AI Links Mineral Chemistry and Geoscience Data to Guide Exploration

Researchers review how AI combines mineral chemistry, geophysical surveys, satellite imagery, geological maps, and text to support the search for mineral deposits, including critical mineral resources...

azom.com

Molecular Velcro Helps Cement Recover Strength Across Six Damage Cycles

Researchers developed a cement composite containing 0.13 wt% polymer that migrates toward cracks under humid conditions and forms reversible bonds with fractured surfaces. The material recovered up to...

azom.com

Sulfur-Selenium Glass Bends, Stretches, and Self-Heals While Transmitting Infrared Light

Researchers created an S60Se40 chalcogenide glass that combined a 0.62-to-21-µm transmission window with ultralow stiffness, 647% tensile strain, approximately 80% strain recovery, and room-temperatur...

azom.com

European Coal Waste Contains Rare Earths, but Recovery Barriers Remain

Researchers analyzed four fine coal-waste samples from Spain, Poland, and Slovenia and found total rare-earth element concentrations of approximately 160-222 ppm. Detailed testing of the Spanish La Ma...

azom.com

Review Maps Five Routes to High-Performance PFAS-Free Membranes

The review compares phase inversion, film stretching, melt extrusion, sacrificial templating, and electrospinning as routes to PFAS-free waterproof breathable membranes. It finds that no single method...

azom.com

Strained Germanium Could Carry Quantum Information Between Distant Qubits

Researchers proposed Quantum Phononic Links that confine acoustic phonons within strained germanium quantum wells to connect spatially separated hole spin qubits. Simulations and theoretical estimates...

azom.com

Africa’s “Tesla Paradox” Shows How EV Supply Chains Shift Costs to Mineral-Rich Nations

Researchers define Africa’s “Tesla Paradox” as the divide between the clean-energy promise of electric vehicles and the economic, environmental, and political burdens concentrated in mineral-rich Afri...

azom.com

Electron-Tuned Interfaces Build Stronger Metal-Polymer Bonds Without Adhesives

Researchers showed that strong metal-polymer bonding depends on electron donation from polymer functional groups into vacant orbitals on oxidized metal surfaces. By engineering oxygen vacancies and ca...

azom.com

Generative AI Speeds 3D Energetic Material Design for Custom Combustion

Researchers developed a hybrid generative AI framework that designs 3D energetic material grain structures to match user-defined pressure-time combustion profiles. By combining physics-informed geomet...

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Copper-Bismuth Smart Window Materials Control Heat Across Seasons

Researchers engineered a copper-bismuth reversible metal electrodeposition layer with a rotatable low- and high-emissivity window structure for all-season spectral control. The material system modulat...

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COF-Polymer Electrolyte Extends Sodium Battery Life Under Fast Charging

Researchers embedded a sulfonate-functionalized covalent organic framework in a fluorinated polymer electrolyte, creating ordered pathways that increased sodium-ion conductivity to 1.2 mS cm?¹ at 30 °...

azom.com

More Than 10 Million Unused Smartphones Hold Critical Materials in Norway

Researchers estimated that dormant smartphones in Norway exceeded 10 million devices by 2024, substantially outnumbering the 6.8 million phones still in use. Across three analyzed components, active a...

azom.com

China’s EV Transition Faces a Lithium Bottleneck First and a Cobalt Squeeze Next

Modeling suggests that overlooking lithium, cobalt, and nickel constraints could overestimate China’s EV ownership by 42% in 2060 while underestimating cumulative CO2 emissions by 57% and transition c...

azom.com

Thiourea Coating Helps Lithium-Rich Cathodes Retain 97% Capacity After 600 Cycles

Researchers developed a thiourea-derived surface treatment that combines a sub-nanometer sulfur-rich coating with a spinel-like layer to protect lithium-rich manganese oxide cathodes and accelerate li...

azom.com

Engineered Microstructures Enable Extreme Superplasticity in Entropy Alloys

This review shows how grain refinement, dynamic recrystallization, phase transformations, and controlled precipitation enable selected medium- and high-entropy alloys to sustain extreme elongation at ...

