Constellium signs multi-year aluminum extrusions agreement with Airbus

Constellium, Issoire, France, announced a multi-year agreement with Airbus for the supply of aluminum alloy extrusions, reinforcing the company’s role as a long-term supplier of advanced aluminum solutions to the European airframer’s commercial and defense programs. Under the agreement, Constellium will provide Airbus with bars and a range of small and large extrusions manufactured in advanced aluminum alloys, including the company’s proprietary aluminum-lithium solution Airware®, all engineered to meet stringent quality requirements and optimized for the strength-to-weight performance demanded by aircraft structural applications. The extrusions will be produced at Constellium’s Issoire and Montreuil-Juigné facilities in France. “This agreement reflects Airbus’ trust in our advanced aluminum products and solutions, and in our quality performance, industrial reliability, and consistent supply continuity to support long-term aerospace programs,” said Philippe Hoffmann, president of Constellium’s Aerospace and Transportation business unit. “We are committed to continuing to grow our outstanding relationship with Airbus, leveraging our comprehensive product portfolio, proprietary solutions, unique manufacturing capabilities, and recycling expertise.” Constellium is a leading supplier of advanced aluminum products and solutions to the global aircraft, defense, and space markets, with proven industrial and recycling capabilities and an extensive portfolio of high-performance alloys, including the heat-treatable Airware® family used in next-generation airframe structures.

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Scientists uncover hidden superconductivity in material once thought only magnetic

A new study shows that iron telluride, or FeTe, long thought to be a simple magnetic metal, is actually a superconductor when excess iron atoms are removed. Superconductors carry electricity with no energy loss as heat, enabling technologies such as MRI machines, particle accelerators and potentially quantum computers. Researchers found that extra iron atoms hidden in the material are responsible for its magnetism and suppress superconductivity. Once those atoms are eliminated, electricity flows with zero resistance, and the material’s superconducting properties can be further tuned using layered structures and moiré effects.

The findings are detailed in two papers published back-to-back, both led by Penn State physicist Cui-Zu Chang. The first paper explains how to activate superconductivity in FeTe. The second describes a new type of “quantum dance” in which superconductivity interacts with the material’s atomic structure when a different top layer is added, allowing scientists to adjust its properties.

Mystery Behind FeTe’s Missing Superconductivity

“Unlike the well-known iron-based superconductor iron selenide (FeSe), FeTe has long been considered a magnetic metal without superconductivity, despite having an almost identical crystal structure,” Chang said. “It has remained a mystery why FeTe doesn’t share this important property.”

To investigate this difference, the team created thin films of FeTe using molecular beam epitaxy. This method produces extremely clean, atomically thin materials by slowly depositing source elements onto a suitable surface.

When the researchers examined the samples at the atomic level using scanning tunneling microscopy, they found that the structure was not perfectly uniform. Extra iron atoms were embedded within the crystal lattice of FeTe.

Excess Iron Atoms Disrupt Superconductivity

“These excess iron atoms disrupt the ideal one-to-one ratio of iron and tellurium atoms in FeTe and upset the balance of magnetism and superconductivity,” Chang said, explaining that the researchers theorized that removing the excess atoms to make truly pure FeTe might result in a superconductor.

To test this idea, the researchers developed a way to control the material’s purity by exposing the FeTe films to tellurium vapor. This process offsets the excess iron and pushes the material toward its ideal composition.

“The resulting ideal FeTe exhibits superconductivity with a critical temperature of around 13.5 Kelvin, or about negative 435 degrees Fahrenheit,” Chang said. “The excess iron atoms had disguised its superconductivity, leading to the decades-old view that FeTe was an ordinary magnetic metal. Our findings redefine the phase diagram of this class of iron-containing compounds. Similar phenomena are likely to be present in other correlated materials, where hidden superconducting states or competing magnetic orders remain concealed until disorder is removed or carefully controlled. Understanding the crucial role of disorder will help us to uncover and stabilize such hidden superconducting states in other materials.”

Engineering Superconductivity with Layered Structures

In the second study, after confirming that FeTe is inherently a superconductor, the researchers investigated how its superconducting behavior could be controlled. They built layered structures by placing a thin material with a different crystal lattice on top of FeTe. Because the two materials have different atomic arrangements, they form a larger repeating pattern at their boundary, known as a moiré superlattice.

