PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Variety in building block softness makes for softer amorphous materials

New model for disordered solids reveals traits behind microscopic force transmission

Variety in building block softness makes for softer amorphous materials
2024-05-04
(Press-News.org)

Tokyo, Japan – Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have created a new model for disordered materials to study how amorphous materials resist stress. They treated groups of atoms and molecules as squishy spheres with varying softness. Putting their model under a load, they discovered unexpected disparities between harder regions and where forces were concentrated, with areas in between such regions “hardening” to produce elongated “force chains”. Their findings promise new insights into designing better materials.

 

When it comes to building hard materials, using hard ingredients is not enough. For example, when concrete fails during earthquakes, the forces which are generated become focused in certain places, causing cracks to form. The transmission of forces through amorphous solids like concrete and cement is known to follow well-defined paths known as “force chains.” Deciphering how they emerge would go a long way to understanding how such solids behave under stress, but it is not yet known how they emerge, and how they relate to material properties.

This inspired a team of researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University led by Professor Rei Kurita to build simple, tractable models of amorphous materials which might teach us how force chains form. Instead of simply simulating the motion of all atoms in some material, they decided to represent groups of atoms with spheres of varying stiffness, reflecting how those groups respond to forces. The materials they studied were then characterized by how much the stiffnesses varied over space, and how broad the patterns of hard and soft regions were.

Deforming their array of squishy particles, they firstly looked for whether local stiffness correlated with force chain transmission. Initially, it seemed like there was a clear correlation between harder regions and force chains. However, further analysis reveals that force chains are more string-like in their shape, and don’t correlate as well with isolated hard regions. To understand this discrepancy, the team studied a simpler model of two stiff regions separated by a softer region, finding that the softer region becomes denser, generating the high forces required to keep the chain going. This is a first glimpse into the fundamental mechanics of how force chains connect.

But how do these variations affect the properties of the material? It turns out that larger variations in softness and broader soft/hard regions both lead to consistently softer materials, as does larger variations in local density. The conclusion we can draw is that even with the same building blocks, amorphous materials with a more uniform stiffness gives a harder material due to more even distribution of the force chains.

While the emergence of stiffness variations in real materials remains unexplored, the team hope their new model and mechanism pave the way for design principles to make better materials.

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 20K14431 and 20H01874.

 

END


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Variety in building block softness makes for softer amorphous materials Variety in building block softness makes for softer amorphous materials 2 Variety in building block softness makes for softer amorphous materials 3

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Tennis greats Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova honored at A Conversation With a Living Legend®

Tennis greats Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova honored at A Conversation With a Living Legend®
2024-05-04
HOUSTON ― Cancer survivors and tennis legends Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova participated in a fireside-style chat on Wednesday, May 1, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s signature event, A Conversation with a Living Legend ®, hosted at the Post Oak Hotel at Uptown Houston. The sold-out event raised more than $1.5 million for cell therapy research at MD Anderson with a ticketed audience of 800+. Past Living Legend honoree and co-anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America, Robin Roberts, led the onstage interview with Evert and Navratilova, and ABC13 Houston’s ...

Seismic waves used to track LA’s groundwater recharge after record wet winter

2024-05-04
Record-setting storms in 2023 filled California’s major reservoirs to the brim, providing some relief in a decades-long drought, but how much of that record rain trickled underground? Shujuan Mao of Stanford University and her colleagues used a surprising technique to answer this question for the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. They analyzed changes in the velocity of seismic waves traveling through the LA basin, tracking these changes in space and time between January and October 2023. As Mao reported at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)’s 2024 Annual Meeting, ...

When injecting pure spin into chiral materials, direction matters

2024-05-03
Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Pittsburgh studied how the spin information of an electron, called a pure spin current, moves through chiral materials. They found that the direction in which the spins are injected into chiral materials affects their ability to pass through them. These chiral “gateways” could be used to design energy-efficient spintronic devices for data storage, communication and computing. Spintronic devices harness the spin of an electron, rather than its charge, to create current and move information through electronic devices.  “One of the goals in spintronics ...

New quantum sensing scheme could lead to enhanced high-precision nanoscopic techniques

New quantum sensing scheme could lead to enhanced high-precision nanoscopic techniques
2024-05-03
Researchers from the University of Portsmouth have unveiled a quantum sensing scheme that achieves the pinnacle of quantum sensitivity in measuring the transverse displacement between two interfering photons. This new technique has the potential to enhance superresolution imaging techniques that already employ single-photon sources as probes for the localization and tracking of biological samples, such as single-molecule localization microscopy with quantum dots. Traditionally, achieving ultra-high precision in nanoscopic techniques has been constrained by the limitations of standard imaging methods, such as the diffraction limit ...

New MSU research: Are carbon-capture models effective?

2024-05-03
MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. EAST LANSING, Mich. – Reforestation efforts to restock depleted forests are important for addressing climate change and for both capturing and restoring carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere. These types of solutions to mitigate carbon emissions are critical after 2023 proved to be the warmest year on record. However, some models have been found to be inaccurate. New research from Michigan State University has found the carbon removal potential of some reforestation models have been over exaggerated ...

