The Hong Kong Standard reports that the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has a team, that was sponsored by UC RUSAL - the leading global aluminum producer from Russia - that has come up with what they call: Fiber Reinforced Aluminium.
Raw material quality is said to be a factor in manufacturing process according to Ben Chan Yui-bun but the announcement continues:
Using chemical deposits from petroleum gas and chloride, a "chemical vapor deposit" technique is used to vaporize the carbon nano fiber. This allows for nickel ions to attach to the fiber.
The fiber with ions is then processed with the aluminum in a nitrogen-filled environment, enabling materials to integrate without glue. This process cuts costs because the raw materials used are cheaper than the glue, Chan said. He also said the new composite is expected to be at least 30 percent stronger than regular aluminum.
The report and the HKUST's press release is scant on details regarding the new composite material's performance other than stating that it can replace concrete or steel and be used in other applications like bicycles and iPads.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:10PM
What is specific about iPads that puts them in the same category as bicycles and buildings? Could this be just another way to tag their announcement to get it in front of more eyes? For me, tagging on something as specific as iPads just discredits the whole story as simple click-bait. I've seen it happen in other stories. Perhaps they meant to say "any and all devices that might benefit from a lightweight, robust material"?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:18PM
oh, what a surprise! From the article:
"Fiber Reinforced Aluminium can be used for a wide range of applications primarily in construction as an alternative to steel and cement, and also in electronic products, automobiles, aircrafts, building materials, thus it has the potential to significantly increase aluminium’s global applications"
So the specific inclusion of iPads came from either the submitter or the editor. Why must we colour articles like this? It might have been a common practice on /. but I expected better here.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Alfred on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:50PM
Wow, my skepticism really kicked in.
>>is expected to be at least 30 percent stronger than regular aluminum
So you haven't tested it? Do your work before you announce.
Stonger how? Tensile, Compressive loading? So much more info is needed here.
>>automobiles, aircrafts,
Is it drillable or tapable? Will it play nice with rivets?
>>a "chemical vapor deposit" technique is used to vaporize the carbon nano fiber.
Do you mean gas deposition? Hope you don't want to make the stuff in bulk yet.
>>This allows for nickel ions to attach to the fiber.
So where are there nickel atoms in Aluminum or Carbon?
>>the raw materials used are cheaper than the glue
I don't know, glue can be very cheap, especially now with the back to school sales and all :-)
>>it can replace concrete or steel
Wood can replace concrete and steel in some applications, what are the real trade offs here?
Maybe I just need a datasheet instead of a journalistic summary.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday July 24 2014, @05:52PM
CVD is the defacto method for building substrate on semiconductors. I don't know much about milling metals, but it'd be expensive to incorporate CVD into aluminum mills, especially if they are looking at LPCVD.
Also, is it weldable? My gut feeling is this stuff is rivetable, tapable like typical aluminum alloys, and may not be as weldable as typical aluminum alloys because of the impurities induced by the carbon fiber in the heat affected zones and the weld itself.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday July 24 2014, @11:28PM
"Also, is it weldable?"
Coming from a laser and electron beam welding background, the contamination and HAZ properties remain to be seen. I am leaning toward no as welding aluminum is already a fickle process when it comes to any foreign matter. A quick check of nanotube properties reveals they have mixed thermal conductivity properties. Insulating properties might stabilize the pool cooling preventing cracking. Heightened conductivity will heat sink the pool causing joint cracking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube#Thermal_properties [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday July 25 2014, @07:38AM
Yes. And now imagine what your house would cost if you made it completely out of microchips.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday July 24 2014, @11:35PM
You make some good points. CVD is a costly process requiring even more costly machinery. Drilling and tapping might be a problem because if carbon nanotubes are as hard or harder than diamond, then you are drilling/cutting a highly abrasive material. That will eat up the hardest oxide coated cobalt bits that cost upward of $100 or more. That means increased tool cost.
But it is way too early to speculate. Until there is a sheet, plate or bar made and put to the test, it's all speculation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:02PM
Apple is known for using aluminum extensively as a case component for its computers and devices. While Acer's Iconia and one or two other tablets are aluminum, by and large the material is a signature element of Apple design. It's a major consumer of the material, and, were I the one developing a process to strengthen aluminum, I would certainly try to position my press releases to catch Apple's attention. That's only good sense.
I'm actually a bit surprised at the vehemence of the kneejerk reaction. Just because Apple is the hipster default and far too mainstream for the discerning palate doesn't mean that it shouldn't ever be mentioned. In connection with developments in aluminum materials science, it's pretty natural to mention one of the largest consumers of the product.
(Score: 1) by freetown on Friday July 25 2014, @12:34AM
Heh. I put in iPads because I was hard pressed to think of any other electronic device that uses aluminium in its casing.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday July 25 2014, @08:21AM
From a reporting point of view, if the article kept it generic, and suddenly when it arrives here, it's mentioning iPads, we do immediately get defensive, as intentional or not, it was not how the article reported it and it really LOOKS like something a shill may potentially do. We are defensive and it is somewhat kneejerk simply because it has happened before and we would rather look silly for overreacting than allow it to happen again. You could end up with a Chinese Whisper.
Next time this is discussed with a person not reading Soylent directly, it might get interpreted as, "These guys made a new kind of Aluminium alloy for iPads" the next time it's "Apple came up with a new kind of aluminium Alloy".
