EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Alumina Al₂O₃ is a material of high technological importance, and is generally obtained via processes that employ calcination of aluminum hydroxides to achieve full dehydration of these phases. The dehydration of aluminum hydrates is extensively investigated. The underlying atomistic mechanisms are, however, still the subject of a lively debate. Investigation of...

Only minute additions of certain elements can render a material either ductile or brittle. This phenomenon is known for a long time. Already in 1803, it was shown that small additions of Bi, Sn, and Pb turn ductile Au into a brittle material and in 1888, Sir Roberts-Austen conducted a comprehensive series of experiments that showed how the potency of an alloying element to embrittle Au is...

Metallic glasses (MGs) are amorphous solids which lack long-range, but exhibiting significant degree of short-range order. The local atomic structure of MGs can be reversibly modified by an external load but the actual atomic-level mechanism of elastic deformation of amorphous metals is not well understood. In this work, we applied molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and density functional...

Phonons are quasiparticles describing the lattice vibrations in a crystal, and they are responsible of transporting heat and sound. Phonon transport in bulk materials is usually described by a diffusive picture. At nanoscale lengths, however, boundaries and interfaces play an important role. At this scale, when the phonon mean free path is larger than the length phonon travel before meeting a...

Nickel sesquioxide Ni2O3 also referred to as black nickel oxide is being recently increasingly used as a component of number of functional materials due to its photocatalytic activity. Yet, the compound remains poorly characterized and its crystal structure, which is a crucial starting point for understanding structure – property relationship, is unknown. The first attempt in 1961 to resolve...

Grain boundaries migration is considered as a prime cause for several degradation effects in polycrystalline materials. Apart from the development of novel materials, such effects are also crucial for the understanding of other properties of nanocrystals. Although Hydrogen is known to be detrimental to the performance of electronic devices, the exact mechanisms under which hydrogen atoms cause...

The reinforcement of ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) has been widely researched. Nevertheless, the interaction between CNTs and the ceramic has not been sufficiently explored. Thus, fundamental questions such as the influence of the CNT diameter, the relevance of the number of walls of the CNT or the presence of functional groups on the CNT are still under debate....