An oxide glass that can plastically deform under unconfined loading conditions would be a big asset in potential applications. An international team of researchers found alumina glass films exhibit such an ability.
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Both glass and ceramics can be quite brittle. Two recent studies look at increasing the ductility of each—one through the consolidation of glassy nanoparticles, and the other through flash sintering.
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If we’re going to colonize Mars someday, we’ll need to build durable structures to shelter us from the elements. Materials scientists at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., have developed a concrete material using only what’s available on the red planet and without using water.
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Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have made new observations that could help design ultrahigh temperature ceramics that overcome the materials’ biggest limitation—brittleness.
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