Scientists create world's strongest silver

Scientists claim to have developed strongest silver ever -- 42 percent sturdier than previous world record. This "fundamental breakthrough" promises a new category of materials that can overcome a tritional tre-off in industrial and commercial materials between strength and ability to carry electrical current, according to research published in journal Nature Materials.

"We've discovered a new mechanism at work at nascale that allows us to make metals that are much stronger than anything ever me before -- while t losing any electrical conductivity," said Frederic Sansoz, a professor at University of Vermont in US.

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Heavy mixtures of material

All metals have defects. Often se defects le to undesirable qualities, like brittleness or softening. This has led scientists to create various alloys or heavy mixtures of material to make m stronger. However, as metals get stronger, y lose electrical conductivity.

"We asked ourselves, how can we make a material with defects but overcome softening while retaining electroconductivity," said Morris Wang, a le scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in US, and co-author of study.

Powerful internal structure

By mixing a trace amount of copper into silver, team showed it can transform two s of inherent nascale defects into a powerful internal structure.

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"That's because impurities are directly attracted to se defects," said Sansoz.

In or words, team used a copper impurity -- a form of doping or "micro-alloy" as scientists style it -- to control behaviour of defects in silver. scientists flipped defects to ir vant, using m to both strengn metal and maintain its electrical conductivity. To make ir discovery, team started with a foundational idea of materials engineering: as size of a crystal -- or grain -- of material gets smaller, it gets stronger. Scientists call this Hall-Petch relation. This general design principle has allowed scientists and engineers to build stronger alloys and vanced ceramics for over 70 years.