It has been proven that a metallic alloy of nickel, cobalt, and chrome is the toughest material on the planet.
In a new study published in the journal Science, researchers subjected the ultra-tough alloy to extremely cold temperatures in order to test its fracture- resistant qualities. The team's surprise was that the alloy became more resistant to cracks as temperatures dropped.
Most materials become brittle in freezing temperatures, but this super-resistance to break is different.
A professor of engineering at the University of California Berkeley and senior faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is one of the study's authors. 35 megapascals per meter is the strength of aluminum. It has a strength of 450 to 500 megapascals per meter.
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The potential uses of such a tough material include space infrastructure, containers for clean energy, and more. Two of the alloy's three elements are too expensive for it to be useful in the lab.
An example of a high entropy alloy is the chrome,cobalt, and nickel alloy. HEAs are made of an equal mix of each element and unlike most alloys, they are mostly made of one element.
According to the study authors, this HEA is very flexible and can bend under stress. The alloy's structure makes it incredibly flexible. The mechanism that causes atoms to dislocate under pressure is one of the key mechanisms. This allows the material to keep changing shape as pressure increases.
When you increase the strain on the material, each one of these mechanisms kicks in. The mechanisms are more effective in the cold.
The researchers tested the alloy's strength by exposing it to liquid nitrogen at a low temperature. The team wondered how much more they could push the material's limits after it improved.
An experiment was designed by a physicist at Bristol University in England to expose the alloy to liquid helium, which can cool to minus 423 F. The team watched the neutrons scatter off the material as they peered into the structure of the alloy and saw how cracks formed.
Graphene was blown out of the water when the alloy was tested.
"Graphene doesn't have any damage tolerance, it's very strong, but that doesn't mean it's good for you," he said. It's brittle and breaks like a mug on the floor.
One of the drawbacks of Graphene is that it only holds its strength at very small scales. The HEA maintained its strength at the scale of everyday objects despite the fact that the samples were cigarette pack-size.
While more testing is needed before this material can be applied, Liu is optimistic that it could be used for many projects. It's possible that the HEA could be used in hydrogen storage containers to make hydrogen-powered vehicles more viable.
"If you drive a car with a hydrogen vessel made from something very brittle you're essentially carrying a bomb around with you." This material is not something that I would use.
It takes a lot of knowledge and time to move material from the lab to the real world, and the costs of nickel and cobalt remain prohibitive. He wants to develop recipes for new alloys that are just as tough.
The periodic table contains 50 usable elements. There are millions of new ALLOYS if you take combinations of three, five or seven.
The original article was published on Live Science.com.
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