Purdue University researchers have developed a superstrong material that may change some manufacturing processes for the aerospace and automobile industries.
The Purdue team, led by Xinghang Zhang, a professor in Purdue’s School of Materials Engineering, created high-strength aluminum alloy coatings. According to Zhang, there is an increasing demand for such materials because of their advantages for automakers and aerospace industries.
“We have created a very durable and lightweight aluminum alloy that is just as strong as, and possibly stronger than, stainless steel,” Zhang said. “Our aluminum alloy is lightweight and provides flexibility that stainless steel does not in many applications.”
Another member of the Purdue team, Yifan Zhang, a graduate student in materials engineering, said the aluminum alloy they created could be used for making wear- and corrosion-resistant automobile parts such as engines and coatings for optical lenses for specialized telescopes in the aerospace industry.
In my endless quest for the perfectly machined paper weight I came up with this. From one solid piece of T6 6061 billet aluminum. These are not seperate cubes put inside one another,it was all machined as a whole,the inner cubes do not come out.
Among the most popular aluminum alloys, 6061 aluminum is an alloy in the 6000 series of aluminum alloys: those heat treatable alloys where the principle alloying elements are magnesium and silicon. Because it is so popular, 6061 aluminum is also one of the least expensive of the aluminum alloys.
Highly resistant to corrosion, this alloy can be tempered a variety of different ways to achieve the desirable properties. Different tempers can alter the workability, weldability, and strength. T6 is one of the most common tempers (solution heat treated and artificially aged), but other tempers include O (annealed), T1 (cooled from elevated temperature shaping process and naturally aged), and T4 (solution heat-treated and naturally aged).
6061 aluminum is composed of over 95% aluminum with small or trace amounts of silicon, iron, copper, manganese, magnesium, chromium, zinc, and titanium added in. Magnesium is the largest alloying element, at up to 1.2% maximum, followed by silicon at 0.80% maximum. It is very often extruded but is also suitable for hot forging.
While not as high strength as some of the other aluminum alloys, 6061 is still highly versatile and used in a wide variety of applications: railway car components; boat or aircraft structures; other structural components such as bridges; pipes; wheels; cans; and SCUBA tanks.
One of the most common methods of improving the corrosion resistance of steel is coating it with other metals such as aluminum (Al). But the use of Al in marine applications is limited owing to its tendency to react with chloride ions in sea water, leading to corrosion. The addition of other elements, such as magnesium (Mg) and silicon (Si), to form an alloyed coating is a promising way around this problem. But Mg cannot be easily deposited as a coating using the conventional method of dipping the steel into a hot bath of metal salts.
In a recent study published in Corrosion Science, scientists have developed a new protocol for Al-Mg-Si coating of steel. “When I served in the navy, I was constantly looking at rusting machinery. Since then, I have become fully engaged in research on how to produce better anti-corrosive steels,” says Professor Myeong-Hoon Lee of the Korea National Maritime and Ocean University, who guided the study. This study was made available online on September 9, 2021 and was published in Volume 192 of the journal in November 2021.
When one of Eric Täuscher’s PhD students arrived at the lab one morning and discovered she had left a TLC plate in an iodine chamber overnight, she could have simply thrown it out. But something compelled her to take a close look at the neglected plate. When she did, she noticed the tiny crystals growing from the plate, the product of the iodine in the chamber reacting with the plate’s aluminum backing. The crystal growth had also caused the silica on the front of the plate to lift off in delicate flakes. Intrigued, she showed it to Täuscher. He also found the corroded plate strangely beautiful, so he snapped a photo.
Täuscher’s lab at the Ilmenau University of Technology studies fluorescent organic molecules for pH, temperature, and ion sensing applications. The student had been running the TLC to try and identify a mysterious non-UV-absorbing byproduct of a reaction. It took her all of ten minutes to redo the plate. — Brianna Barbu
The direct band gap of AlN-based materials makes them suitable for fabricating DUV optoelectronic devices, which have a wide range of application prospects in the fields of curing, water and air disinfection, medicine and biochemistry. Therefore, achieving a high-quality epitaxy of AlN films is of particular importance to ensure the excellent performance of DUV photoelectric devices.
