Structural materials articles within Nature Materials

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Harnessing premature necking produces a rapid multiplication of dislocations to interact with local chemical orders for work hardening in VCoNi alloy, achieving ductility of 20% and yield strength of 2 GPa during room-temperature and cryogenic deformation.

    • Bowen Xu
    • , Huichao Duan
    •  & Xiaolei Wu

  • Article |

    Controlling substrate elasticity during physical vapour deposition allows access to high-density stable glasses that would otherwise be formed under prohibitively slow deposition conditions on rigid substrates.

    • Peng Luo
    • , Sarah E. Wolf
    •  & Zahra Fakhraai

  • Feature |

    Marc Legros, Frédéric Mompiou and Daniel Caillard discuss the different aspects that influence the reproducibility and reliability of characterizations performed using in situ mechanical tests in transmission electron microscopes.

    • Marc Legros
    • , Frédéric Mompiou
    •  & Daniel Caillard

  • Letter |

    Oxidation normally deteriorates the mechanical properties of metals. But it is now shown that the formation of a percolating oxide network in metallic glass nanotubes can result in an unprecedented superelasticity of 14% at room temperature.

    • Fucheng Li
    • , Zhibo Zhang
    •  & Yong Yang

  • News & Views |

    Oxide glasses can be intrinsically toughened by forming crystal-like, medium-range order clusters, which transform inversely to the amorphous state under stress, exciting multiple shear bands for plastic deformation.

    • Hewei Zhao
    •  & Lin Guo

  • News & Views |

    An additively manufactured AlSi10Mg alloy shows high fatigue strength, even close to its tensile strength, for micro-sized samples. The fine cells in its inherent three-dimensional network are considered as cages to limit damage accumulation.

    • Christopher Hutchinson

  • Research Briefing |

    Self-healing behaviour in a nanotwinned diamond composite, at room temperature, has been quantitatively evaluated through tensile testing. The phenomenon is shown to arise from a transition of atomic interactions from repulsion to attraction and the formation of nanoscale diamond ‘osteoblasts’, in analogy to the process of bone healing in living organisms.

  • Article |

    The room-temperature self-healing behaviour of a nanotwinned diamond composite is quantitatively evaluated and found to stem from both the formation of nanoscale diamond osteoblasts and the atomic interaction transition from repulsion to attraction.

    • Keliang Qiu
    • , Jingpeng Hou
    •  & Lin Guo

  • News & Views |

    Amorphization can be an additional mechanism to assist plastic deformation in crystalline materials, providing a strategy to improve the load-bearing ability of brittle materials.

    • Shiteng Zhao
    •  & Xiaolei Wu

  • Article |

    In situ tests show that all-inorganic lead halide perovskite micropillars can morph into distinct shapes without affecting their optoelectronic properties and bandgap, which provides insights into the plastic deformation of semiconductors and also shows their potential for manufacturing relevant devices.

    • Xiaocui Li
    • , You Meng
    •  & Yang Lu

  • Article |

    Through the approach of paracrystallization under high-pressure and high-temperature conditions, exceptional toughening has been achieved in oxide glasses by enhancing their crystal-like medium-range order structure. This discovery offers possibilities for the design of more resilient glass materials.

    • Hu Tang
    • , Yong Cheng
    •  & Tomoo Katsura

  • Comment |

    In many concentrated alloys of current interest, the observation of diffuse superlattice intensities by transmission electron microscopy has been attributed to chemical short-range order. We briefly review these findings and comment on the plausibility of widespread interpretations, noting the absence of expected peaks, conflicts with theoretical predictions, and the possibility of alternative explanations.

    • Flynn Walsh
    • , Mingwei Zhang
    •  & Mark Asta

  • Article |

    Amorphous shear bands in crystalline materials are found to increase the toughness of brittle materials, in contrast to their traditional role as precursors to fracture. Criteria for this toughening have been identified.

    • Xuanxin Hu
    • , Nuohao Liu
    •  & Izabela Szlufarska

  • Article |

    A method to manipulate the dislocation motion via a non-mechanical field alone has remained elusive. Here, using in situ TEM, it is directly observed that dislocation motion can be controlled solely by an external electric field.

    • Mingqiang Li
    • , Yidi Shen
    •  & Yu Zou

  • News & Views |

    The direct observation of enhanced dislocation mobility in iron by in situ electron microscopy offers key insights and adds to the ongoing debate on the mechanisms of hydrogen embrittlement.

    • Vasily Bulatov
    •  & Wei Cai

  • News & Views |

    An ultra-microporous metal–organic framework glass foam shows outstanding gas sieving properties for challenging gas mixtures.

    • Chinmoy Das
    •  & Sebastian Henke

  • Research Briefing |

    An ultrastrong and superhard conductive carbon composite has been synthesized, which consists of ultrafine nanodiamond homogeneously dispersed in disordered multilayer graphene with incoherent interfaces. The microstructures of the composite suggest that the transition from amorphous carbon to diamond involves the extensive nucleation and diffusion-driven growth of nanodiamond.

  • News & Views |

    Scandium added to Al–Cu–Mg–Ag alloys leads to an in situ phase transformation of coherent Cu-rich nanoprecipitates at elevated temperature, with Sc atoms diffusing and occupying their interstitial sites. The transformed nanoprecipitates have enhanced thermal stability while maintaining a large volume fraction and these two microstructural features enable high tensile strength of the Al alloy with creep resistance up to 400 °C.

