Metals and alloys articles from across Nature Portfolio

Adding homogeneously dispersed oxide nanoparticles to aluminium pushes its high-temperature strength up to 500 °C.

In a multi-principal-element VCoNi alloy, premature necking during Lüders banding has been harnessed to produce rapid dislocation multiplication, leading to both forest hardening and hardening induced by regions of local chemical order. The result is ductility of 20% and a yield strength of 2 GPa, during room-temperature and cryogenic deformation.

Monolayer gold could exhibit properties of benefit to various applications, but has been challenging to synthesize. Now, the exfoliation of two-dimensional single-atom-thick gold layers — termed goldene — is achieved through wet-chemically etching away Ti₃C₂ from Ti₃AuC₂, a nanolaminated MAX-phase. Goldene shows lattice contraction and an increase in the gold 4f binding energy compared with the bulk.

An interface modification strategy has been developed to uniformly distribute high-density sub-10 nm coherent MgO particles in an Al matrix, resulting in high strength and creep resistance at temperatures up to 500 °C.

Martensite in Ti-6Al-4V is known to decompose under heating. This study employs rapid laser heating in situ in a synchrotron to study changes in the diffraction profiles during the martensite decomposition process.

Hypersonic vehicles experience extreme temperatures, high heat fluxes, and aggressive oxidizing environments. Here, the authors highlight key materials design principles for critical vehicle areas and strategies for advancing laboratory-scale materials to flight-ready components.

Adding homogeneously dispersed oxide nanoparticles to aluminium pushes its high-temperature strength up to 500 °C.

In a multi-principal-element VCoNi alloy, premature necking during Lüders banding has been harnessed to produce rapid dislocation multiplication, leading to both forest hardening and hardening induced by regions of local chemical order. The result is ductility of 20% and a yield strength of 2 GPa, during room-temperature and cryogenic deformation.

Monolayer gold could exhibit properties of benefit to various applications, but has been challenging to synthesize. Now, the exfoliation of two-dimensional single-atom-thick gold layers — termed goldene — is achieved through wet-chemically etching away Ti₃C₂ from Ti₃AuC₂, a nanolaminated MAX-phase. Goldene shows lattice contraction and an increase in the gold 4f binding energy compared with the bulk.

An additively manufactured AlSi10Mg alloy shows high fatigue strength, even close to its tensile strength, for micro-sized samples. The fine cells in its inherent three-dimensional network are considered as cages to limit damage accumulation.

The near-zero thermal expansion of Invar alloy Fe₆₅Ni₃₅ is technologically important but still unexplained. Measurements show that this phenomenon can be explained by the cancellation of magnetic and phonon contributions to the alloy’s entropy.