Catalysing the reduction of oxygen in acidic media is a standing challenge. Although activity of platinum, the most active metal, can be substantially improved by alloying, alloy stability remains a concern. Here we report that platinum nanoparticles supported on graphite-rich boron carbide show a 50-100% increase in activity in acidic media and improved cycle stability compared to commercial c...

We grow hydrogenated amorphous silicon-germanium alloys by the hot-wire chemical vapor deposition technique at deposition rates between 0.5 and 1.4 nanometers per second. We prepared a set of these alloys to determine the concentrations of the alloying elements as measured by various techniques. This set consists of samples throughout the range of germanium alloying from 0% (a-Si:H) to 100% (a-...

In this article, passivated Pb-Sn and Pb-Sb alloys with different compositions were studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The passive films were found to have a double-layer structure. Both Sn and Sb were found to play an important role during the growth of passive film, which resulted in different compositions of passive filJ;l1s. The Pb oxides, Pb sulfate, SnlSb oxides, and Pb-Sn...

In this work infiltration behavior of mechanical alloyed 75 wt% Cu – 25 wt% WC powders into porous WC compacts were studied. Owing to their ductile nature, initial Cu powders were directly added to mechanical alloying batch. On the other hand initial WC powders were high energy milled prior to mechanical alloying. Contact infiltration method was selected for densification and compacts prepared ...

Article history: Received 10 February 2016 Received in revised form 22 May 2016 Accepted 8 June 2016 Available online xxxx The relationships betweenmicrostructure, controlled by alloying elements prone to grain boundary segregation, and electrical resistivity in sputtered nanocrystalline Cu were investigated. We find a non-monotonic dependence of themean grain size on solute concentration for b...

Strength and toughness are a couple of paradox as similar as strength-ductility trade-off in homogenous materials, body-centered-cubic steels in particular. Here we report a simple way to get ultrahigh toughness without sacrificing strength. By simple alloying design and hot rolling the 5Mn3Al steels in ferrite/austenite dual phase temperature region, we obtain a series of ferrite/martensite la...

For the development of materials in a fusion reactor environment without a fusion reactor, it is important to understand the generation and accumulation of point defects. This paper discusses five important factors in metals that influence the initial stage of defect clustering under cascade damage conditions. The effect of the PKA energy spectrum on damage evolution was explained from the view...

We show that bimetallic surface alloying provides a viable route for governing the interaction between graphene and metal through the selective choice of the elemental composition of the surface alloy. This concept is illustrated by an experimental and theoretical characterization of the properties of graphene on a model PtRu surface alloy on Ru(0001), with a concentration of Pt atoms in the fi...

Although brasses are essentially copper and zinc alloys, they also contain other alloying elements such as lead, silicon, aluminium, iron, tin, manganese, nickel or arsenic whose presence and content are responsible for the wide variety of properties inherent to these materials. In this article, the effect of the chemical composition of brasses, considering each alloying element and the effecti...

Layered transition-metal dichalcogenides have extraordinary electronic properties, which can be easily modified by various means. Here, we have investigated how the stability and electronic structure of MoS2 monolayers is influenced by alloying, i.e., by substitution of the transition metal Mo by W and Nb and of the chalcogen S by Se. While W and Se incorporate into the MoS2 matrix homogeneousl...