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Metal Mixer Nanoparticles Create Novel Combinations of Metals

Source: KIT | Translated by AI 2 min Reading Time

Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (Germany) want to develop previously impossible metal mixtures using special nanoparticles ...

React immediately! Monometals already have useful properties, but alloys are even more useful. Researchers at KIT therefore want to use metallic nanopowders (symbolic image) to try and develop alloys that were previously impossible.(Image: Metal Heart)
React immediately! Monometals already have useful properties, but alloys are even more useful. Researchers at KIT therefore want to use metallic nanopowders (symbolic image) to try and develop alloys that were previously impossible.
(Image: Metal Heart)

Metals can have a wide range of properties, but until now, some combinations of different metals in one material system—i.e. alloys—were not feasible. If this can be achieved, it opens up completely new perspectives. To achieve this, chemist Professor Claus Feldmann at KIT uses metallic nanoparticles as a mediator. If you understand correctly, the focus is on investigations with base metals.

New High-Performance Materials Beckon

For Feldmann, research group leader at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at KIT, metallic materials are the basis for important components for future fields of research—for example in the areas of energy, electronics, automotive and aerospace. With his nanoparticle research, Claus Feldmann is now creating the basis for completely new types of alloys. The project is entitled "Nanoparticles as shuttles for alloying immiscible base metals". As mentioned above, this means that nanoparticles act as mediators to bring together metals that have not yet been able to be mixed. After all, 80 percent of all known chemical elements are metals, which is why a universe is opening up in terms of possible combinations. Apart from the mostly known and similar properties, there are types that exhibit different, sometimes even opposing behavior. The fusion of such metals could result in new high-performance materials in the future.

Fast Reaction Surprises Nanoparticles

However, some metals are immiscible in the solid phase and do not form so-called thermodynamically stable bimetals. Light metals, for example, are soft and reactive. And hard metals are hard, have a high melting point and are inert. Combining these properties opens up interesting prospects, but has often not been possible until now. Feldmann and his team are now using nanoparticles and are working on using rapid reduction (near room temperature in the liquid phase) to kinetically force an atomically statistical distribution of metals in nanoparticles, as the Karlsruhe researchers put it. This chemical reaction takes less than a second, so that the nanoparticles have no time at all to separate from each other again. As a result, the mixture contains both metals in equal amounts and remains evenly distributed. And, as the researchers point out, some new types of bimetals have already been produced in this way, which differ from metals made from just one element in terms of reactivity, crystallization behaviour and thermal stability.

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