Design of V-Substituted TiFe-Based Alloy for Target Pressure Range and Easy Activation.

Titanium iron (TiFe) alloy is a room-temperature hydrogen-storage material, and it absorbs hydrogen via a two-step process to form TiFeH and then TiFeH. The effect of V addition in TiFe alloy was recently elucidated. The V substitution for Ti sublattice lowers / ratio, where and are the equilibrium plateau pressure for TiFe/TiFeH and TiFeH/TiFeH, respectively, and thus restricts the two-step hydrogenation within a narrow pressure range.

Direct nanofluidic channels via hardening and wrinkling of thin polymer films.

In this study, we propose a rational route to create wrinkling patterns with individually controllable location and direction in thin polymer films. Optical and atomic force microscopy analysis confirmed the formation of straight wrinkles with a typical width of 1.51 to 1.

Micro-Mechanical Response of an Al-Mg Hybrid System Synthesized by High-Pressure Torsion.

This paper summarizes recent efforts to evaluate the potential for the formation of a metal matrix nanocomposite (MMNC) by processing two commercial bulk metals of aluminum and magnesium alloy through high-pressure torsion (HPT) at room temperature. After significant evolutions in microstructures, successful fabrication of an Al-Mg hybrid system was demonstrated by observing unique microstructures consisting of a multi-layered structure and MMNC. Moreover, the evolution of small-scale mechanical properties was examined through the novel technique of nanoindentation and the improvement in plasticity was estimated by calculating the strain rate sensitivity of the Al-Mg hybrid system after HPT.

Wall-thickness-dependent strength of nanotubular ZnO.

We fabricate nanotubular ZnO with wall thickness of 45, 92, 123 nm using nanoporous gold (np-Au) with ligament diameter at necks of 1.43 μm as sacrificial template. Through micro-tensile and micro-compressive testing of nanotubular ZnO structures, we find that the exponent m in [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the relative strength and [Formula: see text] is the relative density, for tension is 1.

Time-dependent mechanical-electrical coupled behavior in single crystal ZnO nanorods.

Nanoscale time-dependent mechanical-electrical coupled behavior of single crystal ZnO nanorods was systematically explored, which is essential for accessing the long-term reliability of the ZnO nanorod-based flexible devices. A series of compression creep tests combined with in-situ electrical measurement was performed on vertically-grown single crystal ZnO nanorods. Continuous measurement of the current (I)-voltage (V) curves before, during, after the creep tests revealed that I is non-negligibly increased as a result of the time-dependent deformation.