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Aluminium

Simple metal no more

Nature Materials volume 9, pages 607–608 (2010)Cite this article

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Aluminium is regarded as a simple system in which to test for phenomena occurring at high pressure. Ab initio calculations now show that this metal undergoes a surprising transition to an incommensurate structure when it is subjected to extremely high pressures.

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Figure 1: The host–guest structure of incommensurate aluminium, shown in projection down the c axis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Malcolm I. McMahon and Graeme J. Ackland are part of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), and in the School of Physics and Astronomy, and the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.,

    Malcolm I. McMahon & Graeme J. Ackland

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  1. Malcolm I. McMahon
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  2. Graeme J. Ackland
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Correspondence to Malcolm I. McMahon.

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McMahon, M., Ackland, G. Simple metal no more. Nature Mater 9, 607–608 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2817

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