Eurekalert August 12, 2019
Dislocation activity is critical to ductility and the mechanical strength of metals. In general, suppressing dislocation activity leads to brittleness of polycrystalline materials. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Wisconsin, George Mason University, UT Arlington, China) found that bending samarium cobalt caused narrow bands to form inside the crystal lattice, where molecules assumed a freeform “amorphous” configuration instead of the regular, grid-like structure in the rest of the metal. Those amorphous bands allowed the metal to bend. Next, the researchers plan to search for other materials that might also bend in this peculiar manner. Eventually, they hope to use the phenomenon to tune a material’s properties for strength and flexibility…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Mechanical behavior of SmCo5 as a function of grain size. Full size image https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11505-1/figures/1 Credit: Nature Communications, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-115