One vaccine, many cancers

2024-05-03
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a type of blood cancer that forms in the soft marrow of the bones, typically attacking cells that would otherwise form the key component of the body’s immunodefense system, white blood cells. In a new study published in Blood Advances, researchers from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering’s Hubbell Lab created with a novel approach to develop in-situ cancer vaccines that could increase the effectiveness of immunotherapies in AML and other blood ...

nTIDE April 2024 Jobs Report: Post-pandemic gains seen in employment for people with disabilities appear to continue

nTIDE April 2024 Jobs Report: Post-pandemic gains seen in employment for people with disabilities appear to continue
2024-05-03
East Hanover, NJ – May 3, 2024 – Following a two-month decline, the employment of individuals with disabilities returns to near historic highs reported by nTIDE in late 2023, reaffirming the significance of those prior highs. That’s according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment – semi-monthly update (nTIDE), issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD). Month-to-Month nTIDE Numbers (comparing March 2024 to April 2024) “Following two months of decline, individuals with disabilities are now edging back towards their near ...

Exploring oncogenic driver molecular alterations in Hispanic/Latin American cancer patients

Exploring oncogenic driver molecular alterations in Hispanic/Latin American cancer patients
2024-05-03
“[...] this editorial underscores the complex molecular diagnosis landscape of cancer in the [Latin American] population.” BUFFALO, NY- May 3, 2024 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncoscience (Volume 11) on April 22, 2024, entitled, “Exploring oncogenic driver molecular alterations in Hispanic/Latin American cancer patients: A call for enhanced molecular understanding.” In this new editorial, researcher Rafael Parra-Medina from Fundación Universitaria de Ciencias de la Salud and Instituto Nacional de Cancerología begins by discussing Latin America’s (LA) population — a heterogeneous mix ...

Hungry, hungry white dwarfs: solving the puzzle of stellar metal pollution

Hungry, hungry white dwarfs: solving the puzzle of stellar metal pollution
2024-05-03
Dead stars known as white dwarfs, have a mass like the Sun while being similar in size to Earth. They are common in our galaxy, as 97% of stars are white dwarfs. As stars reach the end of their lives, their cores collapse into the dense ball of a white dwarf, making our galaxy seem like an ethereal graveyard.  Despite their prevalence, the chemical makeup of these stellar remnants has been a conundrum for astronomers for years. The presence of heavy metal elements—like silicon, magnesium, and calcium—on the surface of many of these compact objects is a perplexing ...

New study reveals how teens thrive online: factors that shape digital success revealed

2024-05-03
A new study co-authored by Sophie Janicke-Bowles, associate professor in Chapman University’s School of Communication, sheds light on the role that new and traditional media play in promoting and affecting character development, emotions, prosocial behavior and well-being (aka happiness) in youth.  Her research and teaching focus on positive psychology, media and new communication technologies, and media and spirituality. The study, published April 13 in Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), investigates how adolescents perceive ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

New College of AI, Cyber and Computing launched at UT San Antonio

Collaborative team earns five-year renewal grant from NINDS to continue stroke research

Vitamin K analogues may help transform the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases

Cyclic triaxial tests: Evaluation of liquefaction resistance in chemically treated soils

Uniting the light spectrum on a chip

Hundreds of new bacteria, and two potential antibiotics, found in soil

Smells deceive the brain – are interpreted as taste

New species survival commission fills critical gap in conservation

New conservation committee led by Applied Microbiology International calls on science community to get on board with microbial conservation

Scientists uncover key stabilizing role of small molecules

“Black Hole Stars” could solve JWST riddle of overly massive early galaxies

Mysterious ‘red dots’ in early universe may be ‘black hole star’ atmospheres

A gene mutation found in East Asian people increases liver disease risk by an ‘aldehyde storm’

Artificial intelligence‑assisted conductive hydrogel dressings for refractory wounds monitoring

Scalable fabrication of methylammonium‑free wide‑bandgap perovskite solar cells by blade coating in ambient air

Wearable devices could revolutionize pregnancy monitoring and detect abnormalities

Efficient cation recognition strategies for cationic compounds

US COVID-19 school closures were not cost-effective, but other non-pharmaceutical interventions were, new study finds

Human activities linked to declines of big seeds

North-south autism assessment divide leaves children waiting three years longer 

Want to publish in Nature? Webinar with Prof. Willie Peijnenburg shares insider tips

Cataract surgery on both eyes can be carried out safely and effectively in one go

Personalized brain stimulation shows benefit for depression

AI uncovers hidden rules of some of nature’s toughest protein bonds

Innovative approach helps new mothers get hepatitis C treatment

Identifying the Interactions That Drive Cell Migration in Brain Cancer

ORNL receives 2025 SAMPE Organizational Excellence Award

University of Oklahoma researchers aim to reduce indigenous cancer disparities

Study reveals new evidence, cost savings for common treatments for opioid use disorder in mothers and infants

Research alert: Frequent cannabis users show no driving impairment after two-day break

[Press-News.org] Variety in building block softness makes for softer amorphous materials
New model for disordered solids reveals traits behind microscopic force transmission