How can we engineer materials that are stronger and lighter? What about new materials for extreme conditions, such as in jet engines and spacecraft? The answer, says Fadi Abdeljawad, an associate professor of materials science and engineering in Lehigh University's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, might be hidden in the infinitesimally tiny regions, or boundaries, where atoms in crystals come together.
Along with his collaborators at the U.S. Department of Energy's Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), Abdeljawad is uncovering how those tiny boundaries have such an enormous impact on the characteristics of nanomaterials.
"Atoms come together to form nanocrystals, which are essentially structures about 1/10,000th the width of a human hair," explains Abdeljawad. "Think of these crystals coming together like pieces of a puzzle, or as tiles on a kitchen floor. Billions of these nanocrystals stack on top of each other to form most engineering materials."
According to the researchers, it is the regions where crystals meet that play an outsized role in determining how a material behaves. Recently, the team's work was published in Nano Letters.
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