Dislocation

The material might just revolutionize modern manufacturing.

Fusion is a natural phenomenon that provides our planet with much of its energy—generated millions of miles away in the center of our sun.

Titanium (Ti), often hailed as the wonder metal for its remarkable properties, has many applications in aerospace, marine, and biomedicine industries. Known for their low density, high strength, high ductility, great corrosion resistance, and excellent biocompatibility, Ti and its alloys have been widely studied by numerous researchers for their structural deformation mechanisms at room temperatures.

Settling a half century of debate, researchers have discovered that tiny linear defects can propagate through a material faster than sound waves do.

Most crystalline materials are polycrystals, such as metals. They are composed of many small crystalline grains with different lattice orientations. The interface between two crystalline grains, i.e., the grain boundary, is a thin layer of disordered particles about one or two particles thick.

Scientists have measured the highest toughness ever recorded, of any material, while investigating a metallic alloy made of chromium, cobalt, and nickel. Not only is the metal exceptionally strong and ductile, its properties become enhanced as it gets colder. This runs counter to most other materials in existence.

Crystals have enthralled humans for thousands of years with their visual beauty and elegant symmetrical shapes, and, more recently, with their numerous technological applications. Fundamentally, these materials are based on a highly regular arrangement of their smallest constituent elements, and the physical properties of crystalline materials depend strongly on the purity of their underlying lattice.

On the micrometer scale deformation properties of metals change profoundly: The smooth and continuous behavior of bulk materials often becomes jerky due to random strain bursts of various sizes. The reason for this phenomenon is the complex intermittent redistribution of lattice dislocations (which are line-like crystal defects responsible for the irreversible deformation of crystalline materials) due to external…

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.

A new study describes previously unexpected properties in a complex quantum material, findings that have implications for future quantum devices.

Materials are crucial to modern technology, especially those used in extreme environments like nuclear energy systems and military applications. These materials need to withstand intense pressure, temperature and corrosion. Understanding their lattice-level behavior under such conditions is essential for developing next-generation materials that are more resilient, cheaper, lighter and sustainable.

If you could sink through the Earth's crust, you might hear, with a carefully tuned ear, a cacophany of booms and crackles along the way. The fissures, pores, and defects running through rocks are like strings that resonate when pressed and stressed. And as a team of MIT geologists has found, the rhythm and pace of these sounds can tell you something about the depth and strength of the rocks around you.

Vertically stacking two-dimensional (2D) materials to form van der Waals homo- or hetero-structures has become an effective means for regulating their physical and mechanical properties. In particular, when a small twist angle is present at the stacked interface, the 2D structures often show many interesting and even magical physical phenomena owing to the unique interlayer coupling.

Shear band formation is not typically a good sign in a material—the bands often appear before a material fractures or fails. But materials science and engineering researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have found that shear bands aren't always a negative; under the right conditions, they can improve the ductility, or the plasticity, of a material.

Materials with superior mechanical strengths are crucial to many areas of modern industries and the scientific enterprise by providing cutting and drilling tools, structural components, protective coatings, and abrasives that find wide applications. Solid solution strengthening is a well-established method to enhance hardness of metals by introducing solute atoms to create local distortions in the crystal lattice,…

A research team led by Prof. Qin Xiaoying from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has improved the thermoelectric performance of an n-type transition metal selenide, Bi2Te2.7Se0.3 (BTS), by incorporating MnSb2Se4 (MSS) nanoinclusions. Results were published in two articles in the Chemical Engineering Journal.

You've probably seen solar panels on satellites, call boxes, road signs, homes and businesses. But how do solar panels work?

A metallic alloy of chromium, cobalt, and nickel is over 100 times tougher than graphene and gets even more resistant to damage at extremely low temperatures.

"Dwell fatigue" is a phenomenon that can occur in titanium alloys when held under stress, such as a jet engine's fan disc during takeoff. This peculiar failure mode can initiate microscopic cracks that drastically reduce a component's lifetime.

Dr. Edwin L. Thomas, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and a team of researchers from Texas A&M University and Yonsei University have recently discovered a helicoidal-shaped defect in layered polymers, uncovering how solvents can diffuse through layers and produce color changes.