The effect of particle shape on discharge and clogging.

Granular flow is common across different fields from energy resource recovery and mineral processing to grain transport and traffic flow. Migrating particles may jam and form arches that span constrictions and hinder particle flow. Most studies have investigated the migration and clogging of spherical particles, however, natural particles are rarely spherical, but exhibit eccentricity, angularity and roughness.

Ultrastrong catalyst-free polycrystalline diamond.

Diamond is the hardest naturally occurring material found on earth but single crystal diamond is brittle due to the nature of catastrophic cleavage fracture. Polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) materials are made by high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) technology. PDC materials have been widely used in several industries.

Hardness of Polycrystalline Wurtzite Boron Nitride (wBN) Compacts.

Wurtzite boron nitride (wBN), due to its superior properties and many potential practical and scientific applications, such as ideal machining/cutting/milling ferrous and carbide materials, especially as an ideal dielectric substrate material for optical, electronic, and 2-D graphene-based devices, has recently attracted much attention from both academic and industrial fields. Despite decades of research, there is an ongoing debate about if the single-phase wBN is harder than diamond because of the difficulty to make pure wBN material. Here we report the successful synthesis of pure single-phase polycrystalline wurtzite-type boron nitride (wBN) bulk material by using wBN powder as a starting material with a well-controlled process under ultra-high pressure and high temperature.