“The mismatch between the crystal structures at the interface creates what we call a moiré superlattice, which modifies the superconducting properties of FeTe,” Chang said. “In recent years, moiré superlattices in two‑dimensional materials have emerged as an important platform for discovering new quantum states.”

Using scanning tunneling microscopy, which allows imaging at the atomic scale, the team observed that superconductivity appears as a repeating, droplet-like pattern that follows the moiré superlattice, described by the researchers as a “quantum dance.” They also found that this pattern can be tuned by changing the material used in the top layer.

“The role of crystal lattices has often been overlooked in superconductors,” Chang said. “Our findings encourage a renewed focus on the interplay between superconductivity and lattice structure and highlight how moiré interface engineering can serve as a potentially powerful tool for tuning superconductivity and designing next‑generation quantum materials.”

For more information: Nature

Image: A sample of a thin film of the compound iron telluride (FeTe)—the dark region on the clear substrate at the center of the image—created using molecular beam epitaxy. Long thought to be an ordinary magnetic metal, researchers have now shown that exposing the thin film of FeTe to tellurium vapor removes disorder created by excess iron atoms trapped in the crystal structure of the material, revealing that FeTe is a superconductor. Credit: Chang Laboratory/Penn State.

St. Olaf researchers built a computer that doesn’t require electricity

Researchers from St. Olaf College and Syracuse University have built mechanical computers made entirely of common materials that can perform simple calculations without electricity or batteries. Led by St. Olaf College physics professor Joey Paulsen, the team used steel springs and bars to create devices that store and process information by physically responding to motion and force. One machine counts how many times it is moved, another determines whether it has been pushed an odd or even number of times, and a third remembers whether it experienced a medium or large force, demonstrating that everyday materials can both retain memory and perform basic computation.

“We now have a rational way of building these machines that can perform simple computations without a computer chip or a power source,” Paulsen said.

Key findings from the research include:

  • Mechanical computers can perform simple computations without a computer chip or power source.
  • Mechanical computers are able to harvest their power from physical force, rather than electricity.
  • Proof of design that mechanical computers could be a viable alternative to conventional computers in harsh settings—such as extreme temperatures or exposure to corrosive chemicals—when only simple computations are needed.

“Our results are one step towards designing materials that can sense their environment, make a decision, and then respond,” said Paulsen. “Frequently called smart materials, what we learned could help improve people’s lives by having more responsive artificial limbs or tactile rooms.”

Paulsen recommends that future research on mechanical computers focus on understanding their limitations and scalability. Under his leadership, St. Olaf students are currently testing how the state of one rotor affects its interaction with a second rotor –– and potentially a third. This research will continue in the coming months, with opportunities for students to participate through the college’s Collaborative Undergraduate Research and Inquiry (CURI) program.

For more information:  Nature Communications

Image: St. Olaf College students Faten Abu Al Ardat ‘27 and Harry Maakestad ‘26 work on building the mechanical computer.

Graphene just defied a fundamental law of physics

Scientists have observed electrons in graphene flowing like a nearly frictionless liquid, revealing an unusual quantum state that challenges long-standing assumptions in physics and could enable future technologies. Physicists have long sought evidence that electrons can behave collectively as a smooth fluid governed by universal quantum properties, but such behavior is difficult to detect because atomic defects and impurities in real materials typically disrupt these effects. The new observation overcomes those challenges, offering rare experimental insight into electron behavior under exceptionally clean and controlled conditions.

Now, researchers at the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), working with collaborators from the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan, have finally identified this elusive quantum fluid in graphene. This material consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a flat sheet. Their findings, reported in Nature Physics, open a new path for studying quantum phenomena and position graphene as a powerful platform for exploring effects that were previously out of reach in laboratory settings.

“It is amazing that there is so much to do on just a single layer of graphene even after 20 years of discovery,” says Arindam Ghosh, Professor at the Department of Physics, IISc, and one of the corresponding authors of the study.

Breaking a Fundamental Law of Physics

To uncover this behavior, the team created exceptionally clean graphene samples and carefully measured how they conduct both electricity and heat. What they found was unexpected. Instead of increasing together, the two properties moved in opposite directions. As electrical conductivity rose, thermal conductivity dropped, and vice versa.

This result directly contradicts the Wiedemann-Franz law, a well-established principle that states heat and electrical conduction in metals should be proportional. The researchers observed deviations from this law by more than 200 times at low temperatures, revealing a striking separation between how charge and heat move through the material.

