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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 | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 9 1 0 METALS | POLYMERS | CERAMICS AGC, Japan, announces that its cover glass for car-mounted displays will be used in the new Lexus RX series: Dragontrail, a specialty glass that has been enhanced with a chemical rein- forcement treatment, optical thin coating, and decorative printing, will be used as the protective surface glass for the RX navigation display. agc.com, lexus.com . Kyocera Corp. and Ube Industries Ltd., both based in Japan, announced a joint venture to manufacture ceramic filters for 5G base stations. Ceram- ic filters, which are among the main products manufactured by Ube Elec- tronics, are key components enabling macro-cell base stations. Under the agreement, Kyocera will acquire 51% of the shares of Ube Electronics Ltd., a subsidiary of Ube Industries. The joint venture will commence opera- tions in December. global.kyocera.com, www.ube-ind.co.jp . BRIEFS smartphones, metal-free pacemakers, and more. The new process uses an ultrafast pulsed laser to melt ceramic materi- als along the interface and fuse them together. It works in ambient condi- tions and uses less than 50 watts of laser power, making it more practical than current ceramic welding meth- ods that require heating the parts in a furnace. Ceramic materials are of great interest because they are biocompati- ble, extremely hard, and shatter resis- tant, making them ideal for biomedical implants and protective casings for electronics. However, current ceramic welding procedures are not conducive to making such devices as most require the use of furnaces. The researchers’ solution was to aim a series of short laser pulses along the interface between two ceramic parts so that heat builds up only at the interface and causes localized melting. Ryan Fair, a Penn State doctoral candidate in MSE, con- ducts research into cold sintering in the university’s lab of the Gomez Group. Courtesy of Tyler Henderson. COLD SINTERING IMPROVES BATTERY RECYCLABILITY By discovering a way to combine lithium salts with ceramics, researchers in the Penn State College of Engineering and the Penn State Materials Research Institute may have created a new class of materials for longer-lasting batteries. According to the team, the composite nature of the batteries could make re- cycling easier. Professor Enrique Gomez led the team. “Battery materials need to excel in a lot of ways,” says Gomez. “They need to be highly conductive, highly resistant, have good mechanical prop- erties, and more. Finding the magical material is really hard. Once we find it, making this magical mate- rial recyclable is a crucial challenge.” Gomez and his team have developed a potential “magical materi- al” through cold sintering, which blends a ceramic and an organic salt to create a new hybrid material. The composite combines the conductive properties of the ceramic with the flexi- ble mechanical properties of the organic salt. “Using our new ap- proach, you could recov- er these composite battery materials, grind them up and simply make a new component,” Gomez explains. The pro- cess of traditional sintering turns a powder into a solid via extreme heat of more than 1000°C. Cold sintering achieves the same result with signifi- cantly lower temperatures of only 100-200°C. The cold sintering tempera- tures are below the combustion rate of organic materials. Because organics are not destroyed during cold sintering, this could lead to new types of organic- ceramic hybrid materials, such as the battery materials Gomez and his team are developing. psu.edu . WELDING CERAMICS WITH LASERS A team of engineers at the Uni- versity of California, San Diego has de- veloped a new ceramic welding tech- nology that could pave the way for space-friendly electronics, shatterproof This laser welded ceramic assembly consists of a transparent cylindrical cap joined to a ceramic tube. Courtesy of Garay Lab.