ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES | SEPTEMBER 2023 6 METALS | POLYMERS | CERAMICS A new Rare-Earth Metals Market report projects 12.33% global growth from 2021-2026, from $5.3 billion to $9.6 billion. Permanent magnets are the largest user of rare earth elements, with two main applications including hybrid car engines and wind turbines. Asia Pacific is the fastestgrowing market for rare earth metals due to the increase in production and consumption of rare earth metals in China. marketsandmarkets.com. as a collaboration between the Georgia Tech team and Novelis, a leading manufacturer of aluminum and the world’s largest aluminum recycler, based in Warren, Ohio. The team knew that aluminum would have energy, cost, and manufacturing benefits when used as a material in the battery’s anode, but pure aluminum foils were failing rapidly when tested in batteries. Instead of using pure aluminum in the foils, the researchers added small amounts of other materials to the aluminum to create foils with varied microstructures. They tested over 100 different materials to understand how they would behave in batteries. The team observed that the augmented aluminum anode could store more lithium than conventional anode materials, and therefore more energy. In the end, they created high energy density batteries that could potentially outperform lithium-ion batteries. Now, they’re currently working to scale up the size of the batteries SELF-HEALING METALS Researchers from the DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University report pieces of metal cracking and then fusing back together without any human intervention. “What we have confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale,” says Sandia’s Brad Boyce. The fissure that disappeared was a nanoscale yet consequential fracture. In 2013, Michael Demkowicz, then at MIT and now at Texas A&M, began challenging conventional materials theory. He published a new theory based on computer simulations that showed under certain conditions, metal should be able to weld shut cracks formed by wear and tear. The discovery that his theory was true came inadvertently at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies. When the discovery was made, scientists were evaluating how cracks formed and spread through a nanoscale piece of platinum using an electron microscope technique. About 40 minutes into the experiment, the damage reversed course. One end of the crack fused back together, leaving no sign of the former injury. Boyce shared his findings with Demkowicz, who then recreated the experiment on a computer model, substantiating that the phenomenon witnessed at Sandia was the same one he had theorized years earlier. “The extent to which these findings are generalizable will likely become a subject of extensive research,” says Boyce. sandia.gov. ALUMINUM ANODES FOR BETTER BATTERIES Using aluminum foil, a research team from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, is creating batteries with higher energy density and greater stability. The project began Sandia researcher Ryan Schoell studies fatigue cracks at the nanoscale using a specialized transmission microscope technique. Courtesy of Craig Fritz. Reflex Advanced Materials Corp., Vancouver, Canada, received approval in August for exploration drilling at its Ruby Graphite project in Montana, with permits from the Bureau of Land Management and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. The drill program aims to define potential graphitic mineralization and determine the site’s geological characteristics. reflexmaterials.com. BRIEFS Graduate student researcher Yuhgene Liu holds an aluminum material used in solidstate batteries.
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