A Universal Quantum Connection

Despite this unusual split, the behavior is not random. Both types of conduction appear to follow a universal constant that does not depend on the material itself. This constant is tied to the quantum of conductance, a fundamental quantity that describes how electrons move at the smallest scales.

The Dirac Fluid and Liquid-Like Electrons

This remarkable effect occurs at a special condition known as the “Dirac point,” where graphene sits at a boundary between being a metal and an insulator. By adjusting the number of electrons, researchers can reach this precise state.

At this point, electrons stop behaving like individual particles. Instead, they move collectively, flowing like a liquid. This fluid-like motion resembles water but with far lower resistance to flow. “Since this water-like behaviour is found near the Dirac point, it is called a Dirac fluid — an exotic state of matter which mimics the quark-gluon plasma, a soup of highly energetic subatomic particles observed in particle accelerators at CERN,” says Aniket Majumdar, first author and PhD student at the Department of Physics. The team also measured how easily this fluid flows and found that its viscosity is extremely low, making it one of the closest realizations of a perfect fluid ever observed.

A New Window Into Extreme Physics

These results establish graphene as an accessible and cost-effective system for exploring ideas that are usually associated with extreme environments. Scientists can now investigate phenomena linked to high-energy physics and astrophysics, including black-hole thermodynamics and entanglement entropy scaling, within a laboratory setting.

Future Applications in Quantum Technology

Beyond its scientific importance, this discovery could have practical implications. The presence of a Dirac fluid in graphene may enable the development of highly sensitive quantum sensors. Such devices could amplify extremely weak electrical signals and detect faint magnetic fields, opening the door to new technologies in sensing and measurement.

For more information: Nature Physics

Researchers use large language models to discover recipes for novel materials

Researchers at the University of Rochester have developed an artificial intelligence-based method that uses large language models, similar to ChatGPT, to help chemical engineers discover and manufacture new materials, potentially accelerating efforts such as converting carbon dioxide into fuel. The approach allows researchers to describe desired materials in natural language, receive AI-generated recommendations for experimental procedures, and iteratively refine those experiments by feeding results back into the model. By lowering technical barriers to using AI in catalysis research, the method aims to speed experimentation, improve accessibility and advance materials discovery.

“We’re able to leverage the pre-trained knowledge of large language models and well-established statistical methods for materials discovery to help us as researchers navigate large experimental design spaces more efficiently,” says Marc Porosoff, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Sustainability Engineering.

Porosoff likens the new AI method to describing a cup of coffee, noting that someone could describe the coffee by its taste, color, and aroma, or by the type of beans, grind size, apparatus, and water temperature used to make the brew. Both representation methods describe the same cup of coffee, but the second approach gives you a recipe to reproduce it that others can easily replicate.

Porosoff and his team are applying the same principle to catalysts for energy applications, using language-based representations to describe materials not just by their properties, but by the steps needed to create them.

To build on their success, the US Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced it will provide nearly $3 million in funding to apply the URochester team’s method toward creating catalysts for the production of fuel from abundant materials, specifically methanol and ethanol from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Porosoff will lead a multi-institution project team that includes URochester, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Stanford University, Northwestern University, A*STAR Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment (ISCE2) in Singapore, and OxEon Energy, a small business based in Salt Lake City.

Leveraging the power of LLMs

Traditional AI methods for materials discovery typically use a strategy called Bayesian optimization to identify and design the best candidates. But the result is complex numerical data about a material’s structure, which requires deep expertise to use effectively. The new LLM method instead produces a set of procedures that researchers can easily understand, execute, and verify to determine if the experiment’s output matches the predicted results.

This can be extremely useful for working with complex materials such as trimetallic catalysts, which are made of three metals.

“Our method reduces the technical barrier associated with using Bayesian optimization, which is a well-established method for efficiently exploring large and complicated parameter spaces,” says Shane Michtavy, a URochester chemical engineering PhD student who helped develop the AI method, synthesize materials, and run the chemical reactions described in the paper. “Using pre-trained LLMs allows users to explore using less data than traditional models, as they are deployed in a frozen state with built-in knowledge of the physical world and catalysis.”

