Researchers at the Max Planck Society, Munich, have been exploring how atoms and molecules diffuse and react on metallic surfaces in a variety of technological applications related to chemical energy generation and storage. Their ability to simulate and predict this motion is crucial to understanding material degradation, chemical selectivity, and to optimizing the conditions of catalytic reactions.
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Against the backdrop of towering smokestacks and steel-laden history, the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark, Birmingham, Ala., became a portal into the inner workings of modern metallurgy with the opening of the Symphony of Elements: Art and Science of Metals exhibition on May 23. This innovative showcase, running through August 2025, offers a rare and compelling fusion of technical achievements, advanced materials science, and visual art.
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An international team of scientists headed by Prof. Marco Salvalaglio from TUD–Dresden University of Technology in Germany discovered that internal stresses—not just interface energy—play a key role in shaping the microstructure of crystalline materials. These findings challenge classical theories and may improve how we design materials for engineering and technology.
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Scientists at the University of California, Irvine, recently expanded on a longstanding model governing the mechanics behind slip banding, a process that produces strain marks in metals under compression, gaining a new understanding of the behavior of advanced materials critical to energy systems, space exploration, and nuclear applications.
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Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, introduce a novel powerful tool—the cryogenic quantum twisting microscope—to explore quantum phenomena.
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A team of researchers, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, made an important discovery in their quest to design the next generation of materials for modern devices—ones that are lightweight, flexible, and excellent at dissipating heat: imperfection has its upsides.
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For the first time, scientists characterize a promethium coordination complex, which furthers their understanding of elusive lanthanide elements. The rare earth element promethium is unique in that it has no stable isotopes. This means that it is constantly decaying, making it difficult to study.
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Researchers at Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany, enhanced stimulated emission depletion microscopy by replacing traditional fluorophores with nanographenes, enabling the observation of longer-duration processes, overcoming previous limitations of this type of imaging.
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New research from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Calif., aims to tackle the problem of corrosion, which costs trillions of dollars globally. Their solution is to predict failure and design better materials up front.
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Scientists at Penn Engineering, Penn Arts & Sciences, and Aarhus University found that adding just the right amount of disorder to the structure of certain materials can make them more than twice as resistant to cracking.
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Researchers at the University of Tokyo are breaking new ground being able to define which properties of concrete affect its structural characteristics under various neutron radiation loads.
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Phase3D, Chicago, Ill., is working with commercial part manufacturer, Alloyed in the UK, to characterize part and build quality and determine how anomalies in a build cause defects in a part using the Fringe in-situ inspection system.
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The U.S. National Science Foundation awarded $445,515 to a team including researchers at Penn State Shenango, Sharon, Pa., and Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, to explore the fatigue behavior of 3D-printed materials.
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Evident (Waltham, Mass.) announces the launch of its DSX2000 fully motorized digital microscope designed to simplify operations and boost productivity in material analysis and inspection workflows. An automated and integrated system for imaging, measurement, analysis and reporting, the advanced microscope can be easily operated by users of all skill levels for fast, precise results and high-quality macro to micro imaging at resolutions beyond 4K.
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Researchers at the Swiss Light Source (SLS) recently developed a pioneering x-ray technique to probe the 3D orientation of a material’s building blocks at the nanoscale. Applied to a polycrystalline catalyst, the technique allows the visualization of crystal grains, grain boundaries and defects—key factors dictating catalyst performance. Beyond catalysis, the innovation unlocks previously inaccessible details about the structure of diverse functional materials in numerous applications.
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Scientists at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, developed an innovative imaging method that clearly visualizes nanoscale structures within rubber materials. The new method takes traditional electron microscopy of these materials to the next level.
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The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois announced the creation of an innovative set of methods to evaluate long-term aging in real-world battery cells. The methods their researchers developed and demonstrated are based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.
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Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, Mass., has highlighted the ability of scanning electron microscopy to successfully capture defects when conducting failure analysis on metals.
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Using a custom-built machine to launch microprojectiles at supersonic speeds, Cornell researchers, Ithaca, N.Y., have uncovered new details about how high-speed metallic collisions can form strong, durable atomic bonds, offering insights that could enhance 3D printing and other manufacturing techniques.
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Scientists from the Research Center Future Energy Materials and Systems of the University Alliance Ruhr, Germany, used state-of-the-art microscopy and simulation techniques to systematically observe how iron atoms alter the structure of grain boundaries in titanium. They were surprised by the results: “Iron atoms not only segregate to the interface, but they form entirely unexpected cage-like structures,” explains Prof. Christian Liebscher, lead of the international research team. The researchers did not expect such a behavior.
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Nikon Corp. (Tokyo) has announced that U.K.-based LK Metrology Ltd. (Derby) has acquired Nikon’s laser scanning and Focus Inspection software business. The acquisition makes strategic sense, as the two companies have previously worked together providing non-contact inspection solutions. In addition, Nikon’s deal with long-time collaborator LK Metrology, ensures continued development of its pioneering 3D measurement technology.
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Uranium is known as the heavy metal with an intricate chemistry and diverse bonding behaviors, as well as being radioactive. Now, an international team of scientists have utilized synchrotron light at the Rossendorf Beamline (ROBL) to explore the unique properties of low-valent uranium compounds. At the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) runs four experimental stations for radiochemical experiments.
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Researchers at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) developed a new open-source software package that aims to significantly streamline the study of materials using scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs). The software, named Scanbot, automates the time-consuming probe optimization and data acquisition processes essential for STM experiments, helping to accelerate 2D materials research by enabling detailed investigation after the STM tip has been automatically optimized and sharpened.
Continue readingUranium is known as the heavy metal with an intricate chemistry and diverse bonding behaviors, as well as being radioactive. Now, an international team of scientists have utilized synchrotron light at the Rossendorf Beamline (ROBL) to explore the unique properties of low-valent uranium compounds. At the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) runs four experimental stations for radiochemical experiments.
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A research team led by Prof. JIN Haijun from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently proposed a radical new way to view voids that counters the traditional perspective that fatal flaws must be eliminated in manufacturing. They suggest that the presence of voids is not always hazardous. Instead, voids can be beneficial if they are added “properly” in the material.
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Researchers from TU Wien, Austria, and the University of Vienna have recently unraveled the complex structure of the Al2O3 surface, a puzzle that had eluded precise determination for over half a century.
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Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, developed a new chip that uses light waves rather than electricity to perform the complex math essential to training AI.
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Oxford Instruments Asylum Research (Santa Barbara, Calif.) announced that its next-generation Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), Vero, has received three prestigious awards.
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Imagine a camera so powerful it could take freeze-frame photographs of a moving electron—an object traveling so fast it could circle the Earth many times in a matter of a second. Researchers at the University of Arizona have developed the world’s fastest electron microscope that can do just that.
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Shimadzu Corp. has finalized a business partnership agreement with TESCAN GROUP, a leading manufacturer of scanning electron microscopes (SEM) in the Czech Republic. TESCAN’s SEM will be added to Shimadzu’s core analytical measurement product lineup. The product will be launched in Japan this fall, creating synergies with existing analytical and measurement.
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