Following recent conversations with friends and colleagues, Prof. Cláudio G. Schön, Prof. Ernst Kozeschnik and Dr. Johannes Österreicher, I have come to the conclusion that we should be more optimistic about the future of mankind, and of science, and physics in particular. This holds even when we take into account the geopolitical challenges of the … Continue reading Why I Remain Optimistic About the Future of Mankind
For decades, aluminium alloys forced a choice: the 5xxx family is easy to form but only moderately strong, while the 7xxx family is strong but difficult to process. The crossover concept, developed at Montanuniversität Leoben by the research group of Prof. Stefan Pogatscher, removes that trade-off. A tuned combination of magnesium, zinc and, in some … Continue reading Built for cars, but ready for space: A warm welcome to AMAG CrossAlloy®57!
Aluminium crossover alloys are one of the more interesting recent developments in light metals. Rather than staying within the traditional wrought families, they deliberately blend the chemistries of the AA5xxx and AA7xxx systems, and in doing so they form the compositionally complex T-phase, Mg32(Al,Cu)49, which gives a remarkable hardening response and has already attracted serious … Continue reading On the 3D printing of novel aluminium crossover alloys
Cold spray sounds almost too simple to work: fire a metal particle at a surface fast enough, and it sticks – no melting, no welding, just brute plastic deformation smashing a bond into place. That has been the textbook story for two decades. But in our latest paper with colleagues at Politecnico di Milano and … Continue reading Rethinking how cold spray really bonds dissimilar metals
Ultrafine-grained (UFG) aluminium alloys are strong candidates for space structures: their dense grain-boundary network acts as sinks that absorb radiation-induced defects (more in our perspective review https://doi.org/10.1021/acsmaterialsau.5c00139). But that advantage only survives if the microstructure does — and in Low-Earth Orbit, sunlit components reach ~200 °C, right where severely deformed aluminium begins to recrystallise. The … Continue reading One-grain-at-a-time: how in situ EBSD rewrote sink-strength theory for space aluminium
This week we had the great pleasure of welcoming Professor Milos B. Djukic (University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering) to Leoben — a world-class authority on hydrogen embrittlement and one of the most influential voices in the field today. Professors Djukic and Keckes at ESI. Professor Djukic visited at the invitation of Professor Jozef … Continue reading Professor Milos Djukic Brings Hydrogen Masterclass to Leoben
What if a single microscope image could simultaneously show nanoclusters, dislocations, grain boundaries, and corrosion pores – all in under a minute? We have found a way to do exactly that and we described recently in a paper published it in Small Methods! The method, called differential phase contrast (DPC), is not new to electron … Continue reading A new way to “see” inside aluminium alloys
As the world accelerates its transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy, the pressure to recycle lithium-ion batteries efficiently has never been greater. At the heart of most recycling processes sits a fine black powder called black mass — a mixture of cathode and anode materials, binder residues, and metallic fragments recovered from spent batteries. … Continue reading Battery waste is worth billions!
I am deeply humbled and grateful to the American Chemical Society and the editors of ACS Materials Au for selecting me as part of the 2025 class of Rising Stars in Materials Science. This recognition came as a wonderful surprise, and I am truly thankful to be included alongside 13 other outstanding early-career researchers from … Continue reading Grateful to be among the 2025 Rising Stars in Materials Science
We are pleased to share our latest preprint, now available on arXiv: Unlocking nanoscale microstructural detail in aluminium alloys through differential phase contrast segmentation in STEM (arXiv:2603.11643). In this work, we show how differential phase contrast (DPC) imaging in scanning transmission electron microscopy can be turned into a powerful, quantitative tool for characterising the microstructures … Continue reading New Preprint: Unlocking Nanoscale Detail in Aluminium Alloys with DPC Segmentation
