Metals

Metal fatigue is a huge problem when it comes to building and maintaining everything from aircraft to wind turbines. An Australian system is redefining how to pinpoint structural stress using a compact alternative to traditional mechanical strain gauges.

Despite their prevalence, only a tiny fraction of rare earth magnets are recycled from discarded electronics, but a new project involving Bentley Motors is intended to steer this trend back in the right direction.

Researchers at Brown University have developed a new way to make super-hard metals, up to four times harder than usual. The team made nanoparticle “building blocks” that could be fused together under pressure, thanks to a chemical treatment.

The ingenuity of bacteria keeps surprising scientists. The latest example is a species called Geobacter sulfurreducens, which has now been found to survive exposure to toxic cobalt by building a metal “suit” like a tiny little Iron Man.

A novel type of biosensor could help negate the risks of highly toxic arsenic as it makes its way from soil and into plants, by working with the plant tissues to monitor levels of the element in the underground environment in real time.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have produced a material they say can selectively capture specific heavy metals from wastewater, and do so with unmatched speed and precision down to the atomic level.

The Meltio Engine giveth, and it taketh away. It's a production-grade manufacturing system that attaches to any CNC machine or robot arm, and it allows you to add metal through laser deposition, and then shape and refine it through CNC in one step.

Engineers at Cornell University have developed a new technique for 3D printing metallic objects – and it involves blasting titanium particles at supersonic speeds. The resulting metals are very porous, making them useful for biomedical implants.

Yes, iron. Fine iron powder can burn at high temperatures, emitting nothing but rust as a by-product. That rust can be reduced back into iron powder using renewable energy to create a clean, renewable combustion fuel that could have big implications.

Aluminum can develop weak points through repeated, alternating stress, and scientists in Australia may have come up with a solution to this shortcoming by modifying the microstructure of aluminum alloys so that they can heal these themselves.

Diamond is an electrical insulator, but maybe not always. A new study calculated that deforming diamond nano-needles would change their conductivity from an insulator to a semiconductor to a highly conductive metal – and back again at will.

While it's possible to 3D-print plastic or metal items, printing single items made of both is quite difficult. Scientists have developed a method of doing so, however, that may lead to increased production of 3D-printed electronics.