    • Amit Shyam
    •  & Sumit Bahl

  • Review Article |

    This Review discusses recent progress in bioinspired nanocomposite design, emphasizing the role of hierarchical structuring at distinct length scales to create multifunctional, lightweight and robust structural materials for diverse technological applications.

    • Dhriti Nepal
    • , Saewon Kang
    •  & Hendrik Heinz

  • News & Views |

    Additive manufacturing imparts defects in as-built titanium alloy microstructures, which form internally twinned nanoprecipitates with heat treatment to yield attractive mechanical properties.

    • Amy J. Clarke

  • Comment |

    The steel industry in China has an important role in reducing national and global carbon emissions, demanding integrated actions and efforts across policies, industry and science to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality.

    • Zhuo Kang
    • , Qingliang Liao
    •  & Yue Zhang

  • Article |

    Laser additive manufacturing can be exploited to generate unique internally twinned nanoprecipitates in commercial titanium alloys, paving the way to fabricate ultrastrong metallic materials with intricate shapes for broad applications.

    • Yuman Zhu
    • , Kun Zhang
    •  & Aijun Huang

  • Article |

    The variation in the properties of rare earth (RE) steels is shown to stem from the presence of oxygen-based inclusions, and only under very-low-oxygen conditions can RE elements perform a vital role in purifying, modifying and micro-alloying steels.

    • Dianzhong Li
    • , Pei Wang
    •  & Yiyi Li

  • Comment |

    Structural materials are critical components for our daily lives and industries. This Comment highlights the emerging concepts in structural materials over the past two decades, particularly the multi-principal element alloys, heterostructured materials and additive manufacturing that enables the fabrication of complex architectures.

    • Robert O. Ritchie
    •  & Xiaoyu Rayne Zheng

  • Letter |

    The existence of fast dynamics in glass solids at low temperatures is attributed to liquid-like atoms that are inherited from high-temperature liquids and exhibit behaviour similar to that of atoms in liquid states.

    • C. Chang
    • , H. P. Zhang
    •  & H. Y. Bai

  • News & Views |

    Dynamic recrystallization helps to refine grain structures in metals and tune their properties. Confining recrystallization within prior nanoscale twinning provides a path for reaching exceptional grain refinement.

    • Roland E. Logé

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A design paradigm to create robust robotic metamaterials using versatile gear clusters is demonstrated. It enables intriguing programmability of elastic properties and shape while preserving stability for intelligent machines.

    • Xin Fang
    • , Jihong Wen
    •  & Peter Gumbsch

  • Article |

    Electrostatic capacitors can enable ultrafast energy storage and release, but advances in energy density and efficiency need to be made. Here, by doping equimolar Zr, Hf and Sn into Bi4Ti3O12 thin films, a high-entropy stabilized Bi2Ti2O7 pyrochlore phase forms with an energy density of 182 J cm−3 and 78% efficiency.

    • Bingbing Yang
    • , Yang Zhang
    •  & Yuan-Hua Lin

  • News & Views |

    Outstanding resistance to destructive radiation damage in structural alloys is realized by ultra-high-density reversible nanoprecipitate inclusions, and the improvement is attributed to the reordering process of low-misfit superlattices in highly supersaturated matrices.

    • Yanwen Zhang

  • News & Views |

    Plastic yielding of metallic glasses is mediated by strain softening, which promotes localized failure and impairs engineering predictability. Unravelling the mechanisms associated with this plastic flow behaviour lays the groundwork for reliable engineering design of this elusive material.

    • Marios D. Demetriou

  • Article |

    Two monomers with distinct solubility of their corresponding polymers in an ionic liquid enable tuning of the microstructure of the copolymers during their polymerization. Thus, energy dissipative and elastic molecular domains are created, resulting in highly tough and stretchable ionogels.

    • Meixiang Wang
    • , Pengyao Zhang
    •  & Michael D. Dickey

  • Article |

    Microscale architecting enables metamaterials to achieve mechanical properties not accessible to bulk materials. Here the authors show that established design protocols for the fracture of materials need to be revised to predict the failure of these materials.

    • Angkur Jyoti Dipanka Shaikeea
    • , Huachen Cui
    •  & Vikram Sudhir Deshpande

  • News & Views |

    Glass-forming ability in metallic systems is related to the diversity of atomic packing schemes quenched into the glassy state, which manifests itself in the width of the first broad X-ray diffraction peak. This provides a swift way for screening libraries of deposited alloy films and searching for good glass formers.

    • Simon Pauly

  • Article |

    The liquid nature of hard glasses is demonstrated by broadband stress relaxation experiments. The rheology and dynamic transition of various glass systems can be unified by a universal scaling law in the time–stress–temperature–volume domain.

    • Shuangxi Song
    • , Fan Zhu
    •  & Mingwei Chen

  • News & Views |

    Nanoarchitected carbon composed of intricate tube-in-tube beams connected with nanostruts has been fabricated, achieving both ultralightweight and ultrahigh modulus.

    • Yujia Wang
    •  & Xiaoyan Li

  • News & Views |

    Centimetre-scale crack-free metal nanolattices are realized, enabling outstanding high tensile strength in low-density materials.

    • Andreas Stein
    •  & Nathan A. Mara

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