Clean Fuels and Evs Tungsten

Home , Minor metals

ISSN 2056-6727 (Print)

The CRUCIBLE The magazine of the Minor Metals Trade Association

Clean fuels and EVs

Tungsten: the path of least resistance

Thinking about... Responsible Sourcing

10th Edition 2017/Nov-Dec 1

THE MMTA’S INTERNATIONAL MINOR METALS CONFERENCE 2018

Organised by Metal Events Ltd The Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal, Canada, 11-13 April

EXCELLENT MEMBERS’ AND NON-MEMBERS’ EARLY-BIRD RATES AVAILABLE

Platinum Sponsor Gold Sponsor

Who attends the Conference?

Re-cap: 44th Anniversary Dinner INSIDE THIS ISSUE The MMTA welcomed over 200 guests to the impressive ballroom of 1 Great George Street during LME week for good food and great company. Tesla announcement 3 Tungsten: no resistance 4 Dr Robin Gleek was able to bring a refreshing , Clean tech update 6-7 first-hand report of the work and progress made in the mining community of Mufulira, Zambia. Letter from N. America 8-9 Brussels Raw Materials Week 10 A record amount was raised by the raffle to benefit Mufulira with the final total of £3283 (EUR 85). Metallic glass 12 Snowflakes & Stibnites 14 Thank you for your generosity, this brings us closer Responsible Sourcing Launch 15 to reaching the goal of purchasing an ultrasound machine to benefit Mufulira’s hospital and it’s patients.

The MMTA would like thank RC Inspection for their kind sponsorship which helped to make this such a successful event. The MMTA promotes essential elements that add Birgit Bender, RC Inspection quality, safety and enjoyment to our lives.

The MMTA is the world's Tesla have announced a ‘semi-truck’ and sports car leading minor metals industry Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s first electric semi-truck last week that also included the surprise reveal of a organisation. new Tesla sports car. The new Roadster emerged from the back of one of the trucks at the end of a presentation that focused largely on the economic and performance needs of truck drivers. While the sports car provided a jolt of excitement for Tesla enthusiasts, much of the event focused on Contact Us: pitching the truck to truck drivers – customers with very different concerns than the average Tesla owner. Address: MMTA, Suite 53, 3 Whitehall Court, London, SW1A 2EL, UK Musk had hyped the truck on Twitter throughout the week. He reported that the Tesla truck cost of Tel: +44 (0)207 833 0237 ownership will be 20% less per mile compared with diesel trucks. Among them: faster acceleration, better Email: [email protected] uphill performance, a 500-mile (805km) range at maximum weight at highway speed, and “thermonuclear explosion-proof glass” in the windshield. Disclaimer: The information and data contained in this edition of the Crucible (the Material) has been Safety features include enhanced autopilot, lane-keeping technology, and a design that makes jackknifing compiled by the Minor Metals Trade Association (MMTA) from sources believed to be reliable at the time of writing “impossible”, Musk said. but the MMTA makes no representation or warranty (express or implied) as to the accuracy, timeliness or The company plans to build a network of “Megachargers” (as opposed to the “Superchargers” used by completeness of the Material. The Material is provided for information purposes only, but is not to be relied upon as other Tesla vehicles) that can produce a 400-mile charge in 30 minutes. authoritative or taken in substitution for the exercise of the reader’s own skill and judgment. It should not be Musk claimed it would be “economic suicide” to continue using diesel trucks, saying the Tesla version, if relied upon for any specific or general application without driven in convoy, would be cheaper than shipping goods by rail. first obtaining competent advice. The MMTA, its members, staff and consultants accept no liability The CEO’s promises for the new Roadster were no less ambitious. Musk said the car’s acceleration from whatsoever (however that liability arises) for any direct, indirect or consequential loss arising from any use of the 0 to 60 mph and 0 to 100 mph, as well as its quarter-mile speed, were all “world records” for production Material. cars. The Crucible contains links to third party websites and material and information created and maintained by He said production on the trucks would begin in 2019 and the sports cars would be available in 2020. organisations other than the MMTA. These links are provided solely for your convenience. The MMTA does Despite the confidence exuded by Musk, questions will undoubtedly arise about the company’s capacity to not guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or manufacture the new vehicles, with delivery of the Model 3 currently well behind schedule. completeness of any third party information or material accessed by means of a link within the Crucible. The inclusion of a link is not intended to reflect the Competition in the electric truck market has been heating up. In September, Daimler AG announced the importance of the third party materials accessed through delivery of its first electric trucks to the United Parcel Service (UPS). Other companies working on electric it, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, accuracy of material, products or services offered or trucks include Volkswagen, Cummins and Nikola. other information made available via the link.

