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Category: materials

Material Strength Doesn’t Follow the Rules

A textbook rule for the relationship between the structure and strength of a material breaks down for high-speed deformations, like those caused by strong impacts.

On the microscale, metallic materials are made of homogeneous crystalline regions—grains—separated by disordered boundaries. In general, materials with smaller grains are stronger because they have more grain boundaries, which impede deformation. But researchers have now demonstrated a radical departure from this rule: With rapid deformation, such as that from an explosive impact, finer grained metals are softer, not harder [1]. This new insight, the researchers hope, could be useful for engineers developing impact-resistant alloys for armor, aerospace structures, or hypersonic vehicles.

The yield strength of a material is the stress (force) at which it begins to deform permanently rather than springing back. At the atomic scale in crystalline materials, this deformation occurs when sections of the crystal slide past one another, facilitated by the motion of structural defects called dislocations. But at grain boundaries, dislocations are halted and can pile up, which translates into resistance to deformation and increased yield strength. Materials with smaller grains have more grain boundaries than those with larger grains, so smaller grains are associated with higher strength.

How does glass ‘shake’ and why does it start flowing when pushed hard enough?

Glassy materials are everywhere, with applications far exceeding windowpanes and drinking glasses. They range from bioactive glasses for bone repair and amorphous pharmaceuticals that boost drug solubility to ultra-pure silica optics used in gravitational-wave detectors. In principle, any substance can become glass if its hot liquid is cooled fast enough to avoid forming an ordered crystal.

A distinguishing feature of glass is that its atoms freeze into an irregular, disordered arrangement. This stands in contrast to crystals, where atoms sit in a regular pattern. This disorder gives glass many of its unique and useful properties, but scientists still struggle to understand how atomic-scale disorder produces the properties observed in everyday glasses.

New sodium-sulfur battery may offer safer, cheaper alternative to lithium

Due to our ever-increasing reliance on electronics, researchers are always on the lookout for battery materials with more desirable qualities. Common battery materials, like lithium, can be prone to disadvantages like overheating and material sourcing issues, leading to safety risks and higher costs.

Now, researchers from China have revealed a new battery design that may offer a better alternative to lithium. The new study, published in Nature, describes a sodium and sulfur-based, anode-free design offering a high voltage. The sodium–sulfur (Na–S) batteries are a promising alternative to lithium-based batteries due to sodium’s abundance and potential for high energy storage.

Scientists capture first-ever high-resolution images of topological quantum Hall edge states

Read more here.

By Tom Garlinghouse

Physicists have long known that some materials behave strangely at their edges, conducting electricity without resistance even as their interiors remain insulating. These boundary phenomena, called topological edge states, form the basis of quantum technologies and exotic “topological phases” of matter. But despite decades of study, scientists could only infer how these quantum edges behave—no one had actually seen their microscopic structure in action.

Now, a collaborative team of researchers have achieved a remarkable first: they directly imaged the internal structure of these edge states in monolayer graphene, using one of the most precise tools in modern physics—scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Their results, published last week in Nature, reveal how fundamental interactions between electrons reshape the very edge of a quantum material, upending long-held theoretical assumptions and opening a new window onto quantum topological behavior.

THz spectroscopy system bypasses long-standing tradeoff between spectral and spatial resolution

Terahertz (THz) radiation, which occupies the frequency band between microwaves and infrared light, is essential in many next-generation applications, including high-speed wireless communications, chemical sensing, and advanced material analysis.

To harness THz waves, scientists rely on functional devices like metasurfaces and resonant gratings, which exhibit sharp and effective resonance features. Characterizing and optimizing these high-performance devices, however, remains a technical challenge.

The difficulty stems from a fundamental tradeoff when performing THz measurements: achieving high spectral resolution versus high spatial resolution. To accurately capture the narrow spectral fingerprints of certain gases and the features of devices with a high quality factor (Q), researchers need very high spectral resolution.

‘Pocket-type’ high-temperature superconducting coil achieves 44.86 tesla combined magnetic field

A research team led by Kuang Guangli and Jiang Donghui at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CHMFL), has developed a “pocket-type” high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coil, achieving a record combined magnetic field of 44.86 tesla.

The coil, wound using domestically produced REBa₂Cu₃O₇₋ₓ (REBCO) tapes, generated 28.20 T at zero field in a liquid helium bath and produced an additional 10.36 T inside the 34.5 T steady-state magnetic field of the WM5 water-cooled magnet.

Steady high magnetic fields are critical for frontier research in materials science, physics, and biology, enabling scientists to observe new phenomena and explore new laws of matter. REBCO high-temperature superconducting material has become one of the optimal choices for developing devices that generate higher magnetic fields, owing to its high current-carrying capacity and favorable mechanical properties.

Discoveries rewrite how some minerals form and dissolve

Two related discoveries detailing nanocrystalline mineral formation and dynamics have broad implications for managing nuclear waste, predicting soil weathering, designing advanced bioproducts and materials and optimizing commercial alumina production.

The two recently published studies combine detailed molecular imaging and molecular modeling to sort out how gibbsite, a common aluminum-containing mineral, forms and dissolves in exquisite detail.

Scientists Create a New Crystal That Twists Magnetism Into Exotic Swirls

By forcing crystal structures to compete, scientists uncovered a new way to make magnetism twist. Florida State University scientists have developed a new crystalline material whose magnetic behavior differs sharply from that of conventional magnets, opening potential paths toward advances in dat

Cosmic rays from a nearby supernova may help explain Earth-like planets

How common are Earth-like planets in the universe? When I started working on supernova explosions, I never imagined that my research would eventually lead me to ask a question about the origin of Earth-like planets. Yet that is exactly where it brought me.

For decades, planetary scientists have believed that the early solar system was enriched with short-lived radioactive elements—such as aluminum-26—by a nearby supernova. These radioactive elements played a crucial role in forming water-depleted rocky planets such as Earth. Their decay heated young planetesimals, causing them to lose much of their originally accreted water and other volatile materials.

There was just one problem that kept bothering me.

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