Science Daily August 3, 2022 The additive manufacture of metal alloys by laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) involves large temperature gradients and rapid cooling which enables microstructural refinement at the nanoscale to achieve high strength. However, high-strength nanostructured alloys produced by laser additive manufacturing often have limited ductility. A team of researchers in the US (UMass Amherst, Georgia Institute of Technology, Texas A&M, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rice University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCLA) used L-PBF to print dual-phase nanolamellar high-entropy alloys (HEAs) of AlCoCrFeNi that exhibit a combination of a high yield strength of about 1.3 gigapascals and a large […]
Tag Archives: Advanced materials
Artificial skin sweats on command
Phys.org July 27, 2022 Following their previous work on artificial sweating skin an international team of researchers (the Netherlands, Italy) demonstrated three-dimensionally steered dynamic liquid mobility at nanoporous liquid crystal polymer coatings. The release of fluid is stimulated by UV light. Upon a primary flood exposure to UV light, liquid is ejected globally over the entire coating surfaces. They reallocated the secreted liquid by applying a secondary electric field stimulus. By doing so, the liquid is transported and collected at pre-set positions as determined by the electrode positions. They monitored the process in real-time. Through precise analysis they found that […]
At the water’s edge: Self-assembling 2D materials at a liquid-liquid interface
Science Daily July 21, 2022 Researchers in Japan have demonstrated a facile one-pot synthesis of laminated 2D coordination polymer films comprising bis(terpyridine)iron and cobalt at a water/dichloromethane interface. Cross-sectional elemental mapping unveiled the stratum-like structure of the film and revealed that the second layer grows to the dichloromethane side below the first layer. Cyclic voltammetry clarified that the bottom layer mediates charge transfer between the top layer and the substrate in a narrow potential region of mixed-valence states. Furthermore, the bilayer film sandwiched by electrodes in a dry condition shows stable rectification character, and the barrier voltage corresponds to the […]
Researchers present anti-reflective coating that blocks waves of many types
Phys.org July 14, 2022 An international team of researchers (Austria, France) has developed a method that allows the calculation of a tailor-made anti-reflective structure which can be used to design an additional layer to the medium only partially permeable to a wireless signal so that the entire signal can be channeled through the medium without reflections. To determine the anti-reflective structure they sent the waves through the medium and measured exactly in which way these waves are reflected by the material. Using a mathematical technique they calculated the corresponding compensating structure so that the combination of both media allowed the […]
Development of new biomaterial with super strength inspired by limpets
Phys.org July 7, 2022 The small aquatic snail-like mollusks use a tongue bristling with tiny, microscopic teeth to scrape food off rocks and into their mouths. These teeth contain a hard yet flexible composite, which in 2015 was found to be the strongest known biologically occurring material, far stronger than spider silk and comparable to man-made substances, including carbon fiber and Kevlar. An international team of researchers (UK, Poland USA – industry, Switzerland) has replicated the limpet tooth developmental processes ex vivo, where isolated limpet tissue and cells in culture generated new biomimetic structures. Transcriptomic analysis of each developmental stage […]
Physicists discover a “family” of robust, superconducting graphene structures
MIT News July 8, 2022 Despite multitudes of correlated phases observed in moiré systems, robust superconductivity appears the least common, found only in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) and more recently in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene. An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, Japan) has reported experimental realization of superconducting magic-angle twisted four-layer and five-layer graphene, hence establishing alternating twist magic-angle multilayer graphene as a robust family of moiré superconductors. This finding suggests that the flat bands shared by the members play a central role in the superconductivity. Their measurements in parallel magnetic fields reveal a clear distinction between […]
Cocrystal engineering—a clever way for designing multifunctional material
EurekAlert June 24, 2022 Using cocrystal engineering researchers in China have designed Flu-TCNQ cocrystal with integrated optoelectronic properties. They selected the Flu (donor) as the luminescence unit due to its good luminescence, extended π-conjugated plans, and rich electrons properties, and the TCNQ (acceptor) as the electrical building block, a typical n-type semiconductor that can provide a strong electron-withdrawing capacity. Driven by the charge transfer (CT) interaction and affected by the D-A molecules stacking mode, the emission of Flu-TCNQ cocrystal was regulated to be red, and the n-type charge transport property of the acceptor molecule was maintained in the cocrystal. According […]
Magnetic superstructures as a promising material for 6G technology
Phys.org June 20, 2022 A chiral spin soliton lattice (CSL) exhibits reconfigurability in periodicity over a macroscopic length scale. Such coherent and tunable characteristics of the CSL lead to an emergence of elementary excitation of the CSL and bring a controllability of the dispersion relation of the CSL phonon. An international team of researchers (Japan, Canada, Russia, Germany) used a broadband microwave spectroscopy technique, and directly found that higher-order magnetic resonance modes appear in the CSL phase of a chiral helimagnet CrNb3S6, which is ascribed to the CSL phonon response. The resonance frequency of the CSL phonon can be tuned […]
Rubbery camouflage skin exhibits smart and stretchy behaviors
EureakAlert June 13, 2022 Cephalopod (octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish) skin is a soft organ that can endure complex deformations, such as expanding, contracting, bending, and twisting, capable of cognitive sensing and responding that enable the skin to sense light, react and camouflage its wearer. While artificial skins with either these physical or these cognitive capabilities have existed, none has simultaneously exhibited both qualities. An international team of researchers (USA – Pennsylvania State University, University of Houston, South Korea, China) has developed artificial neuromorphic cognitive skins based on arrayed, biaxially stretchable synaptic transistors constructed entirely out of elastomeric materials. Through investigation […]
New route to build materials out of tiny particles
Phys.org May 27, 2022 Creating materials with structure that is independently controllable at a range of scales requires breaking naturally occurring hierarchies. Breaking these hierarchies can be achieved via the decoupling of building block attributes from structure during assembly. An international team of researchers (the Netherlands, USA (University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Canada) demonstrated that shape and interaction decoupling occur in colloidal cuboids suspended in evaporating emulsion droplets. The resulting colloidal clusters serve as “preassembled” mesoscale building blocks for larger-scale structures. They showed that clusters of up to nine particles form mesoscale building blocks with geometries that are independent […]