Tungsten offers nano-interconnects a path of least resistance

As microchips become ever smaller, and therefore faster, the shrinking size of their copper interconnects leads to increased electrical resistivity at the nanoscale. Finding a solution to this impending technical bottleneck is a major problem for the semiconductor industry.

One promising possibility involves reducing the resistivity size effect by altering the crystalline orientation of interconnect materials. Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute conducted electron transport measurements in epitaxial single-crystal layers of tungsten (W) as one such potential interconnect solution. They performed first-principles simulations, finding a definite orientation- dependent effect. The anisotropic resistivity effect they found was most marked between layers with two particular orientations of the lattice structure, namely W(001) and W(110). The work is published in the Journal of Applied Physics.

Author Pengyuan Zheng noted that both the 2013 and 2015 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) called for new materials to replace copper as interconnect material to limit resistance increase at reduced scale and minimize both power consumption and signal delay.

In their study, Zheng and co-author Daniel Gall chose tungsten because of its asymmetric Fermi surface—its electron energy structure. This made it a good candidate to demonstrate the anisotropic resistivity effect at the small scales of interest. "The bulk material is completely isotropic, so the resistivity is the same in all directions," Gall said. "But if we have thin films, then the resistivity varies considerably."

To test the most promising orientations, the researchers grew epitaxial W(001) and W(110) films on substrates and conducted resistivity measurements of both while immersed in liquid nitrogen at 77 Kelvin (about -196 degrees Celsius) and at room temperature, or 295 Kelvin. "We had roughly a factor of 2 difference in the resistivity between the 001 oriented tungsten and 110 oriented tungsten," Gall said, but they found considerably smaller resistivity in the W(011) layers.

Although the measured anisotropic resistance effect was in good agreement with what they expected from calculations, the effective mean free path—the average distance electrons can move before scattering against a boundary—in the thin film experiments was much larger than the theoretical value for bulk tungsten.

"An electron travels through a wire on a diagonal, it hits a surface, gets scattered, and then continues traveling until it hits something else, maybe the other side of the wire or a lattice vibration," Gall said. "But this model looks wrong for small wires."

The experimenters believe this may be explained by quantum mechanical processes of the electrons that arise at these limited scales. Electrons may be simultaneously touching both sides of the wire or experiencing increased electron-phonon (lattice vibrations) coupling as the layer thickness decreases, phenomena that could affect the search for another metal to replace copper interconnects.

"The envisioned conductivity advantages of rhodium, iridium, and nickel may be smaller than predicted," said Zheng. Findings like these will prove increasingly important as quantum mechanical scales become more commonplace for the demands of interconnects.

The research team is continuing to explore the anisotropic size effect in other metals with nonspherical Fermi surfaces, such as molybdenum. They found that the orientation of the surface relative to the layer orientation and transport direction is vital, as it determines the actual increase in resistivity at these reduced dimensions.

"The results presented in this paper clearly demonstrate that the correct choice of crystalline orientation has the potential to reduce nanowire resistance," said Zheng. The importance of the work extends beyond current nanoelectronics to new and developing technologies, including transparent flexible conductors, thermoelectrics and memristors that can potentially store information. "It's the problem that defines what you can do in the next technology," Gall said.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-tungsten-nano-interconnects-path-resistance.html#jCp

Source: American Institute of Physics

We focus on quality

Established over 21 years with an unrivalled reputation for supplying pure metals and high temperature super alloys into the aerospace, oil, medical and associated industries

Accredited ISO 9001, ISO 14001, BS OHSAS 18001

We buy & sell

Specialists in the supply of

 Mo  Ta

 W  Hf

 Nb  All Nickel / Cobalt based alloys

Full revert management/processing

 Shot blast

 Size reduction/plasma

 Bar cutting

 Turnings degreased

Suppliers of High Temp Raw Materials & Pure Metals

Call us on 01909 569930 Email us at [email protected] Website www.advancedalloys.co.uk 5

Even Cleaner Hydrogen Fuel

Electrolysis, splitting water molecules with electricity, is the cleanest way to obtain hydrogen, a clean and renewable fuel. Now, researchers at ICIQ and URV, led by Prof. José Ramón Galán-Mascarós, have designed a new catalyst that reduces the cost of electrolytic hydrogen production. Catalysts reduce the amount of electricity needed to break the chemical bonds, speed up the reaction and minimise energy waste.