Currently, due to the lack of cost-effective homogenous substrates, the optimal choice to grow AlN films is usually to perform heteroepitaxial growth on sapphire. Unfortunately, the inherent mismatches between AlN and sapphire substrate inevitably introduce a variety of crystalline defects into the AlN epilayer. In particular, the large residual strain in the AlN film leads to the nonuniformity of the Al distribution in the upper AlGaN layer accompanied by wafer bending, which severely limits the device performance. Therefore, a feasible strategy is required to make a qualitative leap to realize high-quality growth of heteroepitaxial AlN films and to meet the application requirements of DUV optoelectronic devices.
NUST MISIS scientists have proposed a technology that can double the strength of composites obtained by 3-D printing from aluminum powder, and advance the characteristics of these products to the quality of titanium alloys: titanium’s strength is about six times higher than that of aluminum, but the density of titanium is 1.7 times higher.
The developed modifiers for 3-D printing can be used in products for the aerospace industry.
The developed modifying-precursors, based on nitrides and aluminum oxides and obtained through combustion, have become the basis of the new composite. The research results have been published in the highly rated scientific journal Sustainable Materials and Technologies.
Two decades ago, molding was considered the only cost-effective way to manufacture bulk products. Today, 3-D printers for metal are a worthy competitor to metallurgical methods. 3-D printers have a chance to replace traditional methods of metallurgical production in the future. Using additive technologies with 3-D printing creates a whole array of advantages, from creating more difficult forms and designs to the technology’s cheaper cost and theoretical edge.
Further information: The micrograph shows primary Al dendrite arms (white). The dendrite trunk has been intersected at an angle by the plane of polishing to give the observed morphology. Between the dendrites is the Al - CuAl2 eutectic. Initially dendrites would have formed from the liquid, the regions between the dendrite arms known as the mushy zone transforming to a eutectic solid (L to Al + CuAl2). These two phases form cooperatively as neighbouring lamellae with the lateral diffusion of material across the growing interface. The relative amounts of the two phases (Al and CuAl2 ) within the eutectic are determined by applying the Lever Rule at the eutectic temperature.
A new heating method for certain metals could lead to improved earthquake-resistant construction materials.
Tohoku University researchers and colleagues have found an economical way to improve the properties of some ’shape memory’ metals, known for their ability to return to their original shape after being deformed. The method could make way for the mass production of these improved metals for a variety of applications, including earthquake-resistant construction materials.
Most metals are made of a large number of crystals but, in some cases, their properties improve when they are formed of a single crystal. However, single-crystal metals are expensive to produce.
Researchers have developed a cheaper production method that takes advantage of a phenomenon known as ‘abnormal grain growth.’ By using this method, a metal’s multiple 'grains’, or crystals, grow irregularly, some at the expense of others, when it is exposed to heat.
The team’s technique involves several cycles of heating and cooling that results in a single-crystal metal bar 70 centimetres in length and 15 millimetres in diameter. This is very large compared to the sizes of current shape memory alloy bars, making it suitable for building and civil engineering applications, says Toshihiro Omori, the lead researcher in the study.
Rock West Composites (RWC) has launched a new system of aircraft-grade, aluminum connector joints that make it possible to construct an extensive variety of structures made of prefabricated carbon fiber composite tubes and plates.
Structures made with Carbon Erector joints will be reportedly stronger and lighter in weight.
The initial Carbon Erector product line comprises a series of 24 different connector kits, which include connectors made of CNC-machined, aircraft-grade 6061-T6 black anodized aluminum and screws with 170,000 PSI tensile strength. The construction method is mechanical and requires no adhesives or bonding. The product line currently supports construction using 1 inch, 1.5 inch and 2.0 inch interior diameter round carbon fiber composite tubing of varying thicknesses and any plate thickness.
The joints are designed to facilitate an almost infinite number of connections on planes, intersections and corners. The kits will allow the rapid construction and reconfiguration of modular structures utilizing pre-manufactured and readily available carbon fiber composite tubing and plates. Rock West Composites is also able to design connectors for other tube sizes based on customers’ specific needs.
It is easy to take things you see and use on a regular basis for granted, and the aluminium beverage can is probably one of them. There is a reason it is such a ubiquitous object – it features an ingenious design, using the right material for the job. Bill Hammack (engineerguy), from the University of Illinois, explains why this can is made as it is.
