Purdue University develops new nickel manufacturing technology for automobile and manufacturing industry with high strength and corrosion resistance

Posted 2021-09-09 00:00:00 +0000 UTC

According to foreign media, nickel is a kind of metal widely used in manufacturing industry, which can be used in industry and advanced material processing industry. Today, researchers at Purdue University in the US have created an innovative technology that can be used to make new nickel metals that could help to produce life-saving medical equipment, high-tech equipment and cars with strong corrosion-resistant protection components in the future. (photo source: Purdue University) Purdue University's technology involves the application of an efficient electrodeposition process on certain conductive substrates. For nickel metal manufacturers, one of the biggest challenges is to deal with the intersection of grains in the metal, i.e. the boundary area, while the traditional grain boundary can enhance the strength of the metal to meet the high strength demand. However, the grain boundary is often the stress concentration point, which is the easy part of electron scattering and corrosion. As a result, such boundaries often reduce the ductility, corrosion resistance and conductivity of metals. The other is called twin boundary, because of its high stacking fault energy, which is not very common in metals such as nickel. The single crystal nickel developed by Purdue University contains high-density ultra-fine twin structure, but there is almost no traditional grain boundary. Researchers at Purdue University have shown that this unique nickel metal can improve strength, ductility and corrosion resistance, which are important for manufacturers in many industries such as automobiles, natural gas, oil and micro electromechanical equipment. The solution of Purdue University researchers is to use single crystal substrate as growth template, combined with the designed electrochemical formula, to promote the formation of twin boundaries and inhibit the formation of traditional grain boundaries. This high-density twin boundary results in the mechanical strength of nickel metal exceeding 2 GPa, low corrosion current density of 6.91 × 10-8 a cm-2 and polarization resistance up to 516 K Ω. Purdue University's technology can be applied to industries such as semiconductors and automobiles, which are in need of metal materials with advanced electrical and mechanical properties for manufacturing (products). The nano twin nickel can be used as anticorrosive coating in automobile industry, natural gas industry and petroleum industry. After careful design, the new nickel metal made by this hybrid technology can be used in the micro electronic mechanical system (MEMS) industry, and MEMS medical equipment is usually used in the intensive care sector and other hospital areas to monitor the condition of patients. In MEMS, related pressure sensors and other smaller functional components need materials with excellent mechanical stability, structural stability and chemical reliability.

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