That may be a bit of a leap, or exaggeration, I'm sure someone will provide the correct term (logical fallacy/strawman or something). But the purpose is to point out why you have to remain objective and try not to change the article too much when submitting it.
Those of us who might be Apple fans/owners, will make the connection between the product and the new material. However, some of us might also think, "I wonder will Samsung adopt this material in place of the plastic they use for cases" Keeping it neutral prevents it from becoming what it's not, a press release for Apple.
It may be true that Apple are synonymous with Aluminium cases, but if we're this is an aggregate site, the story shouldn't be skewed to present it differently.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:23PM
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:39PM
http://makezine.com/2012/01/17/transparent-aluminum/ [makezine.com]
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:11PM
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Thursday July 24 2014, @05:39PM
Yeah, cool stuff, but so damn expensive people think it's fiction.
The US military has been using in Iraq and Afghanistan as windows on vehicles.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:54PM
This sounds alot like Fiber Reinforced Plastics where they use wood fibers in a matrix with plastic to make it much stronger. Only by using carbon fiber and aluminum this is several orders of magnitude lighter and stronger. I wonder if you can retain the same or less volume with the same strength....
The article doesn't mention price, but i'm guessing extremely expensive as carbon nano-fiber alone is ridiculously expensive. Add to that cost the doping, I doubt that you'll see this in consumer electronics in this decade... or the next.
Undoubtedly the first applications will be military industrial... ICBM's first, then rockets, followed by fighter aircraft and their armament. Thats pretty much the path that aluminum has followed. It took 20 years for aluminum to become common and inexpensive enough to start using it for everything.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 24 2014, @10:04PM
Dude, I know hyperbolas have a nice shape and all, but several order of magnitude? Next time you'll tell me what? They don't need helium anymore for blimps? (Aluminium density: 2700 kg/m^3. "Several" >= 3 - otherwise would be "a couple". Then what? Composite material density 2.7 kg/m^3 and "several order of magnitude" stronger than aluminium?? Just make a hull to have only 3 times the volume, "fill it with vacuum" and it will float in the air - 1.225 kg/m^3).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by albert on Saturday July 26 2014, @03:00AM
This is already in a Wikipedia article. Even the use of nickel is there; these people merely propose to use carbon nanotubes in place of regular old carbon fiber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_matrix_composite [wikipedia.org]
Note the lengthy list of applications, including some affordable things you could buy.
(Score: 2) by DrMag on Thursday July 24 2014, @03:54PM
I would love to know more about its performance in a vacuum. If there's no outgassing, this could be a great material for making spacecraft lighter (cheaper) and stronger (better). For that matter, it would be interesting to know more of its thermal properties too.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MrGuy on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:00PM
Maybe someone who's more up on materials science than I am can weigh in, but I didn't think 30% was much of a needle mover when considering one material over another. I had thought (and wikipedia, among others, seems to bear out) that you can get 30% stronger than aluminum (even when considering strength-to-weight ratio) without leaving the world of metals, to say nothing of fiberglass, composites, or other materials.
Aluminum isn't used because it's particularly strong, but because it's easy to work, relatively light for its strength, and most importantly cheap.
It feels like adding cost on top of aluminum is taking away one of its strengths (affordability) and not really overcoming any of its weaknesses (it's still relatively weak compared to other metals). Your ipad (to take an example from the artice) with "30% stronger" aluminum will still dent if you whack it on the edge of a table, just slightly less so.
(Score: 2) by TK on Friday July 25 2014, @06:32PM
30% can be a big deal. Assuming a similar strength-to-weight ratio, 30% increase in tensile strength really means 30% reduction in the weight of structural members (plus a little more reduction in strength because of the reduced weight of whatever it is that you are building). If you were running a manufacturing shop and could cut your material usage by 30%, you would do it in a second*.
*Barring the extra cost of a difficult to machine material: new tooling, new procedures, etc.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:04PM
The Voyage Home this evening.
Hello computer!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @09:25AM
Off-topic? Haven't you seen the film? Aluminium technology!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 24 2014, @04:44PM
srsly? iPads?
build an indestructible FAD that lasts a few years and never decomposes or is near impossible to recycle?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday July 24 2014, @10:14PM
There been a couple of new aluminum composites over the last few decades. All had some early or late fabrication difficulties.
The last few ones were considered for airplanes and such but were found just a little too hard to weld well.
As a side note, in the past, the less-then-stellar demand for a new and better aluminum composite just didn't justify the additional costs... After all plastic does a pretty good job for the most part... So, maybe that's why the iPads were name-dropped... To hint at a possible market.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday July 25 2014, @08:28AM
Assuming you could weld it, the bicycle market would eat it up. Performance bikers LOVE aluminium, but put up with carbon despite it being terrible at absorbing shock, being quite fragile, simply because of the weight. If you make aluminium that's stronger, but maintains it's ability to flex (and not snap) and absorb vibrations from the road, then you can use less and make your bikes lighter. The use of carbon in bikes might die out rapidly there would be your market.
But yeah, it's all well and good to say you have a new type of Aluminium, but if you can't use it then it's worthless. You might as well say to use spiderweb for making bicycles because we all know it's stronger than steel.