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The team of researchers claim this metal could be used on everything
from cell phones to making lighter and more fuel-efficient cars,
airplanes and even spacecrafts.
The possibilities this could bring are intriguing ... and perhaps
endless.
A team of UCLA researchers, from the University's Henry Samueli
School of Engineering and Applied Science, have announced that they
have created a new ultra-strong, but still lightweight metal.
The metal, which UCLA researchers report has an extremely high
stiffness-to-weight ratio, consists of "magnesium infused with a
dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles."
UCLA researchers say this metal could be used to make lighter cars,
airplanes and even spacecrafts, subsequently improving their fuel-
efficiency rates as well. They add that the metal could also be used
for mobile and biomedical devices as well.
The research team created the ultra-strong, yet lightweight material
by manipulating nanoparticles in molten metals.
"It's been proposed that nanoparticles could really enhance the
strength of metals without damaging their plasticity, especially light
metals like magnesium, but no groups have been able to disperse
ceramic nanoparticles in molten metals until now," said Xiaochun Li,
a principal investigator on the research team and UCLA Raytheon
Chair in Manufacturing Engineering, with the research published in the
Nature journal . "With an infusion of physics and materials processing,
our method paves a new way to enhance the performance of many
different kinds of metals by evenly infusing dense nanoparticles to
enhance the performance of metals to meet energy and sustainability
challenges in today's society."
He later added: "The results we obtained so far are just scratching the
surface of the hidden treasure for a new class of metals with
revolutionary properties and functionalities."
As with any potentially-breakthrough research findings, though, it
remains to be seen how soon this metal could be put into production
and across a massive scale for every-day use.
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