Metal matrix composites are the class of composite materials finding vast applications in automotive, aircraft, defense, sports and appliance industries. A horizontal ball mill has been fabricated for milling of aluminum and SiC particles. The change in powder particle morphology during mechanical alloying of Aluminum and SiC powders using horizontal ball mill was studied. Al-SiCp composites wi...

Pd-Au bimetallic model catalysts, synthesized either as thin films on Mo(110) or as nanoparticles on a TiO2 thin film, were used in CO oxidation at both low (1 × 10-7 Torr) and elevated (8-16 Torr) CO pressures. Alloying with Au forms isolated Pd sites that are incapable of dissociating O2. This inability causes reactivity loss at low reactant pressures. Moreover, alloying also electronically m...

Nickel and aluminum powders were mechanically alloyed with 10 or 30 vol.% refractory metal powders (molybdenum or tungsten) for times up to 50 h. Intermetallic synthesis takes place after lo-20 h alloying, with concomitant dispersion of the inert refractory metal phase, resulting in an NiAl matrix containing fine refractory dispersoids. The reactive synthesis step is direct, without intermediat...

Electrodeposited aluminum films and template-synthesized aluminum nanorods are examined as negative electrodes for lithium-ion batteries. The lithium-aluminum alloying reaction is observed electrochemically with cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic cycling in lithium half-cells. The electrodeposition reaction is shown to have high faradaic efficiency, and electrodeposited aluminum films reach t...

We have measured the temperature dependence of the electron drift mobility using the time-offlight technique for a series of undoped hydrogenated amorphous silicon-germanium alloys with band gaps spanning the range 1.47-1.72 eV. We also developed techniques for analyzing dispersion effects in such measurements, which permitted us to compare essentially all previous measurements with our own. We...

We report on the distribution of micro-alloying elements in a multi-component TiAl-based alloy. The specimen contains 3 at.% Nb, 1.5 at.% Cr, 0.5 at.% Mn, 0.6 at.% (W + Hf + Zr), and 0.2 at.% each of B, C, and O. The distributions of all micro-alloying elements with respect to the heterophase interface between α2 and γ lamellae are analyzed with a three-dimensional atom-probe (3DAP) microscope....

The identification of similarities in the material requirements for applications of interest and those of living organisms provides opportunities to use renewable natural resources to develop better materials and design better devices. In our work, we harness this strategy to build high-capacity silicon (Si) nanopowder-based lithium (Li)-ion batteries with improved performance characteristics. ...