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A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 9 9 never produced anything like this,” says chemical engineer Michael Strano. “These materials mimic some aspects of something living, even though it’s not reproducing.” mit.edu . leads to an introduction of microstruc- tural defects, which make the material stronger but also more susceptible to molten salt corrosion. It was found that the amount of cold rolling has a strong relationship with thematerial mass loss in the molten salt, with higher amounts of cold rolling leading to increased loss- es. An electron probe micro-analyzer at the University of New South Wales also revealed that the bulk material retained a uniform distribution of iron and nick- el, while there was enhanced diffusion of chromium and molybdenum to the grain boundaries. ansto.gov.au . STUDYING MATERIALS IN MOLTEN SALT ENVIRONMENTS Newresearchcoming fromtheAus- tralian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) discovered that cold rolling increases the susceptibility of materials to molten salt corrosion by increasing grain boundary length and other microstructural defects, proper- ties that typically contribute to material strengthening. The team believes this finding has relevance for future molten salt reactors, concentrated solar ther- mal, and thermal energy storage sys- tems now under development. The study was done on 316L stain- less steel, which is used in today’s nu- clear reactors. Using electron and neu- tron diffraction techniques at ANSTO, investigators found that cold rolling Top: A crack is created in the material, which is composed of a hydrogel (dark green) with chloroplasts (light green) embedded in it. Bottom: In the presence of light, the material reacts with carbon dioxide to expand and fill the gap, repair- ing the damage.