azom.com

Researchers Identify the Best Nanographite Dose for SLA Resin

Researchers found that adding 1 wt.% nanographite produced the best balance of tensile strength, flexural strength, hardness, printability, and microstructural quality in SLA-printed UV-curable resin....

azonano.com

China’s Rare Earth Dominance Drives Price Spikes and Slow Reversals

A working paper finds that rare earth element prices follow a distinctive spike-and-revert pattern, with sharp increases followed by prolonged declines toward long-term levels. The authors link this b...

azom.com

Nickel Alloy Screening Reveals Four Promising Catalysts for Cleaner Aircraft Exhaust

Researchers combined density functional theory, machine-learning-enhanced transition-state calculations, and microkinetic modeling to screen 12 Ni-based ternary alloys for nitric oxide reduction under...

azom.com

Kekulé Pairing Offers a New Explanation for Superconductivity in Twisted Graphene

Researchers developed a microscopic theory in which intra-valley, finite-momentum pair-density waves generate the Kekulé patterns observed in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene. The model links spin...

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Ancient Calcite Cements Explain Why Roman Concrete Lasted for Millennia

Long-term carbonate mineralization helped preserve a 2nd-century Roman concrete sample from Hadrian’s Villa by forming calcite cements that filled pores, fractures, and microcracks. The study shows th...

azom.com

Four-Fold Symmetry Reveals Magnetic Clues in Nickelate Superconductors

Infinite-layer nickelate thin films showed a universal four-fold angular magnetoresistance symmetry across weakly insulating and superconducting compositions. The p/4 symmetry shift suggests a shared ...

azom.com

Seawater Lithium Becomes Battery Material Through Li-Air Chemistry

Researchers developed a Li-air chemistry-inspired electrodialysis system that uses a LAGP membrane, ambient CO2, and a DBBQ redox mediator to extract lithium from simulated seawater and form Li2CO3 di...

azom.com

New Geoscience Model Reveals Where Australia Should Search for Heavy Rare Earths

A national-scale mineral potential assessment mapped areas across Australia that are prospective for unconformity-related rare-earth-element systems. The framework reduced the exploration search area ...

azom.com

Scientists Turn Pine Resin-Derived Rosin Into High-Quality Bulk Graphite

Researchers converted pine resin-derived rosin into a thermoplastic, mesophase-forming pitch that can be graphitized into high-quality bulk graphite. The study shows how molecular restructuring of ren...

azom.com

AI Meets Soft Materials to Advance Skin-Like Wearable Electronics

This review explains how soft materials, scalable manufacturing, energy-efficient hardware, and AI are converging to create smarter wearable systems for physiological monitoring and human-machine inte...

azom.com

EV Batteries Turn Lithium Mining Into a Measurable Climate Gain

The study found that projected U.S. light-duty EV adoption could cut life cycle GHG emissions by 61%, primary energy use by 20%, and total material extraction by 34% compared with an ICEV-only counter...

azom.com

Deep-Sea Mining Boom Could Trap Small States in Costly Legal Disputes

A CITP working paper argues that deep-sea mining exposes a legal fault line between UNCLOS environmental duties and investment-law protections for mining investors. The paper warns that this mismatch ...

azom.com

Freshwater Limits Could Shape The Future of Green Hydrogen

Researchers found that green hydrogen’s freshwater demand can be substantially underestimated when evaporative cooling for large-scale electrolyzers is ignored. Their global analysis shows that solar-...

azom.com

New Metamaterials Reveal Hidden Ways to Shape Light

Researchers introduced intrinsically nonlocal metamaterials, demonstrating that nanoscale semiconductor layering can shape a material’s intrinsic charge-carrier response and thereby determine how ligh...

azom.com

The Third Wave Of Critical Minerals Is Reshaping Global Power

A century-long legal and historical analysis shows that critical minerals are defined not only by scarcity but by shifting claims about security, trade, industrial power, and geopolitical control. The...

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