Material Science News and Discussions

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Behold, Carbon-Free Steel Now Exists
HYBRIT, a partnership between a mining firm, an electric utility, and a steel company, made the world's first delivery of clean steel to Volvo.
ByDharna Noor

This week, a Swedish firm announced it had delivered carbon-free steel to a customer—a world-first. It’s a huge step in the race to clean up one of the most carbon-intensive activities on Earth.

On Wednesday, HYBRIT, a partnership between steel company SSAB, state-owned mining firm LKAB, and state-owned utility Vattenfall, said it delivered the clean steel to Swedish automaker Volvo. This was just a test run, but the firm plans to ramp up production to commercial scale by 2026.

“The first fossil-free steel in the world is not only a breakthrough for SSAB, it represents proof that it’s possible to make the transition and significantly reduce the global carbon footprint of the steel industry,” Martin Lindqvist, president and CEO of SSAB, said in a statement.

Making steel is notoriously difficult to decarbonize. The majority of production relies on coal as a raw material feedstock and also as a fuel. HYBRIT has been working to build out clean steel production since it was formed five years ago using renewable power to produce hydrogen and then combining it with iron ore to create a porous material called sponge iron. It began testing the process, which had only been proven at a laboratory scale, last year. This past June, the venture announced it had successfully used this process on a pilot scale. Volvo plans to experiment with the initial batch of green steel by making prototype vehicles and parts, according to the Guardian.
https://gizmodo.com/behold-carbon-free- ... 9h0H7UQA74
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New family of ferroelectric materials raises possibilities for improved information and energy storage
https://phys.org/news/2021-08-family-fe ... nergy.html
by Jamie Oberdick, Pennsylvania State University
Part of the process of creating ferroelectric magnesium-substituted zinc oxide thin films includes: (left) Image showing thin film being sputter-deposited from metal sources; (center) ferroelectric hysteresis loops of thin-film capacitors showing two remanent polarization states at zero field; (right) atomic force microscope image showing a smooth surface at the nanometer scale and a very fine-grained and fiber-textured microstructure. Credit: Materials Research Institute, Penn State

A new family of materials that could result in improved digital information storage and uses less energy may be possible thanks to a team of Penn State researchers who demonstrated ferroelectricity in magnesium-substituted zinc oxide.

Ferroelectric materials are spontaneous electricly polarized bcause negative and positive charges in the material tend toward opposite sides and with the application of an external electric field reorient. They can be affected by physical force, which is why they are useful for push-button ignitors such as those found in gas grills. They can also be used for data storage and memory, because they remain in one polarized state without additional power and so are low-energy digital storage solutions.
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Physicists engineer new property out of 'white' graphene
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-physicist ... phene.html
by Elizabeth A. Thomson, Materials Research Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ultrathin materials made of a single layer of atoms have riveted scientists' attention since the discovery of the first such material—graphene—about 17 years ago. Among other advances since then, researchers including those from a pioneering lab at MIT have found that stacking individual sheets of the 2D materials, and sometimes twisting them at a slight angle to each other, can give them new properties, from superconductivity to magnetism.

Now MIT physicists from the same lab and colleagues have done just that with boron nitride, known as "white graphene" in part because it has an atomic structure similar to its famous cousin. The team has shown that when two single sheets of boron nitride are stacked parallel to each other, the material becomes ferroelectric, in which positive and negative charges in the material spontaneously head to different sides, or poles. Upon the application of an external electric field, those charges switch sides, reversing the polarization. Importantly, all of this happens at room temperature.
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Inspired by metamorphosis, researchers create materials for shape-shifting architecture
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-metamorph ... cture.html
by Matt Shipman, North Carolina State University
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed materials that can be used to create structures capable of transforming into multiple different architectures. The researchers envision applications ranging from construction to robotics.

"The system we've developed was inspired by metamorphosis," says Jie Yin, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State. "With metamorphosis in nature, animals change their fundamental shape. We've created a class of materials that can be used to create structures that change their fundamental architecture."

Kirigami is a fundamental concept for Yin's work. Kirigami is a variation of origami that involves cutting and folding paper. But while kirigami traditionally uses two-dimensional materials, Yin applies the same principles to three-dimensional materials.
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New world record in materials research: X-ray microscopy at a speed of 1000 tomograms per second
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-world-mat ... grams.html
by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Most people are familiar with computed tomography from medicine: A part of the body is X-rayed from all sides and a three-dimensional image is then calculated, from which any sectional images can be created for diagnosis.

This method is also very useful for material analysis, non-destructive quality testing or in the development of new functional materials. However, to examine such materials with high spatial resolution and in the shortest possible time, the particularly intense X-ray light of a synchrotron radiation source is required. In the synchrotron beam, even rapid changes and processes in material samples can be imaged if it is possible to acquire 3-dimensional images in a very short time sequence.

