New materials are fueling a boom in commercial fusion projects. Will the hype pan out?

For the first time, a team at BESSY II has succeeded in demonstrating the one-dimensional electronic properties of a material through a highly refined experimental process.

Imagine being able to program materials to control heat like you can control a light with a dimmer switch. By simply squeezing or stretching the materials, you can make them hotter or colder.

New research shows that composite metal foam (CMF) is incredibly resilient at high temperatures, able to withstand repeated heavy loads even at temperatures of 400°C and 600°C. Coupled with the material's high strength-to-weight ratio, the finding suggests that CMF could be used in applications ranging from automobile engines to aerospace components to nuclear power technologies.

The bandgap, i.e. the energy gap between the highest lying valence and the lowest lying conduction band, is a defining property of insulating solids, governing how they absorb light and conduct electricity. Tracking how a bandgap changes under strong laser excitation has been a long-standing challenge, since the underlying processes unfold on femtosecond timescales and are difficult to track directly, especially for wide-bandgap dielectrics.

For decades, it's been known that subtle chemical patterns exist in metal alloys, but researchers thought they were too minor to matter—or that they got erased during manufacturing. However, recent studies have shown that in laboratory settings, these patterns can change a metal's properties, including its mechanical strength, durability, heat capacity, radiation tolerance, and more.

Atoms in crystalline solids sometimes vibrate in unison, giving rise to emergent phenomena known as phonons. Because these collective vibrations set the pace for how heat and energy move through materials, they play a central role in devices that capture or emit light, like solar cells and LEDs.

Humans have been making metal alloys for thousands of years, and most of us can conjure a rough mental image of the process—it involves red-hot molten metals being mixed, poured, and shaped in a sweltering workshop or factory. This approach still works perfectly well for the traditional metals we see every day, like steel. But advanced metals with special chemical and mechanical properties, ones that scientists are investigating to use in energy technologies like long-lasting batteries and extreme-temperature engines for aerospace vehicles, need a more refined approach.