The paper shows how the researchers applied the method to several live experiments, including one to identify catalysts for turning carbon dioxide and hydrogen into carbon monoxide and water using trimetallic catalysts made from low-cost metals. Porosoff says that there are about 360,000 possible experiments that could have been run to find the ideal catalyst, but by using procedures produced by the AI model and providing it with the results from the experiments, they were able to find an ideal candidate in just ten experiments.

The study was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the US Department of Energy. Additional authors included Mayk Caldas, technical staff at Edison Scientific.

Next steps

Now that they have shown the model works as a proof of concept in the lab, Porosoff aims to take the method further using the funding announced through ARPA-E’s Catalytic Application Testing for Accelerated Learning Chemistries via High-throughput Experimentation and Modeling Efficiently (CATALCHEM-E) program.

“Right now, it takes a decade or longer to go from conceptualizing a new catalyst to testing it in a lab to putting it in a real reactor,” says Porosoff. “The CATALCHEM-E program aims to cut that by an order of magnitude to a single year, and we think using AI with text-based representations will be a big factor in shortening the development cycle.”

Porosoff and his collaborators will first demonstrate their workflow on carbon dioxide-to-methanol and then extend the process to higher alcohols such as ethanol, which is a key additive for gasoline and used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and many other applications. Ultimately, they hope to commercially deploy the model for industries to create catalysts to synthesize alcohols for fuel.

For more information: ACS Central Science

Materials modeling improved by giving atoms freedom

Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Calif., created a new model for crystal defects at realistic temperatures. As most materials, especially metals and ceramics, are crystals, their atoms are arranged in three-dimensional lattices that repeat the same exact pattern, over and over again. But there’s a well-known saying in materials science: “Crystals are like people. It is the defects that tend to make them interesting.”

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Ancient zircon crystals offer a glimpse into early Earth history

To determine what Earth was like early in its lifetime, researchers turn to minerals called zircons, which are resilient against physical and chemical alteration over time and thus preserve a precise chemical record about the moments in which they were formed. Some of the oldest zircon crystals are 4.4 billion years old. Now, a new study at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) examines these most ancient zircon grains and discovers evidence for two key findings.

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Tough, reusable adhesive can glue a variety of materials

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a reusable adhesive made from waste polymers that is stronger than commercial glues, works in wet and dry conditions, and bonds materials ranging from wood and glass to metal and plastics. Inspired by mussels’ sticking power, the adhesive uses reversible chemical crosslinkers that let it soften, release and be reused, unlike conventional single-use glues. The innovation could simplify manufacturing and repair by replacing the many specialized adhesives used today and may have significant economic impact in the global adhesives and sealants market, valued at about $87 billion and projected to reach nearly $119 billion by 2032.

“Most adhesives are made for one specific application,” said Anisur Rahman, a research and development staff member at ORNL who led a study with former ORNL postdoctoral researcher Mary Danielson, now a research assistant professor with the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute. “Our adhesive can be used for diverse applications, including structural or pressure-sensitive uses, and it performs reliably in both wet and dry environments,” he said. “None of the commercial adhesives can be used this way.” 

Beginning with common polymers from beverage bottles, fabric fibers and packaging films, the research team developed a process that saves materials, energy and money. “We took material destined for the landfill and turned it into something valuable,” Danielson said.

The researchers have applied for a patent for their versatile glue. 

How the reversible bonds work

Traditional structural adhesives rely on permanent crosslinks that make removal difficult. “You apply traditional adhesives once; you cannot reuse them,” Rahman said. 

“You basically have to rip an assembly apart to debond it,” Danielson added. “You’ve damaged both the part you’re glueing to and the part you’re glueing from. If you make a mistake when you’re gluing something and you allow it to cure, it’s done.“

In the ORNL adhesive, crosslinkers act like reversible attachments, akin to Velcro. Heating breaks dynamic chemical bonds in the polymer, allowing the adhesive to release without damaging surfaces. As the material cools, the bonds reform.

“If something is damaged or misapplied, you’re able to completely remove it and put it back on with full integrity,” Danielson said.

The team debonded and rebounded the adhesive more than 10 times with no loss in performance. 

“Normally in the marketplace, structural adhesives typically have shear strength — a measure of adhesion — in the 7- to 10-megapascal range,” Rahman said. “Our adhesives also stay well above that range but maintain reusability.”

The researchers can also retrieve the glue chemically, using an excess of amine molecules to break the adhesive into its monomer subunits. “We can recover all chemicals used in this adhesive,” Rahman said.

