Stronger than Titanium, Cheap as Dirt: New Steel Alloy Shines

[jimmy olsen]

Neat.

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/strong-titanium-cheap-dirt-new-steel-alloy-shines-n301226

Strong as Titanium, Cheap as Dirt: New Steel Alloy Shines

The strength of steel is proverbial, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved. It's heavy, after all, and there are stronger metals out there. But researchers in South Korea have created an alloy that's as strong as titanium, lighter than ordinary steel, and cheap to boot. The new alloy, described in the journal Nature, is created by allying the steel with aluminum — this lightens the steel, but also makes it weak. To counter that weakness, the team added a dash of manganese and a sprinkle of nickel, while modifying the way the metal crystals form at the nanometer scale. This new alloy has no flashy name just yet but is referred to as High Specific Strength Steel. It has an even better strength-to-weight ratio than the far more expensive titanium.

This may bring steel back to industries where light, strong materials have become key, in particular the manufacturing of cars and planes. There's already interest in getting HSSS to the production line, so you may expect to see it (or ride in it) within the next few years.

[The Brain]

Steel isn't strong, boy. Flesh is stronger.

[Tonitrus]

But at least you can trust it.

[jimmy olsen]

In other noteworthy materials science,  I seem to have missed this last year. Sweet

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/lab-accident-yields-ultra-strong-material-recycles-cleanly-n105686

Lab Accident Yields Ultra-Strong Material That Recycles Cleanly
By Devin Coldewey

Plastics. That was the famously anticlimactic word that failed to captivate Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate."

And indeed, it's a bit hard to get excited about a science in which the best stuff was invented half a century ago. But a serendipitous accident in an IBM Research lab (also straight out of the movies) may be turning the world of plastics, gels and polymers on its head with a super-strong, super-light, and super-recyclable new material. It may soon find its way into everything from airplane wings to spacecraft.

Polymers, long chains of small, strongly-bonded molecules called monomers, are everywhere, from the kitchen to the International Space Station. But all the cool, unique materials were invented what seems like ages ago: Nylon in the '30s, Styrofoam in the '40s, polypro in the '50s, and so on.

"It's really considered quite a mature field," said James Hedrick, head of IBM's materials lab. The last big jump, he estimated, not counting tweaks to make something less toxic or more flexible, was at General Electric in the early '80s.

That is, until a good old-fashioned "absent-minded professor" lab accident resulted in a new family of materials.

IBM researcher Jeannette Garcia forgot to add a component to a fairly straightforward polymerization reaction, but instead of blending into a toxic slurry, it formed a polymer — and to everyone's surprise, a very strong one.

"I couldn't even get it out of the flask. I had to break the glass with a hammer," Garcia recalls. "The polymer actually survived the glass breaking, so I hit it with the hammer, and it didn't seem to break. I thought, 'Hmm, there could be something to this.'"

What they discovered when they studied the material further astounded them.

"It's stronger than existing thermosetting plastics by about threefold," explained Garcia. "Even without reinforcement, we're reaching 14 gigapascal's on Young's Modulus."

That's the standard test for strength, by the way: Take a thin slice of a material, be it plastic wrap or aircraft-grade aluminum, suspend it and apply force to the middle, and see when it gives way. Fourteen gigapascals surpasses the score of bone (a benchmark historically) and approaches steel.

Garcia described the material and process in a paper appearing in this week's issue of Science.

IBM's "computational chemistry" techniques also revealed that there was a hidden, stable precursor to the material, meaning it could be further tweaked and added to. Cure the stuff at high temperature and it's rigid enough to serve in aerospace. Cure it at low temperature and you get an "organogel" that sticks to itself, healing gaps and scratches.

But the biggest surprise was yet to come. Both these materials (nicknamed "Titan" and "Hydro" at the lab) can be reduced to their component monomers, the tiny molecules strung together to make the polymers, by incredibly simple methods. Titan disappears in strong acid, and Hydro in ordinary water.

The greatest asset of such super-strong materials is generally also their greatest liability: Nothing affects them.

"They have incredibly great stability — mechanical, chemical, thermal — but it kind of goes in tension with the idea of recyclability," explained Tim Long, a professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech. "If you're going to reduce it back to monomers, that demands that the molecule be unstable."

So for decades, you've had to choose: strength or reusability? The question is not a simple one at, for example, Boeing or NASA, where expensive, high-performance materials must be made to astronomical levels of precision — and if they deviate a tiny bit, or take the slightest damage, they must be discarded.

That's no longer necessary, as IBM has proven. "We can begin as scientists to design molecules that are incredibly tough, incredibly durable, but still recyclable," enthused Long. "Those things don't have to be in tension."

We can have our cake and recycle it too, in other words. Simply showing it's possible may set off a rush of research to make the new, cheaper, more eco-friendly shopping bag or water bottle.

So what can't this wonder material do? Well, you probably won't have it in your kitchen, for one thing. Titan isn't the kind of thing you wrap your extra asparagus in — more like structure reinforcement for a moon lander or the body of a military drone. Hydro's tendency to form little capsules full of whatever fluid it's formed in might find it a spot in cosmetics, but that's still a ways off, too.

What had Long, Hedrick and Garcia excited wasn't the materials they have now, but the ones yet to come. Titan and Hydro aren't just better versions of existing polymers — a slightly lighter kevlar or more transparent PET — they're the first fruits of an entirely new process. In a world where the best methods have been around for the better part of a century, the importance of such a discovery to industry is hard to estimate — but its impact on the Earth's ecosystem may be even greater.