"Normally, hydrogen is obtained from using a cheap process called steam reforming. But this is not clean hydrogen—this process uses natural gas and produces carbon dioxide and other contaminants," says Galán-Mascarós. "Breaking the water molecule is cleaner, but it's not easy. We need to develop cheap, efficient catalysts that allow us to obtain hydrogen at a competitive price," he says. To date, the best catalysts are based on iridium oxides, but iridium is a very expensive and scarce precious metal.

Chemists at ICIQ and URV discovered a compound made of cobalt and called a polyoxometalate that can catalyse water splitting better than iridium. "Polyoxometalates are nanometric molecular oxides that combine the best of two worlds: the activity of oxides and the versatility of molecules," explains Marta Blasco-Ahicart, postdoctoral researcher at ICIQ and first author of the Nature Chemistry paper. "Our polyoxometalates are way cheaper than iridium and allow us to work in acidic media, the optimal media to generate oxygen, normally a drawback for catalysts, which are usually consumed by the acid," says Blasco-Ahicart.

Joaquín Soriano, co-author of the paper and currently a postdoctoral researcher at Trinity College in Dublin, says, "Our catalysts work especially well when we work with low voltages. That may seem to be a drawback, but is actually an advantage. It saves electricity and will soon allow us to obtain the energy required for water splitting from renewable sources like solar panels."

The researchers present an additional discovery. When the catalysts are supported in a partially hydrophobic material, the efficiency of the process improves. This generates a "waterproof" reactor in which electrolysis advances quicker, and also enhances the lifetime of catalysts. The new methodology not only improves the performance of the new cobalt-tungsten polyoxometalates, but also a lot of other catalytic systems. Currently, researchers are investigating new ways of taking advantage of this finding, developing new hydrophobic scaffolds to further boost the efficiency of water splitting, a fundamental step toward the evolution of artificial photosynthesis.

Journal reference: Nature Chemistry Provided by: Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-cobalt-tungstenthe-key-cheaper-cleaner.html#jCp

Electric cars emit 50% less greenhouse gas than diesel

Electric cars emit significantly less greenhouse gases over their lifetimes than diesel engines even when they are powered by the most carbon intensive energy, a new report has found.

In Poland, which uses high volumes of coal, electric vehicles produced a quarter less emissions than diesels when put through a full lifecycle modelling study by Belgium’s VUB University.

CO2 reductions on Europe’s cleanest grid in Sweden were a remarkable 85%, falling to around one half for countries such as the UK.

“On average, electric vehicles will emit half the CO2 emissions of a diesel car by 2030, including the manufacturing emissions,” said Yoann Le Petit, a spokesman for the T&E think tank, which commissioned the study.

“We’ve been facing a lot of fake news in the past year about electrification put out by the fuel industry but in this study you can see that even in Poland today it is more beneficial to the climate to drive an electric vehicle than a diesel.”

The new study uses an EU estimate of Poland’s emissions – at 650gCO2/kWh – which is significantly lower than calculations by the European commission’s Joint Research Centre science wing last year.

Chart from Visual Capitalist

Letter from North America

Dear Members

November 5th – both Guy Fawkes Day and the New York Marathon. You will, of course, guess which is more important here. Town has a number of visitors. Well, visitors in their thousands. This year some 98,247 runners applied for the free, non-guaranteed drawing of places and the field today was expected to be over 50,000.

Keen to avoid the crowds, I had brunch with family and friends, imbibing industrial strength Bloody Marys and consuming a great deal of frittata and fruit salad. On the Bloody Mary front, I would thoroughly recommend lashings of El Avion smoked paprika powder – hot is thoroughly to be recommended. (You really don’t need any alcohol to enjoy a prime spiced tomato juice.)

