{"id":54778,"date":"2026-06-04T10:00:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T14:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/materials\/?post_type=news&p=54778"},"modified":"2026-06-04T13:55:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T17:55:25","slug":"engineering-metals-from-the-inside-out-building-stronger-materials-through-microscopic-chaos","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/materials\/news\/engineering-metals-from-the-inside-out-building-stronger-materials-through-microscopic-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineering metals from the inside out: building stronger materials through microscopic chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the naked eye, a piece of metal is just a piece of metal. But researchers like Tim\u00a0Rupert, a professor of materials science and\u00a0the\u00a0Director of Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute,\u00a0are working to\u00a0make metals stronger by\u00a0changing\u00a0how\u00a0each tiny atom\u00a0within\u00a0a metal\u00a0is packed together.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rupert’s lab has spent\u00a0a decade studying\u00a0how to make\u00a0materials more reliable and durable, including the use of\u00a0nanocrystalline materials: metals engineered at the nanometer scale to be\u00a0significantly\u00a0stronger than\u00a0they normally are.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine\u00a0the grains in a\u00a0regular\u00a0piece of\u00a0metal\u00a0sort of like\u00a0a street paved with concrete slabs.\u00a0In nanocrystalline metals, the grains are much\u00a0smaller\u00a0and\u00a0more tightly packed, like a cobblestone street\u00a0full of\u00a0millions of pebbles packed together with mortar.\u00a0This is what makes them\u00a0strong. If you\u00a0tried to damage the concrete street with a\u00a0big\u00a0shovel, whole sections might come up easily.\u00a0But your shovel would catch on every single crack and pebble in the nanocrystalline cobblestone street.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

The standard, ordered grain boundary of two crystals in a piece of metal.<\/p><\/div>\n

These nanocrystalline\u00a0metals\u00a0look\u00a0the same as regular metals\u00a0to the naked eye,\u00a0but\u00a0they\u00a0are immensely\u00a0stronger. They could be used to make safer cars,\u00a0more earthquake-resistant buildings, or countless other uses.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Rupert says the catch with nanocrystalline materials\u00a0at the moment\u00a0is that they\u00a0tend\u00a0to be brittle.\u00a0If you dropped a nanocrystalline metal\u00a0like a dinner\u00a0plate,\u00a0it\u00a0could\u00a0shatter.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been trying to make nanocrystalline materials\u00a0tougher,\u201d Rupert explains, adding that the materials are not\u00a0widely used\u00a0yet\u00a0because they\u00a0are prone to damage.\u00a0\u201cWe want these metals to deform,\u00a0bend, and absorb energy\u00a0almost like\u00a0a\u00a0plastic, rather than\u00a0shattering.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rupert\u2019s group recently showed that the solution may lie\u00a0along the edges of nanocrystalline materials. Here, at the materials\u2019 so-called\u00a0grain\u00a0boundaries,\u00a0individual metal particles meet when they solidify, like the cracks\u00a0in\u00a0pavement stones.\u00a0Rupert says they began\u00a0exploring an\u00a0idea\u00a0that may sound counterintuitive: deliberately making those boundaries\u00a0<\/span>amorphous<\/span><\/i>, or\u00a0more disordered, to improve the material’s\u00a0toughness\u2014 so it can absorb damage and crumple or bend rather than breaking entirely.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u00a0this\u00a0opens the door\u00a0for\u00a0engineering these features, controlling what they look like, and improving your properties even more,\u201d says Rupert.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Their\u00a0findings, recently published in the journal\u00a0<\/span>Acta\u00a0Materialia<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0show\u00a0that\u00a0it’s\u00a0not only possible\u00a0to make these materials stronger, but\u00a0that\u00a0they\u00a0can be precisely controlled.\u00a0The manuscript\u00a0was led by joint first-authors Dr. Esther Hessong and Dr. Zhengyu Zhang.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the outside,\u00a0materials\u00a0can look the same,\u201d\u00a0Rupert\u00a0elaborates,\u00a0\u201cbut we’re engineering the internal structure with really fine control\u00a0–\u00a0on the nanometer scale, or even sub-nanometer scale\u00a0–\u00a0to end up getting properties that are so much better than classical metals.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rupert says that, in the future, this\u00a0could mean metals that are\u00a010 to 25 times stronger than what we use today\u00a0–\u00a0lighter, safer cars; more efficient\u00a0aircraft;\u00a0or\u00a0\u2014\u00a0one of Rupert\u2019s main focuses\u00a0\u00a0\u2014metals capable of\u00a0better\u00a0withstanding the radiation\u00a0inside\u00a0a nuclear reactor.\u00a0Conventional metals used in nuclear reactors\u00a0accumulate defects and degrade\u00a0quickly.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rupert and his team conducted the research with a mix of\u00a0physical experimentation\u00a0and\u00a0computation.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They fabricated the materials using\u00a0a process called\u00a0powder metallurgy\u00a0\u2014 creating metals by heating and compacting metal powder \u2014\u00a0and then examined\u00a0the grain boundaries under a\u00a0high-resolution transmission electron microscope.\u00a0To understand the\u00a0disordered\u00a0structures\u00a0on an atomic scale, the team had to develop\u00a0new machine learning models capable of simulating these materials for the first time.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rupert says the results of this research\u00a0is\u00a0a proof\u00a0of concept.\u00a0They now\u00a0have a better understanding of\u00a0what is happening inside the metal,\u00a0how specifically to control and tweak the structure,\u00a0and\u00a0how to\u00a0tune\u00a0the\u00a0local structure and chemistry of the\u00a0grain boundaries\u00a0with\u00a0control\u00a0than before.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rupert says once they tracked the\u00a0changes\u00a0they were making more accurately using their computational models, he was surprised by\u00a0how\u00a0easy they were to engineer. It just took more\u00a0knowledge of\u00a0how\u00a0grain\u00a0boundaries were\u00a0formed\u00a0on the nanometer scale.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u00a0I think it’s easier to\u00a0access\u00a0these\u00a0amorphous\u00a0features and easier to manipulate their structure than I thought going in,\u201d\u00a0Rupert says.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The work, funded by\u00a0the Department\u00a0of Energy, is still ongoing.\u00a0Rupert says that the next frontier will be finetuning the amorphous regions of these metals to influence how they\u00a0ultimately behave\u00a0under stress.\u00a0With the work from Rupert\u2019s team,\u00a0these \u201cnext generation\u201d materials\u00a0are becoming a reality.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-54778","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","news_categories-research"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEngineering metals from the inside out: building stronger materials through microscopic chaos - Department of Materials Science & Engineering<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/materials\/news\/engineering-metals-from-the-inside-out-building-stronger-materials-through-microscopic-chaos\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Engineering metals from the inside out: building stronger materials through microscopic chaos - Department of Materials Science & Engineering\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"To the naked eye, a piece of metal is just a piece of metal. 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