Green steel from toxic red mud

An economical process with green hydrogen can be used to extract CO2-free iron from the red mud generated in aluminium production

01-Feb-2024 - The production of aluminium generates around 180 million tonnes of toxic red mud every year. Scientists at the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung, a centre for iron research, have now shown how green steel can be produced from aluminium production waste in a relatively simple way. In an ...

New approach to calculate electron traffic jam in transition metal dichalcogenide

21-May-2021 - Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea have found that the existing method to calculate a particular insulating state produces errors and suggest a new ...

Topology Gets Magnetic: The New Wave Of Topological Magnetic Materials

Researchers demonstrate new high-throughput method for discovering magnetic topology

24-Nov-2020 - The electronic structure of nonmagnetic crystals can be classified by complete theories of band topology, reminiscent of a “topological periodic table.” However, such a classification for magnetic materials has so far been elusive, and hence very few magnetic topological materials have been ...

A touch of gold and silver

For the first time, it is possible to produce crystalline layers of precious metals that consist of a single atomic layer and which are semiconducting

05-Jun-2020 - Metals are usually characterized by good electrical conductivity. This applies in particular to gold and silver. However, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, together with partners in Pisa and Lund, have now discovered that some precious metals lose ...

Speeding up the hydrogen production by the magic topological surface states

29-Aug-2019 - Water electrolysis could provide high-quality hydrogen gas that can be used in fuel cells directly. However, since noble metals, such as platinum and iridium, are currently needed to initiate such a reaction, the cost is very high. "Obviously, catalysts that are low-cost with high-activity are ...

The marriage of topology and magnetism in a Weyl system

06-Aug-2018 - Topology is a global aspect of materials, leading to fundamental new properties for compounds with large relativistic effects. The incorporation of heavy elements give rise to non-trivial topological phases of matter, such as topological insulators, Dirac and Weyl semimetals. The semimetals are ...

Gum metals pave the way for new applications

Scientists discover peculiarities in crystal structure of titanium alloy

02-Feb-2017 - Metals which can be bent as gum pave the way for new industrial applications for example in the aerospace industry. These so-called gum metals exist but the mechanism behind this behaviour was still unsettled and thus difficult to be used for applications. Scientists from the Max-Planck-Institut ...

Tiny microbots that can clean up water

Self-propelled tiny ‘microbots’ that can remove pollution from contaminated water developed.

03-May-2016 - Working with colleagues in Barcelona and Singapore, Samuel Sánchez’s group used graphene oxide to make their microscale motors, which are able to adsorb lead from industrial wastewater from a level of 1000 parts-per-billion to down to below 50 parts-per-billion in just an hour. The lead can ...

A predilection for certain symmetries: Researchers discover why atoms in solids show a preference for certain structures

13-Apr-2010 - The process involved here sounds unwieldy, but is, in fact, quite simple: a material has a 6-fold rotation symmetry if the arrangement of its atoms remains unchanged when it is rotated by 60 degrees – one sixth of a circle. The atoms in metals often order themselves in this way. However, more ...

Getting to the roots of lethal hairs

Fine metal hairs, also called metal whiskers, on tin-plated copper cause short circuits in electronic components. An international team of researchers is finding out why they grow

05-Oct-2009 - A short circuit can be quite hairy: satellites have failed, a NASA computer centre was repeatedly paralysed and the US public heath authority recalled thousands of pacemakers - all because tin whiskers caused a short circuit in the electronic components of these devices. A team of scientists from ...