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Measuring up to success in the race for advanced metals
technology
Postgraduate work in the UK that earned its author a prestigious
award could have applications in the metal powder industry,
particularly in sintering. Iain Fielden from Sheffield Hallam
University won the National Physical Laboratory's Materials
Award by resurrecting and adapting an apparently obsolete
technique to study grain growth in hot metal.
He has hit on a method by which scientists can use an electron
microscope to "look into" red hot metal. The discovery
could revolutionise some metal manufacturing techniques and
pave the way for better, more durable cars, aircraft and buildings.
He said: "What I've found is a way for scientists to
use an electron microscope to look into red hot metal and
watch the changes in its structure, as they happen. It means
the possibilities for what we can do with steel are limitless."
Metals are made up of lots of small crystal grains and when
the metal is hot, and soft enough to work into shape, some
grains grow and eat up the others. Scientists know that the
end result is bigger grains, but don't know exactly how it
happens, or how much bigger they will turn out to be.
Iain said: "Now we can see what's happening, we can
understand it better. This means we will be able to predict
the size of grains after heating and working the metal. We
can also work out ways of heating and working that keep the
grains small. Small grains mean stronger, tougher metal."
The technique is cheap and simple, and laboratories around
the world could be using it very soon. Iain re-mastered an
abandoned technique as part of his post-graduate research
in the University's well known Materials and Engineering Research
Institute.
• The 2004 UK National Measurement Award for Innovative
Measurement was won by Oxford nanoScience and materials researchers
at Oxford University for the development and successful commercialisation
of the three-dimensional atom probe (3-DAP). The technique
enabled by the probe allows materials scientists to locate
the position of and chemically identify individual atoms in
a conducting material so that the structure on the nanoscale
can be directly related macroscale properties of the material.
Oxford nanoScience's parent company, Polaron, was successfully
floated on the Alternative Investment Market in London last
year (see Metal Powder Report, June 2004).
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