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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 2 0 1 0 METALS | POLYMERS | CERAMICS Novelis Inc., Atlanta, will invest $36 million to expand and up- grade recycling capacity at its Greensboro, Ga., facility. The investment includes adding state-of-the-art equipment for aluminum scrap recycling, a new baghouse for improved dust mitigation, and enhanced designs for more efficient traffic flow. The company expects to complete the project by fall 2021. novelis.com . Pennex Aluminum, Wellsville, Pa., recently completed a $23 million expansion of their Leetonia, Ohio, facility. The 175-employee company special- izes in aluminum fabrication and extrusions for the automotive, construction, HVAC, landscaping, and off-road vehicle markets. pennexaluminum.com. Glass manufacturer Corning, Corning, N.Y., and ceramics producer Lithoz America, Troy, N.Y., are collaborating to open additive manufacturing to the properties achieved by glass ceramics. According to Lithoz, its lithog- raphy-based ceramic manufacturing enables the formation of high-quali- ty advanced ceramics. The process, originally developed at the Technical University of Vienna, uses light to structure ceramic powders suspended in a photopolymer resin. corning.com , lithoz-america.com . BRIEFS back to its original volume. This is a sig- nificantly larger volume change than those previously reported, not only in conducting polymers but also in other materials controlled by an electrical signal. The scientists demonstrated one application of the polymer as a smart sponge, or filter, in which they can control the expansion electronic- ally and change the pore size by 85%. In addition to applications in medicine and biochemistry, the “smart filter” function could be used for sieving, fil- tration, purification, and process chem- istry. www.liu.se/en. MAKING NANOPOROUS METALS WITH HEAT Researchers at Brookhaven Na- tional Laboratory, Upton, N.Y., are using heat to create new nanostructured ma- terials. Called thin-film solid-state inter- facial dealloying (SSID), the approach uses heat to drive a self-organizing process in which metals mix or de-mix Researchers in Sweden are working on a new polymer that can shrink or grow in response to an electrical signal. Courtesy of Thor Balkhed. CONDUCTING POLYMER ACTS AS PARTICLE FILTER Scientists at Linko- ping University, Sweden, have discovered a new conducting polymer that can increase as well as reduce its volume when exposed to a weak elec- trical pulse. Using the material as a filter, re- searchers can control the size of particles that pass through. Ma- terials that change vol- ume depending on temperature or pH have long been available and are used in control units, robots, and biomed- icine applications. One property that researchers have long sought is the change of a material from a solid form to a gel state with the aid of an electri- cal signal. It is particularly desirable that such electronic con- trol of the phase transition is reversible. The newly discovered conducting polymer can in- crease its volume by a fac- tor of more than 100. The change takes place when the material is placed into an electrolyte and subject- ed to a weak electrical volt- age of +0.8 V. If a negative voltage of − 0.8 V is applied instead, the material con- tracts nearly the whole way A schematic showing thin-film SSID for the Fe-Ni/Mg system. The thin films of Mg and Fe-Ni are layered on top of an Si substrate. Upon exposure to heat, the Mg dealloys Fe-Ni to form an Mg-Ni composite and pure Fe with a 3D bicontinuous structure. Pennex Aluminum, Leetonia, Ohio.