ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES | APRIL 2025 6 METALS | POLYMERS | CERAMICS Carolina Metals Group, Dallas, N.C., and Spartan Recycling Group, Spartanburg, S.C., merged their scrap metal processing businesses in January. The new entity, Southeast Recycling Group, will employ more than 100 people with nearly 100 acres of processing area at three locations in the Carolinas. srgmetals.com. magnetic, and optical properties. Even graphite can rearrange into six different crystalline forms, each with distinct electrical conductivities, infrared responses, magnetizations, and superconducting properties. The main challenge is maintaining the material’s stability while ensuring controlled structural transitions. The team’s latest study proposes new methods to refine this “slidetronics” switching mechanism, which could lead to new applications in electronics, computing, and other fields. https://english.tau.ac.il. SIMPLE PROCESS DECONSTRUCTS POLYMERS Materials scientists at ETH Zurich developed a light-triggered chemical process for breaking down certain polymers into their component monomers, which would enable cheaper and easier recycling. The new process involves placing the polymer in a dichlorobenzene solvent and then shining a violet light on it as reactions in the solvent take place, with no reagents or SLIDETRONICS AND POLYTYPE MATERIALS Researchers at Tel Aviv University, Israel, are exploring the idea of turning graphite into diamond since they are both made entirely of carbon atoms. The main difference between the two involves how their atoms are arranged. Converting graphite into diamond would require extreme temperatures and pressures to break and reform chemical bonds, making the process impractical. A more realistic transformation, according to Professor Moshe Ben Shalom, involves reconfiguring the atomic layers of graphite by shifting them against relatively weak van der Waals forces. In this case, the value of these newly engineered “polytype” materials could surpass that of both diamonds and gold. “We are developing new methods to slide the layers into different arrangements and study the resulting materials. By applying an electric field or mechanical pressure, we can shift the layers into various stable configurations. Since these layers remain in their final position even after the external force is removed, they can store information— functioning as a tiny memory unit,” says researcher Simon Salleh Atri. The team also explored how different numbers of layers influence materials properties. For example, three layers of a material with two types of atoms can create six distinct stable materials, each with unique internal polarizations. With five layers, this number increases to 45 possible structures. By switching between these configurations, researchers can control electrical, Ball Corp., Westminster, Colo., acquired Alucan, Barcelona. The purchase complements Ball’s existing extruded aluminum aerosol and bottle business by adding two manufacturing facilities located in Spain and Belgium. ball.com. BRIEFS Layers research team from the School of Physics and Astronomy. Courtesy of Tel Aviv University. Graphic of the reversion of commercial Plexiglas to its starting materials, the monomer. Courtesy of Hyun Suk Wang and Athina Anastasaki/ETHZ.
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