Mussel-inspired design

A polymer is a long chain or network made of monomers, or chemical subunits of one type. Using no solvents or catalysts, the scientists added amine, a nitrogen-containing chemical group, to the waste polymer and heated it to just below the polymer’s melting temperature. Under these mild conditions, the amine broke the polymer down into monomers that each contained four amine groups.

Next, to design the adhesive, ORNL researchers mimicked mussel foot proteins, which contain both hydrophilic and hydrophobic components that enable strong adhesion even in wet environments.

“We used a crosslinker, or hardener, that has both water-loving (hydrophilic) and water-hating (hydrophobic) components together in the same molecule,” Rahman said. “We mix the hardener and the monomer. It creates an adhesive resin that acts like a mussel foot protein.”

“For any glue that is a cross-linked network of two components, it takes time to complete the reaction between the two components,” Danielson said. “To repair boats, submarines and pipelines, our glue can be applied underwater using hand pressure until it sets.” 

Curing happens when a large four-armed monomer interacts with the crosslinking hardener. The monomer’s amine group reacts with the hardener’s acetoacetate group to produce a resin, or matrix with hydrophilic and hydrophobic characteristics. Whether the protein sticks or releases depends on the balance of those properties. 

“Our glue maintained strong adhesion across different environmental conditions, including seawater, extremely low temperature (100 degrees Celsius below zero), and both acidic and basic conditions,” Rahman said.

National lab capabilities enabled the achievement

Rahman conceived the concept of transforming deconstructed polymer waste into an adhesive. He and Danielson designed and led experiments and drafted the paper. Chuyi Pan, a summer intern from the University of Pennsylvania, assisted in synthesizing the adhesive. Tomonori Saito of ORNL and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, reviewed and edited the manuscript drafts.

ORNL researchers performed vital characterizations. Bobby Sumpter simulated the energies with which the adhesive bound to different surface materials. Catalin Gainaru used rheology to characterize its stress and relaxation. Honghai Zhang and Vilmos Kertesz performed mass spectrometry to quantify different molecules. Zoriana Demchuk’s lifecycle analysis of the ORNL glue showed it was more energy-efficient to make than commercial adhesives. 

Toward strong and weak bonding applications

The team has also explored using this pioneering chemistry to advance vehicles. ORNL’s glue maintained strong adhesion between dissimilar substrates — a crucial requirement in automotive and aerospace applications, where joining composites to aluminum or steel presents notable challenges.

Next, the scientists aim to tune crosslinking to enable weaker, temporary bonds for removable labels, adhesive bandages, drug-delivery patches and other applications. 

ORNL’s versatile, high-performance glue is poised to make an impact that sticks in situations from the mundane to the extraordinary. Potential uses range from household items that require gentle removal, like press-on nails and price tags, to repairs in remote or extreme environments, including underwater or outer space — settings where specialty glues may be unavailable. 

The DOE Office of Science supported the research. The work used resources of the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE Office of Science user facility at ORNL.

For more information: Science Advances

Image: From left, Mary Danielson and Anisur Rahman, leaders of an ORNL project to invent a versatile reusable glue from polymer waste, examine its bonding performance. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Argonne National Laboratory’s new facility is giving researchers an inside look at irradiated nuclear materials

Argonne National Laboratory has opened its Activated Materials Lab, a radiological facility next to the Advanced Photon Source that lets scientists use an ultrabright X-ray beam to safely examine the inner structure of irradiated metals and nuclear fuels. The new capability allows researchers to see how radiation affects reactor materials in real time, supporting advances in reactor component design and helping utilities better plan maintenance and repair schedules.

Activated Materials Lab

Equipped with fume hoods, glove boxes, shielded containers, and approved sample containments, the new Activated Materials Lab can safely handle samples with higher radioactivity than previously allowed at the facility.

Staffed with a dedicated team that is responsible for receiving radioactive samples and transferring them safely to the Advanced Photon Source x-ray beamlines for measurements, the lab is able to reduce the turnaround time on user experiments while allowing researchers to focus on data collection and interpretation.

The Advanced Photon Source recently underwent a major upgrade project which enhanced its brightness over 100-fold and built nine new x-ray beamlines, including the High-Energy X-ray Microscope beamline at 20-ID which is adjacent to the Activated Materials Lab. With enhanced access to upgraded x-ray capabilities, researchers now have the ability to pursue a wider range of experiments. 