[KRonn]

"It's stronger than existing thermosetting plastics by about threefold," explained Garcia. "Even without reinforcement, we're reaching 14 gigapascal's on Young's Modulus." 

   This is all very cool,  the new metal and plastic discoveries. 

[Monoriu]

I am still waiting for transparent aluminum to appear 

[Tonitrus]

I am still waiting for transparent aluminum to appear 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride

[Siege]

Timmay, you got me at "nanometer scale".

[Siege]

What about Graphene?

[jimmy olsen]

What about Graphene?

Unlimited possibilities
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/wonder-material-graphene-just-getting-started-researchers-say-n236766

'Wonder Material' Graphene Is Just Getting Started, Researchers Say
By Devin Coldewey

It makes batteries charge faster and last longer. It can detect light better than the best sensors. It could lead to flexible, impossibly thin touchscreens, super-strong composites and implantable electronics. It's called graphene, and although physicists have known about it for almost 70 years, it's only now that the wonder material is set to make a big debut.

Graphene, a lattice of carbon atoms so thin that it's referred to as "two-dimensional," is at the heart of dozens of advances in as many branches of technology.

"Almost every week there is a lab or university that has some amazing result or prototype," said Andrea Ferrari, graphene researcher at Cambridge University and chairman of the executive board at the European Union's billion-euro Graphene Flagship project.

That's no exaggeration: In October alone, researchers showed that it could enable transparent, nontoxic brain implants, a powerful new tool for analyzing DNA, and stretchable batteries for use in flexible devices.

"There is such an array of interesting properties, and so many possible applications, it is almost a duty to investigate it," Ferrari said.

But perfect, unbroken, single-atom-thick sheets are the most difficult and expensive to create. The race is on now, not to find new uses for the material, but a way to make it without breaking the bank.
Old idea, new material

Graphene may be new to the average Joe, but physicists have long known about it — the flat honeycomb structure is a natural configuration that carbon atoms assume under certain conditions — like carbon fibers or "Buckyballs." In fact, the graphite we call pencil lead is billions of layers of graphene, a fact that led to a "eureka" moment in 2004.

Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov of the University of Manchester managed to isolate a sheet of graphene simply by putting some graphite between pieces of Scotch tape and pulling it apart a few times. They announced this faintly comical (but effective) method ten years ago last month, and their follow-up work establishing a number of graphene's remarkable properties won them the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.

They also set off a veritable frenzy of studies as researchers tested the real-world properties of this long-theorized material. The possibilities multiplied:

"The great thing is it's like any other nanomaterial, you can tune it, you can change the dimensions of it — and on top of that, it's carbon-based," said Danielle Buckley, an expert in physical chemistry with the American Chemical Society. Many other useful materials are also toxic, building up in our bodies or in the soil when discarded — but carbon? We're made out of it!

The trouble is that you can't meet global demand with pencil lead and scotch tape.
Supply and demand

"When a new material is being produced, it takes 20 to 40 years before it is in everyday use," explained Ferrari. "But the clock is ticking."

Graphene is facing growing pains just as every amazing new material does: it was a long time before nylon, polypropylene, kevlar, and carbon fiber were used anywhere but heavy industry.

Even now there are thousands of tons of graphene being produced, but there is no one best way to make it, as there might be for a simpler, less exotic material.

"You can do it chemically, or by putting some graphite in a liquid solution and using sound waves to break it apart, then there's what's basically a super-powerful blender," explained Buckley. Each method has its merits: speed, cost, volume — but also its drawbacks: small or flawed sheets, toxic byproducts.

Fortunately, even the tiniest bits of graphene can be used — recycled into larger patchwork pieces, suspended in a liquid to give it special properties, or used as a powder-like conductive coating. And a whole industry is being created from scratch to handle the material and its byproducts. One of the biggest projects attempting to get a jump on that is the EU's Graphene Flagship.
Flagship and beyond

"The Graphene Flagship is a ten-year program, and this week is the first year anniversary," explained Ferrari. A billion euros are scheduled to be doled out — a little now, more later as the industry becomes more established.

"By the end of the ten years, we hope to have products on the market," he said, likely first in strong, conductive polymers and then in advanced sensors.

If that sounds like a long time, remember that graphene is still a baby, even compared to other nanomaterials. There's a lot of work to be done.

There are the challenges of competition and manufacturing as well as questions regarding long-term environmental and health effects — which the Flagship and graphene programs around the world are also investigating.

But even as they settle down to bring graphene to your living room, scientists are hard at work on the next next big thing.

"There are 500 or more materials that are layered like graphene so you can extract a 2-D flake," said Ferrari. "Anywhere they say graphene studies, they always mean graphene and related 2-D materials. In fact, some of the work being done right now is to mix them."

In other words, no matter how you look at it, we're just getting started.

"We don't want to claim that we're going to solve all of humanity's problems," cautioned Ferrari, "but we are in for a very interesting next ten years."
First published November 4th 2014, 10:51 am

[11B4V]

What's the next tech level to research after this? 

[Ed Anger]

What's the next tech level to research after this? 

Sexbots

[Valmy]

Pretty sure those are already being researched.

[Tonitrus]

I don't think we want our sexbots to made out of titanium.  Or even graphene.

[Ed Anger]

Pretty sure those are already being researched.

Convert a city's Elvis to a scientist.