A simple synthesis strategy could enable carbon nanomaterials to retain their unique properties in three-dimensions, say researchers. The team from Case Western Reserve University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of North Texas, Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Wenzhou Medical University, and Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems has devised a novel one-step process to create seamless graphene—carbon nanotube (CNT) threedimensional nanostructures [Xue et al., Sci. Adv. (2015), 10.1126/sciadv.1400198].
One-dimensional carbon nanotubes and two-dimensional graphene boast impressive thermal, electrical, and mechanical properties in-plane but poor properties in three dimensions because of weak van der Waals interactions between layers. Now Liming Dai and colleagues have created hollow fibers consisting of radially aligned CNTs (RACNTs) attached to cylindrical graphene layers (Fig. 1) with a seamless junction between the two materials.
‘‘In our one-step process, the interface is made with carbon—to—carbon bonding so it looks as if it’s one single graphene sheet,’’ explains Dai. ‘‘That makes it an excellent thermal and electrical conductor in all planes.’’
In a recent report, scientists from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) analysed how critical raw materials (CRM) are currently used in the EU and whether their use is in line with the principles of the circular economy.
The result is a data heavy report detailing reuse for work in extractive waste, landfills, electric and electronic equipment, batteries, automotive, renewable energy, defence as well as chemicals and fertilisers. It also references a number of good practices in each sector, such as in mining: ‘Building on the principle that all valuable metals contained in the ore should be recovered rather than ending up in e.g. the tailings dam, the BRAVO (Bauxite Residue and Aluminium Valorisation Operations) project in Ireland is targeted to the recovery of CRMs from bauxite residues (red mud). Using red mud as a source of critical raw materials (e.g. gallium, titanium, selenium, germanium, dysprosium and cerium) simultaneously brings environmental benefits due to the additional treatment of the red mud itself, which potentially causes environmental damage due to its alkaline content.’
These graphs taken from the report show some key figures on recycling CRMs in the EU.
However, Figure 8 does not yet show the level of circularity of CRMs in the EU-28. For materials used predominantly in the EEE sectors (i.e., gallium, germanium, indium, and dysprosium, provides an indication of the amounts of secondary raw materials functionally recycled to contribute to EU demand in 2012 (see purple coloured Sankey arrow in the Figure).
Indium tin oxide (ITO) is the current material of choice for electronics because it combines optical transparency with electrical conductivity. Its use ranges from touch-sensitive smartphone screens to light-harvesting solar panels. Indium is in short supply, however, and as demand increases for ITO-containing devices, so does the price of indium.
One promising low-cost ITO alternative is a transparent material known as aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO).
“The elements that make up this material are more abundant than indium, making AZO a commercially sensible option,” said Professor Husam Alshareef from the KAUST Physical Science and Engineering Division who also led the research. “However, electronic devices made using AZO have traditionally shown inferior performance to devices made using ITO.”
Study: Pointed tips on aluminum ‘octopods’ increase catalytic reactivity.
Points matter when designing nanoparticles that drive important chemical reactions using the power of light.
Researchers at Rice University’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) have long known that a nanoparticle’s shape affects how it interacts with light, and their latest study shows how shape affects a particle’s ability to use light to catalyze important chemical reactions.
In a comparative study, LANP graduate students Lin Yuan and Minhan Lou and their colleagues studied aluminum nanoparticles with identical optical properties but different shapes. The most rounded had 14 sides and 24 blunt points. Another was cube-shaped, with six sides and eight 90-degree corners. The third, which the team dubbed “octopod,” also had six sides, but each of its eight corners ended in a pointed tip.
Metal stock in our department’s machine shop. Basic machining skills are often necessary to build an experiment, and so many experimental physicists are encouraged to take a course in machining. The final project is to make a nut and bolt from scratch.
Aluminum target for our sputter system. If you look closely you can see individual crystal grains.
Sputtering is a technique used to deposit thin films of material. The material source is called a target because it is bombarded with high energy atoms which remove bits of material that are then redeposited on your sample or wafer. The ring is a result of the magnetic field confining the plasma to that region.
Welcome to my hometown of Easton, Minnesota! Population 199 (maybe).
Photographed in August 2016.
This limited edition black and white print is available exclusively on natural brushed aluminum. The highlights in the sky on this print literally shine and change as the light in the room changes!
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