“By safely enabling higher activity samples at the Advanced Photon Source, this new capability allows for clearer views of how materials change during their time in a reactor, speeding progress toward safer, longer-lasting components,” said Brenden J. Heidrich, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Science User Facilities program. 

Going Granular 

The new facility recently completed its first-ever user experiments examining the origins of stress corrosion cracks in irradiated materials.

Researchers looked at stainless steel parts that after decades of use were removed from a light-water reactor. The parts had developed microcracks due to a combination of irradiation, mechanical stress, and exposure to a corrosive environment.

Using a combination of three-dimensional x-ray techniques, researchers were able to examine the metal at the polycrystal grain level to see if they could find characteristics that correlated to cracking.

Finding the mechanisms that contribute to this behavior in alloys used in nuclear reactors will inform future material designs and long-term performance of existing reactors.

“This first experiment shows that the Activated Materials Laboratory can safely bridge irradiated samples to world-class X-ray tools, lowering barriers for the nuclear materials community,” said Xuan Zhang, Principal Materials Scientist at Argonne and facility lead of the AML. ​“By coordinating shipping, encapsulation, and safety reviews, AML helps users make the most of beam time and investigate questions that were out of reach before.”

“Access to higher-activity samples at beamline 1-ID, under strict controls, lets us probe grain-level behavior in materials that reflect real conditions,” said Jon Almer, Group Leader and Scientist, Materials Physics and Engineering Group, at Argonne. ​“Combining tomography with far-field and near-field high-energy diffraction microscopy gives a fuller picture that can inform models and materials design.”

The experiment was led by the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign’s Professor James Stubbins, with collaborators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, The University of Alabama, and Argonne National Laboratory, and was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program and the Light Water Reactor Sustainability program. 

What’s Next?

The Activated Materials Lab stands ready to receive its next user experiment, adding its capacity to the list of innovative resources and capabilities the U. S. Department of Energy provides to researcher and industry to advance nuclear materials and technologies.

The Activated Materials Laboratory is supported by the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) program. The Advanced Photon Source is a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility operated by Argonne National Laboratory.

For more information: NSUF

Electric field tunes vibrations to ease heat transfer

New research from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory found that applying an electric field to a ceramic material removes barriers to phonon transport, conducting heat almost three times more efficiently along the field direction, challenging conventional understanding about controlling heat flow in solid materials.

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PRIME Project Launches to Strengthen Global Nitinol Supply Chain

Five leading companies in the medical device industry have launched the PRIME project, a strategic initiative dedicated to advancing the consistency, scalability, and performance of nitinol materials. PRIME, which stands for PRoficient Ingot Material Evaluation, brings together deep technical expertise from every stage of the nitinol value chain.

The founding members are Fort Wayne Metals (ingot melting), Vascotube and Euroflex (tube drawing), and Admedes and MeKo MedTech (component manufacturing). Together, the consortium spans the complete nitinol production chain from melting through tube processing to final device assembly.

The initiative was created to strengthen supply chain stability and meet rising market demands through joint testing, real-world validation, and transparent evaluation of new ingot sources. A key goal is to prevent monopolistic dependencies and mitigate future supply risks for critical medical applications such as stents and heart valve frames.

Technical papers with testing data will be made available through the consortium’s website, and ingots, tubes, and components will be available for independent testing and production validation.

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Unconventional method strengthens metal in extreme conditions

Blacksmiths fire metals before hammering them, as heat always softens metal, making it more malleable and easier to reshape. Or does it? In a surprising new study, engineers from Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) discovered that, in extreme conditions, heat does not soften pure metals—it strengthens them.

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How rough grinding makes stainless steel prone to corrosion

Stainless steel is widely known for its corrosion resistance. But when it is exposed to environments containing chloride ions, such as seawater, the risk of corrosion increases. Manufacturers typically grind the surface to smooth it. However, this finishing process reduces corrosion resistance even further. Researchers at Tohoku University in Japan have recently shed light on why this occurs.

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Novel AI method sharpens 3D x-ray vision

Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new X-ray tomography method called the perception fused iterative tomography reconstruction engine (PFITRE), a novel approach that combines the physics of X-rays with the power of artificial intelligence (AI).