From 200 to 1000 tomograms per second

An HZB team led by Dr. Francisco Garcia Moreno is working on this together with colleagues from the Swiss Light Source SLS at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland. Two years ago, they managed a record 200 tomograms per second, calling the method of fast imaging tomoscopy. Now the team has achieved a new world record: With a speed of 1000 tomograms per second, they can now record even faster processes in materials or during the manufacturing process. This is achieved without any major compromises in the other parameters: The spatial resolution is still very good at several micrometers, the field of view is several square millimeters and continuous recording periods of up to several minutes are possible.
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Researchers suggest a way to achieve net-zero emission plastics

by Bob Yirka, Science X Network, Phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-net-zero- ... stics.html
A team of researchers with members affiliated with institutions in Germany, Switzerland and the U.S. has created a model that they claim could be used to achieve net-zero-emission plastics by 2050. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group outlines their model and requirements for implementation.

A host of studies has shown that the production and use of plastics has become a significant environmental problem as it breaks down into microplastics, it makes its way into virtually every water source on the planet, resulting in health problems for organisms. Production of plastic is also a significant contributor to global warming due to the gasses emitted during manufacture. In this new effort, the researchers analyzed the data produced by over 400 research efforts aimed at solving the plastics problem and developed a model that they say could lead to a net-zero-emission-plastic world by 2050.

The model implements a cycle built around combining recycling of plastics with chemical reduction of the carbon dioxide they emit when they are burned or collected from biomass. They suggest a recycling rate as low as 70% would be sufficient to reach net-zero emissions, which would result in energy savings of 34 to 53%. They also suggest that the operational costs involved would be on a par with other carbon-capture processes. They further suggest that the cost savings associated with implementing their model globally would amount to approximately $288 billion annually. They point out that production of plastics now accounts for approximately 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and note that current forecasts suggest that the number could grow to 20% over the next 30 years if things continue as they are now. They conclude that the technology exists to solve the plastics problem—all that is needed to solve it is the will to do so.
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Enhancing piezoelectric properties under pressure
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-piezoelec ... ssure.html
by FLEET

Stress enhances the properties of a promising material for future technologies.

UNSW researchers have found a new exotic state of one of the most promising multiferroic materials, with exciting implications for future technologies using these enhanced properties.

Combining a careful balance of thin-film strain, distortion and thickness, the team has stabilized a new intermediate phase in one of the few known room-temperature multiferroic materials.

The theoretical and experimental U.S.-Australian study shows that this new phase has an electromechanical figure of merit over double its usual value, and that we can even transform between this intermediate phase to other phases easily using an electric field.
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Ultrafast control of quantum materials
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-ultrafast ... rials.html
by Paul Scherrer Institute
An international team with participation of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI shows how light can fundamentally change the properties of solids and how these effects can be used for future applications. The researchers summarize their progress in this field, which is based among other things on experiments that can also be carried out at the Swiss X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL, in the scientific journal Reviews of Modern Physics.

The researchers explore how light can fundamentally alter the properties of solids—and how these effects can be harnessed in future applications. The review on the latest developments in ultrafast materials science is both meant as a guide for graduate students entering the field as well as a standard reference for the community. In addition to PSI researcher Simon Gerber, it was written by MPSD group leaders James McIver and Michael Sentef as well as Dante Kennes from RWTH Aachen University, Alberto de la Torre (Brown University, U.S.) and Martin Claasen (University of Pennsylvania, U.S.). The team discusses experiments and theoretical ideas for how solids react to excitations with short laser pulses or the coupling of light and matter during irradiation with light.
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Researchers develop self-healing polymers for cracked cellphone screens
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-self-heal ... reens.html
by Elisabeth Faure, Concordia University

If you're like most cellphone users, at one point you have experienced a cracked screen.

This pesky problem can be frustrating to live with, and it's pricey to fix.

Two Concordia researchers from the Oh Research Group in the Faculty of Arts and Science are looking at ways to "self-heal" your cellphone, and their research could have broader implications as well.

Turning down the heat

"One of the major difficulties in these types of projects is to maintain a balance between the mechanical and self-healing properties," explains Ph.D. candidate Twinkal Patel (BSc 17), first author on the paper "Self-Healable Reprocessable Triboelectric Nanogenerators Fabricated with Vitrimeric Poly(hindered Urea) Networks," published in ACS Nano.

Patel says this research stands out from similar work on the topic because of its focus on temperature.
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Nanotwinned titanium forges path to sustainable manufacturing
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-nanotwinn ... nable.html
by Julie Fornaciari, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Titanium is strong and lightweight, boasting the highest strength to weight ratio of any structural metal. But processing it while maintaining a good balance of strength and ductility—the ability of a metal to be drawn out without breaking—is challenging and expensive. As a result, titanium has been relegated to niche uses in select industries.

Now, as reported in a recent study published in the journal Science, researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered a new and practical path forward.

The team found that they could use a technique called cryo-forging to manipulate pure titanium on the scale of a billionth of a meter (a nanometer) at ultra-low temperatures to produce extra-strong "nanotwinned" titanium without sacrificing any of its ductility.

"This study is the first time someone has produced a pure nanotwinned structure in bulk material," said Andrew Minor, the study's project lead and director of the National Center for Electron at the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience user facility at Berkeley Lab. "With nanotwinned titanium, we no longer have to choose between strength and ductility but instead can achieve both."
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