New technique builds super-hard metals from nanoparticles

Metallurgists have all kinds of ways to make a chunk of metal harder. They can bend it, twist it, run it between two rollers or pound it with a hammer. These methods work by breaking up the metal's grain structure—the microscopic ...

Transparent ceramics make super-hard windows

Scientists have synthesised the first transparent sample of a popular industrial ceramic at DESY. The result is a super-hard window made of cubic silicon nitride that can potentially be used under extreme conditions like ...

Physicists find fractal boundaries in crystals

Blacksmiths make horseshoes by heating, beating and bending iron, but what's happening to the metal's individual atoms during such a process? Cornell researchers, using computational modeling, are providing new insight into ...

Routes towards defect-free graphene

A new way of growing graphene without the defects that weaken it and prevent electrons from flowing freely within it could open the way to large-scale manufacturing of graphene-based devices with applications in fields such ...

Making ceramics that bend without breaking

Ceramics are not known for their flexibility: they tend to crack under stress. But researchers from MIT and Singapore have just found a way around that problem—for very tiny objects, at least.

The earliest stages of planet formation

(PhysOrg.com) -- Small dust particles in a disk of gas around a young star, according to current models, gradually coagulate during the first million years until kilometer-sized objects are formed. These in turn coalesce ...

Creating Denser Magnetic Memory

(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the issues afflicting magnetic memory is the fact that it is difficult to store information for as long as 10 years. In order to overcome this problem, scientists and engineers have been looking for ...

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