I don’t know about the U.K. and elsewhere, but here anyway for a while now the press has been full of news, opinions, and facts about electric vehicles (EVs). And everywhere there seems to be research from the banks, brokers, and others on them. Needless to say, much of the focus has been on metals: copper and nickel have both been to the fore, as have cobalt, lithium, and graphite. (Honorary metal? No, I rather think not!)

Whilst I have not boned up on the details, I understand that, perhaps in response to all the interest in devices both vehicular and electric, the London Metal Exchange is looking at the potential for lithium and cobalt sulfate contracts. I certainly will be interested to see just how things develop. I seem to remember, a long while ago, writing a detailed piece on the LME’s erstwhile plastics futures contracts.

When it comes to the individual metals (especially lithium), and graphite, to me the interesting thing will be to see just how the majors address the potential opportunities as and when (or even before) they arise. When it comes to lithium, will they, as have gold producers, take strategic equity stakes in development and exploration companies? And when it comes to graphite and the continuing “Battle of the Batteries”, which will “win”, natural or synthetic graphite?

Thinking about it, though, the same is most likely true also for both nickel and cobalt – which will “win”. On the other hand, as someone explained to me the other day, it is not necessarily a case of “winner takes all”. Batteries come in myriad different shapes and sizes and serve probably as many different purposes. What you want (and need), for example, out of a static, back-up/storage battery will be very different from what you want from the battery in your car or bus.

Amongst all the noise around EVs, I was also interested to see some news about undersea mining and the fact that China has three of the more than 20 (I think it’s around 25 or 27) deep-sea exploration licenses granted by the International Seabed Authority (ISA). From what I can see, whilst the ISA may have granted exploration licenses, no exploitation license has yet to be granted. (I have to say though, that, search as I may, I cannot find any table or anything on the ISA’s site that actually states clearly how many licenses it has, in fact, granted.) It will probably come as no surprise that cobalt is one of the resources that potential undersea “miners” will be going after.

Finally, I recently read of some especially exciting research being undertaken by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. It appears that a team there has been able to use liquid metal to create atom-thick two-dimensional materials never before seen in nature.1

Whilst readers would be well advised to read the article in Science Daily itself, here’s just a wee taste of what it says.

“The incredible breakthrough will not only revolutionise the way we do chemistry but could be applied to enhance data storage and make faster electronics. The "once-in-a-decade" discovery has been published in Science.

“The researchers dissolve metals in liquid metal to create very thin oxide layers, which previously did not exist as layered structures and which are easily peeled away.

“Once extracted, these oxide layers can be used as transistor components in modern electronics. The thinner the oxide layer, the faster the electronics are. Thinner oxide layers also mean the electronics need less power. Among other things, oxide layers are used to make the touch screens on smart phones.”

And, the metal the researchers used as a reaction medium was my old favourite: gallium!

On that high note I shall bid you farewell, whilst remaining, as always, with best wishes from New York

Yours

Tom Butcher

Tom Butcher is an Associate Director at Van Eck Associates Corporation ("VanEck"). The views and opinions expressed herein are the personal views of Tom Butcher are not presented by or associated with VanEck or its affiliated entities.

1 Science Daily: Liquid metal discovery ushers in new wave of chemistry and electronics, October 19, 2017

NEW YORK DINNER

Thursday 18 January 2018

The Cornell Club-New York | 6 East 44th Street | New York, NY 10017

Get the New Year started with industry friends and colleagues! Networking drinks will be followed by a 4-course meal and wine. Share networking drinks and canapés with business colleagues and friends and enjoy a presentation from INTL FC Stone’s Ed Meir who will be giving a much anticipated Global Metals Outlook. MMTA members pay only $170 (130GBP) and non-members $220 (GBP168). Bookings can be made on the website or, by contacting Gina: [email protected]

Brussels Raw Materials Week

The European Commission’s second annual raw materials week in Brussels took place during the first week of November.

Over the week, various meetings and conferences were held on material issues such as responsible mining and critical raw materials (CRMs). The MMTA attended a conference organised by the EU funded project SCRREEN, which aims to create a network of experts on CRMs.

There were presentations on chrome, indium and scandium, which ranged from how to substitute from flat screen devices (indium), to how to ensure a more reliable/ abundant/ cheaper supply to support the development of light weight alloys (scandium).

