Nanowerk June 26, 2024 Ti:sapphire lasers are unmatched in bandwidth and tuning range, yet their use is restricted because of their large size, cost and need for high optical pump powers. An international team of researchers (USA – Stanford University, Belgium) demonstrated a monocrystalline titanium:sapphire-on-insulator (Ti:SaOI) photonics platform that enabled dramatic miniaturization, cost reduction and scalability of Ti:sapphire technology. Through the fabrication of low-loss whispering-gallery-mode resonators, they realized a Ti:sapphire laser operating with an ultralow, sub-milliwatt lasing threshold; through orders-of-magnitude improvement in mode confinement in Ti:SaOI waveguides, they realized an integrated solid-state optical amplifier operating below 1 μm. They amplified distortion-free […]
Tag Archives: Titanium
MIT researchers identify routes to stronger titanium alloys
MIT News July 2, 2024 Optimizing the properties of structural materials to involve a tradeoff between two key characteristics: strength and ductility. Mechanical properties of titanium alloys suffer from the lack of 〈c + a〉dislocations on pyramidal slip planes, failing homogeneous plastic strain accommodation. A team of researchers in the US (MIT, industry) demonstrated that such a dilemma may be overcome by meticulously tuning the c/a ratio, the simplest crystallographic parameter of the hexagonal close-packed lattice, through Sn alloying. Combining this lattice-scale design concept with a cross-rolling based polycrystal-scale design solution, they showed a facile route to bimodal (α + […]
Cheap yet ultrapure titanium metal might enable widespread use in industry
Phys.org June 17, 2024 Widespread use of titanium is significantly hampered by its strong affinity to oxygen, resulting in elevated manufacturing costs during the refining, melting, and casting processes. Researchers in Japan introduced a high-throughput technique, that effectively reduced the oxygen content in molten titanium to a level suitable for structural material applications, to streamline the mass production of titanium by seamlessly integrating the refining, melting, and casting processes. The process leveraged the high affinity of rare-earth metals, such as yttrium (Y), for oxygen. They utilized the formation reaction of their oxyhalides (YOF) to directly remove oxygen from liquid titanium […]