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Scientists achieve sub-second 3D printing using rotating light field

Researchers have developed a new sub-second volumetric 3D printing technique that eliminates the need to rotate the printed sample, a long-standing mechanical challenge in the field. The system, called Digital Incoherent Synthesis of Holographic Light Fields, or DISH, instead rotates the illumination using a high-speed periscope, allowing millimeter-scale structures to be printed in 0.6 seconds with about 19-micrometer resolution across a 1-centimeter depth range. The advance addresses a persistent trade-off in volumetric additive manufacturing between resolution, stability and printable volume.

Volumetric 3D printing has long hoped to fabricate entire objects simultaneously – rather than layer by layer. But established approaches, such as computed axial lithography, typically rotate the resin container during exposure.

Fast rotation introduces vibration and alignment errors. Slow rotation, meanwhile, requires highly viscous resins, often thousands of centipoise, to prevent features from drifting before polymerization completes.

When it comes to optics, higher resolution demands higher numerical aperture (NA) objectives. Yet higher NA optics come with a shallow depth of field.

The system used in the study has an intrinsic NA of 0.055 at 405 nm, with a native depth-of-field of roughly 0.4 mm. That’s far smaller than the centimetre-scale volumes desirable for practical manufacturing. 

DISH tackles both precision and scale at once.

In their method, instead of moving the resin container the researchers mounted a rotating periscope on a hollow stage to deliver synchronized angular illumination while keeping the sample stationary.

A 405 nm coherent laser is modulated by a Digital Micromirror Device operating at 17 kHz, projecting optimized binary patterns as the periscope rotates at speeds up to 10 revolutions per second.

The demonstrated sub-second fabrication corresponds to the specific exposure timing used in the reported experiments.

The team abandoned conventional ray-based approximations and implemented a wave-optics model that explicitly incorporates diffraction and refraction at the air–material interface.

A coarse-to-fine iterative optimization algorithm generates projection patterns that maintain intensity modulation well beyond the native focal plane.

An adaptive calibration scheme using two orthogonal cameras corrects single-pixel misalignments in the synthesized 3D light field, improving angular registration and exposure fidelity.

Performance tests show that DISH maintains approximately 19 μm feature fidelity across a 1 cm depth range, far exceeding the objective’s intrinsic 0.4 mm depth of field.

Relief-structure experiments demonstrated approximately 11 μm uniform linewidth across the full centimeter span, while the smallest independently resolved positive feature measured 12 μm.

Comparative tests against conventional back-projection approaches showed sharper edges and improved consistency, particularly in off-center regions where optical blur typically increases.

The single-sided illumination geometry does introduce a missing-cone trade-off that slightly affects axial resolution. The authors note that alternative periscope geometries could mitigate this limitation in future implementations.

One of the more practically significant findings is material compatibility. The system printed successfully in aqueous solutions of polyethylene glycol diacrylate with viscosities as low as 4.7 cP. Because polymerization completes within 0.6 seconds, gravitational drift occurs only after solidification.

By contrast, conventional volumetric systems often require viscosities between 6,000 and 10,000 cP to maintain positional stability during slower exposures.

The researchers also demonstrated printing in higher-viscosity resins and bio-derived hydrogels, including gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) and silk fibroin methacrylate (SilMA).

The single-sided geometry further enables in situ fabrication on fixed substrates and within confined environments such as petri dishes.

Integration with a fluidic channel allowed successive fabrication of multiple structures, pointing toward continuous production workflows.

The authors estimate voxel rates on the order of 1.25 × 108/second, calculated for a defined voxel size and build volume. They suggest that higher-power lasers and faster modulation hardware could further increase build rates.

Surface analysis indicates that inclined projection reduces the prominence of stripe-like speckle artefacts compared with perpendicular illumination systems.

However, the hologram optimization process currently requires substantial offline computation. The authors propose GPU acceleration or neural-network-based approaches as pathways to reduce processing time and enable more automated deployment.

By decoupling angular illumination from sample motion and synthesizing holographic light fields through wave-optics modeling, DISH demonstrates a way to extend effective depth performance without sacrificing resolution.

While industrial deployment remains prospective, the work outlines a credible pathway toward faster, continuous volumetric manufacturing using both acrylate-based systems and selected biomaterials.

Future efforts are likely to focus on accelerating hologram computation, refining optical geometries to address missing-cone effects, and scaling projection hardware.

For more information: Nature