The participants ranged from association representatives and academics to metals and mining industry professionals.

The MMTA aims to engage with these research groups more fully to ensure that association members are properly represented and that the technological advantages of minor metals are promoted as widely as possible.

Molten metal enables climate-friendly hydrogen production

A method for making hydrogen from methane without emitting carbon dioxide could be a new route to a sustainable future for fossil fuels. Chemists and engineers at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) in the US bubble methane through a molten bismuth–nickel catalyst, converting 95% of the gas into graphite and hydrogen.

Today steam reforming makes hydrogen from methane, unavoidably producing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. ‘Hydrogen is a huge industry, and if you think about the possibility of using hydrogen as a fuel, it’s going to expand enormously,’ says UCSB theorist Horia Metiu. ‘That can’t be done, unless we have a way of making hydrogen without carbon dioxide.’

Previous attempts to develop cleaner methods for making hydrogen from methane have failed because solid catalysts got ‘coked’, covered by carbon layers that stopped them working. One alternative method used molten tin as a catalyst, in which only a limited amount of carbon can dissolve, with the rest precipitating out at the top, avoiding coking. But although tin melts easily the catalyst didn’t make enough hydrogen. ‘Our first reaction when we heard this is, “Well, we’ve got to put some nickel in to activate the melt,”’ Metiu tells Chemistry World.

The UCSB team – with most of the experiments done in Eric McFarland’s lab by PhD student Ches Upham – used quartz tubes to contain the metals and methane. The researchers heated a mixture of nickel and bismuth to 1065˚C and bubbled through 10cm3 of methane per minute. Conversion to hydrogen was almost complete, and Metiu stresses no carbon dioxide was produced. However, the energy required for heating would generate emissions unless powered entirely by renewable sources.

Beatriz Fidalgo from Cranfield University, UK, calls the approach to avoiding coking ‘interesting’ and likes the reactor’s simplicity. It’s hard to see how it would fit in our existing energy infrastructure, she adds, although it ‘could be a useful method for converting solar energy into chemical energy’.

McFarland has analysed the economics of scaling up this very early result to producing 180,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year. That would need a 620m3 reactor, around a quarter the size of an Olympic swimming pool. The UCSB team is collaborating with Shell, and both think the technology may be viable on that scale. There is now an ‘ongoing conversation’ about its development, Metiu says.

References: D C Upham et al, Science, 2017, DOI: 10.1126/science.aao5023

10 GLOBAL SUPPLIERS OF PRIMARY MINOR METALS AND SUPERALLOY REVERT

Amorphous metallic glass for high-sensitivity MEMS microphones

Advanced microphones using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are capable of supporting new user interactions with "smart" devices, like chatting with Apple's Siri, or Amazon's Alexa. The key to achieving the high sensitivity desired for these microphones, you might be surprised to learn, is tied to the "admittance" or "compliance" of its membrane components.

Polysilicon is the material most commonly used as a membrane for microphone devices today. But, in general, single-crystal and polycrystalline-silicon-based devices are brittle and prone to fractures that can cause interior defects during the fabrication processes. This has lead researchers to search for a replacement material.

During the AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition, being held Oct. 29-Nov. 3, 2017, in Tampa, Florida, researchers from WPI-Advanced Institute for Materials Research/Micro System Integration Center at Tohoku University, in Japan, will present their work with a potential replacement material that shows promise for MEMS microphones: amorphous metallic glass.

"One of the most important specifications to evaluate these devices is signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)," said Mai Phuong Nguyen, assistant professor at Tohuku University. "SNR is a good indicator of the minimum sound level that a microphone can detect within a quiet environment."

Until now, most studies focused on improving the SNR, according to Nguyen, which is proportional to the "compliance" of the membrane. "But no significant results have been achieved, due to the limitations of polysilicon," Nguyen said.

Metallic glasses, however, share the properties of both metals and glasses. Like glasses, they have a "supercooled liquid region," in which the viscosity can be controlled.

"Their amorphous structure means that metallic glasses are free of crystalline defects—dislocation, point defects, stacking faults, etc.," Nguyen said. "So metallic glasses possess high strength and low stiffness, which gives them the ability to store elastic strain energy and release it."

