and aluminum in a unique cubic lattice, acts like a tiny physical archive of the blast. This micro-scale “experiment” helps scientists understand how matter can organize under violent events and may inform broader studies of unusual materials such as quasicrystals and other extreme-condition formations.
US researchers at UC Davis and Berkeley Lab found that surrounding host metals can dramatically boost low-energy deuterium fusion, with fusion rates plateauing below 2.5 keV and, in some samples, increasing by up to a quintillion-fold versus vacuum; the effect is attributed to electrons and structural defects in the host metal shielding Coulomb repulsion, opening a new materials-driven approach to fusion and potentially enabling compact neutron generators and new modeling tools like DuctGPT.
Researchers studied the jaws of the bristle worm Perinereis cultrifera and found metal ions concentrated at the bite tips, making those regions harder and wear‑resistant. The jaws also show a size‑dependent elasticity and a metal‑like nanoindentation behavior (Nix–Gao effect), supporting a formal concept of bio‑metals and suggesting routes for bio‑inspired material design.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a 3D-printed, aluminum-rubber lattice cloak that guides heat around objects, effectively erasing their infrared signatures from all directions and even cloaking complex shapes like a human head, with potential applications in microchip cooling and defense; the work, published in Nature Communications, signals a new approach to omnidirectional thermal cloaking.
Researchers report a Refractory High-Entropy Alloy (RHEAD) created by melting hafnium, niobium, tantalum, titanium and zirconium, then cooling to about 550°C and aging for hours to days. The atoms self-organize into smaller, well-packed grain structures, producing a material more than twice as strong as steel and up to three times stronger than aluminum, with a compressive yield over 2 GPa while remaining ductile. If scalable, this approach could enable new alloys with fewer elements and broad industrial impact, though understanding the mechanism and scaling the process remain challenges.
Researchers at Dundee and Warwick universities have shown that oxygen actively participates in energy storage within lithium‑ion battery cathodes, overturning the view that oxygen is passive. By comparing layered oxide cathodes with phosphates and using advanced modeling and experiments, they demonstrate significant oxygen redox in the charging/discharging process. Published in Nature Nanotechnology, the findings could enable batteries that charge faster, last longer, and are safer for electric vehicles and portable electronics.
Researchers from the University of Houston and Argonne National Laboratory achieved superconductivity at 151 kelvin (-190°F) under ordinary pressure by applying a brief high-pressure pulse to the cuprate Hg-1223 and then rapidly decompressing it while cold, trapping a metastable state with a higher Tc that persists after pressure is removed. This breaks the long-standing 133 K ambient-pressure record and suggests pressure may not be required to reach higher temperatures, enabling study with standard lab instruments and guiding future efforts toward room-temperature superconductivity.
US researchers at Ames National Laboratory have developed a physics-informed, AI-assisted workflow to discover permanent magnets that do not rely on rare-earth elements, integrating physics-based modeling, high-throughput simulations, and real-world material data to predict performance while considering cost and supply-chain viability, with the aim of reducing dependence on foreign refiners and bridging discovery to scalable production (published in Materials Science and Engineering).
Atomic oxygen in low Earth orbit aggressively erodes carbon-based polymers, carbon composites, and optical surfaces on spacecraft such as the ISS. NASA tests exposed material trays outside the station to study damage and variations in material properties, leading to protective coatings like silicon dioxide or aluminum oxide to mitigate reactions with single oxygen atoms. In LEO, the atmosphere is a thin, UV-driven environment rather than a hard vacuum, so long-duration missions require careful material selection and protective measures; very low orbits demand extra care for satellites. Deep space exposure to atomic oxygen is much less of a concern, making this primarily a LEO issue.