Innovating alloy production: a single step from ores to sustainable metals

Scientists design a process that merges metal extraction, alloying and processing into one single, eco-friendly step

13-Dec-2024 - Metal production is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions, with iron production emitting two tons of CO2 for every ton of metal produced, and nickel production emitting 14 tons of CO2 per ton and even more, depending on the ore used. These metals form the foundation of alloys that have a ...

With AI against material wear

13-Aug-2024 - Friction and wear lead to considerable economic losses in industry. The complexity of technical systems makes it difficult to predict damage accurately. Dr. Stefanie Hanke, new Professor of 'Materials Engineering' at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Duisburg-Essen, is developing an ...

New Material Paves the Way to On-Chip Energy Harvesting

09-Jul-2024 - Researchers from Germany, Italy, and the UK have achieved a major advance in the development of materials suitable for on-chip energy harvesting. By composing an alloy made of silicon, germanium and tin, they were able to create a thermoelectric material, promising to transform the waste heat of ...

Refrigerator cools by flexing artificial muscles

The new technology is based on an incredibly simple principle

04-Apr-2024 - There is room for just one small bottle in the world’s first refrigerator that is cooled with artificial muscles made of nitinol, a nickel-titanium alloy. But the mini-prototype that the team led by professors Stefan Seelecke and Paul Motzki will be presenting at the Hannover Messe from 22 to 26 ...

Golden future for thermoelectrics

Record breaking material

20-Sep-2023 - Researchers at TU Wien discover excellent thermoelectric properties of nickel-gold alloys. These can be used to efficiently convert heat into electrical energy. Thermoelectrics enable the direct conversion of heat into electrical energy - and vice versa. This makes them interesting for a range of ...

Artificial intelligence designs advanced materials

Scientists of the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung pioneer new machine learning model for corrosion-resistant alloy design

15-Aug-2023 - In a world where annual economic losses from corrosion surpass 2.5 trillion US Dollars, the quest for corrosion-resistant alloys and protective coatings is unbroken. Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly pivotal role in designing new alloys. Yet, the predictive power of AI ...

AI supports analysis of metallic materials

"With our specially developed algorithm, we are three times faster"

22-May-2023 - Until now, the analysis of crystalline microstructures in metallic materials has been technically challenging and particularly time-consuming. Researchers from the fields of materials engineering and computer science have now developed an algorithm for this purpose and published it in the ...

Shape memory for nano-sized objects

Shape memory objects as thin as twenty nanometers produced for the first time: Broad range of applications

21-Mar-2023 - Researchers at ETH Zurich achieved a shape memory effect for the first time with objects that are only a few nanometers in size. This can be used to manufacture tiny machinery and robotic devices on the nanoscale. Alloys that can return to their original structure after being deformed have a ...

Slim steel - strong and safe

A material made from a few readily available components is very strong in tension and is nevertheless highly formable

31-Jan-2023 - Until now, developers of steels have had to make a choice: Either they increase the tensile strength of the material and usually accept that their material becomes relatively brittle. Or they rely on the fact that the steel can be strongly stretched and thus absorb a lot of energy in the event of ...

Changing shapes at the push of a button

A single piece of material can take the place of entire systems of sensors, regulators and actuators

04-Jan-2023 - Programmable materials are true shapeshifters. They can change their characteristics in a controlled and reversible way with the push of a button, independently adapting to fit new conditions. They can be used, for example, to make comfy chairs or mattresses that prevent bedsores. To produce ...