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Category: materials – Page 37

Scientists develop new method to measure and predict hydrogen bond strength in confined water

A breakthrough by researchers at The University of Manchester sheds light on one of nature’s most elusive forces, with wide-reaching implications for medicine, energy, climate modeling and more. The researchers have developed a method to precisely measure the strength of hydrogen bonds in confined water systems, an advance that could transform our understanding of water’s role in biology, materials science, and technology.

The work, published in Nature Communications, introduces a fundamentally new way to think about one of nature’s most important but difficult-to-quantify interactions.

Hydrogen bonds are the invisible forces that hold water molecules together, giving water its unique properties, from high boiling point to , and enabling critical biological functions such as protein folding and DNA structure. Yet despite their significance, quantifying in complex or confined environments has long been a challenge.

Tectonic Plates Have a Memory — And It’s Changing What We Know About Earth

New research has found that variations in rock composition within oceanic plates, caused by ancient tectonic processes, can significantly affect the path and speed of these plates as they sink into Earth’s mantle.

At depths between 410 and 660 kilometers lies the mantle transition zone (MTZ), a key boundary layer that regulates the movement of material into the planet’s deeper interior. When subducting plates, those that dive beneath others, encounter large concentrations of basalt within the MTZ, their descent can slow down or even stall, rather than continuing smoothly into the lower mantle. While basalt-rich regions in the MTZ have been observed before, their origins have remained uncertain until now.

Rare crystal shape found to increase the strength of 3D-printed metal

Andrew Iams saw something strange while looking through his electron microscope. He was examining a sliver of a new aluminum alloy at the atomic scale, searching for the key to its strength, when he noticed that the atoms were arranged in an extremely unusual pattern.

“That’s when I started to get excited,” said Iams, a materials research engineer, “because I thought I might be looking at a .”

Not only did he find quasicrystals in this , but he and his colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that these quasicrystals also make it stronger. They have published their findings in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds.

Stainless steel strengthened: Twisting technique creates submicron ‘anti-crash wall’

A combined team of metallurgists, materials scientists and engineers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shandong University and the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a way to make stainless steel more resistant to metal fatigue. In their study published in the journal Science, the group developed a new twisting technique that functions as an “anti-crash wall” in the steel, giving it much more strength and resistance to cyclic creep.

Metal can experience when bent many times, leading to breaking. When this occurs in critical applications, it can result in catastrophic accidents such as bridge failures. Because of that, scientists have for many years been working to reduce or prevent stress levels in metals. In this new effort, the researchers found a way to dramatically improve the strength of a type of stainless steel while also boosting its resistance to what is known as cycle creep, where fatigue occurs due to ratcheting, a form of repeated bending.

The new technique involved repeatedly twisting a sample of 304 austenitic stainless steel in a machine in certain ways. This led to spatially grading the cells that made up the metal, resulting in the build-up of what the team describes as a submicron-scale, three-dimensional, anti-crash wall. Under a microscope, the researchers found an ultra-fine, sub-10 nanometer, coherent lamellar structure that slowed dislocation by preventing stacking faults.

A new frontier in spintronics: Antiferromagnetic quasicrystals unveiled

Quasicrystals (QCs) are fascinating solid materials that exhibit an intriguing atomic arrangement. Unlike regular crystals, in which atomic arrangements have an ordered repeating pattern, QCs display long-range atomic order that is not periodic. Due to this ‘quasiperiodic’ nature, QCs have unconventional symmetries that are absent in conventional crystals.

Since their Nobel Prize-winning discovery, condensed matter physics researchers have dedicated immense attention toward QCs, attempting to both realize their unique quasiperiodic magnetic order and their possible applications in spintronics and .

Ferromagnetism was recently discovered in the gold-gallium-rare earth (Au-Ga-R) icosahedral QCs (iQCs). Yet scientists were not surprised by this observation because translational periodicity—the repeating arrangement of atoms in a crystal—is not a prerequisite for the emergence of ferromagnetic order.

Molecules in a Twist: How a Flash of Light Flips Chirality

Scientists in Japan have uncovered a surprising twist, literally, in how molecules organize themselves. By introducing tiny leftover fragments from previous assemblies, they discovered a way to flip the direction of helical molecular structures.

Using specific intensities of UV and visible light, they controlled whether these molecules formed left-handed or right-handed spirals, revealing a new method to fine-tune optical and electronic properties. This groundbreaking insight could unlock novel ways to engineer smarter, more responsive materials.

Revealing the power of molecular self-assembly.

Transparent paper-based material can hold boiling water and degrade in deep ocean in under a year

A team of biomaterial engineers, environmental resource specialists and industrial design researchers affiliated with a host of institutions across Japan has developed a biodegradable material that is clear and can hold boiling water—and it degrades in less than a year after settling on the ocean floor. Their work is published in the journal Science Advances.

Prior research has shown that millions of tons of plastics are piling up in the environment, including on the . Because of this, scientists have been looking for better, biodegradable replacements. In this new effort, the research team has developed a paper-based, clear, that can stand up to liquids for several hours, even those that have been heated, allowing them to replace plastic cups, straws, and other everyday objects.

The research team made the material by starting with a standard cellulose hydrogel. After drying, the material was treated with an aqueous lithium bromide solution which forced the cellulose to solidify into desired shapes. The researchers note that end-products could be as thin as plastic cup walls, or as thick as desired. They describe the material as tPB, a transparent 3D material made solely of cellulose.

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