The MEMS fabrication processes are typically done at a temperature of 200 degrees C or higher, and the materials must undergo chemical corrosion during the stripping processes in lithography steps, which also etch for patterning or structuring of the device. "Thermal budgets and chemical resistance may potentially have a strong impact on device performance and this needs to be explored further," Nguyen said.

The group prepared a cobalt tantalum boron (CoTaB) amorphous metallic glass by a sputter technique, a simple method commonly used by the semiconductor industry. The final thickness ranges from 100 nanometers to several micrometers, controlled by simply changing sputter conditions. They were able to confirm the most important properties of metallic glass: an amorphous structure with metallic glass behavior.

"We also explored the mean and gradient stress, which appear to have a strong impact on the sensitivity of devices," Nguyen said. "And we further studied compressive and tensile stress under different deposition conditions, as well as their compatibility with MEMS manufacturing processes."

Microphones are already well established in a full range of consumer products. "But there is clearly room to increase their reach within the audio supply and value chain, which would enhance audio capabilities," Nguyen said.

Explore further: Studying entropy in metallic glasses

Provided by: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-11-amorphous-metallic-glass-high-sensitivity-mems.html#jCp

This coupling caused a gradient in the droplet's surface oxidation, Liquid Transistors which then resulted in a gradient in the droplet's surface tension, Mechanical engineers Carmel Majidi and James Wissman of the Soft which finally drove the separation of the two droplets. Machines Lab at Carnegie Mellon University have been looking at new The team calls it a liquid metal transistor because it has the same kind ways to create electronics that are not just digitally functional but also of circuit properties found in a conventional circuit transistor. "We have soft and deformable. Rather than making circuits from rigid metals like these two droplets that are analogous to source and drain electrodes in copper or silver, they use a special metal alloy that is liquid at room a field-effect transistor, and we can use this shape programmable temperature. This alloy, made by mixing indium and gallium, is a effect to open and close the circuit," says Majidi. "You could eventually non-toxic alternative to mercury and can be infused in rubber to make use this effect to create these physically reconfigurable circuits." circuits that are as soft and elastic as natural skin. The applications for this type of programmable matter are endless. If Together with North Carolina State University, they recently discovered materials can be programmed to change shape, they can potentially that liquid metal electronics are not only useful for stretchable circuit change their function depending on their configuration, or even wiring but can also be used to make electrical switches. These fluidic reconfigure themselves to bypass damage in extreme environments. transistors work by opening and closing the connection between two Other applications could include liquid computers for uses in liquid metal droplets. When a voltage drop is applied in one direction, technologies of the future. Think of miniature computers that interface the droplets move towards each other and coalesce to form a metallic with biological material to monitor disease in the body, or restore brain bridge for conducting electricity. When voltage is applied in a different function to a stroke survivor. Imagine search and rescue robots that direction, the droplets spontaneously break apart and turn the switch can self-assemble new parts when damaged. Liquid computing might to open. By quickly alternating between an open and closed and open one day be as commonplace as today's laptops. switch state with only a small amount of voltage, the researchers were able to mimic the properties of a conventional transistor. Published in the journal Advanced Science.

The researchers had to find a way to induce this instability in the liquid More information: "Field-controlled electrical switch with liquid metal such that it could seamlessly transition from one droplet to two. metal," Advanced Science, DOI: 10.1002/advs.201700169 , http:// After performing a series of tests on droplets within a sodium onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.201700169/full hydroxide bath, they realized that the instability was driven by the coupling between an applied voltage and an electro-chemical reaction. MMTA Christmas Lunch Taking place at the beautiful Trinity House, London on the 18th December. Join us for a festive drinks reception followed by a three course meal with wine.

Visit the MMTA website to book or send an email to Gina: [email protected]

Member £85 Non-Member £110

Festive Metals: Gallium Indium Snowflakes

Drops of liquid metal can be grown into snowflake shapes, researchers have discovered.

When a team of scientists from the North Carolina State University, US, tried to use a droplet of liquid gallium–indium as an electrode in a electrochemical cell, they observed something odd: within a few seconds, the metal starts to spread out into a snowflake-like shape. An unusual behaviour for a liquid that has the largest surface tension of any fluid and is therefore rarely inclined to change its shape.

Applying a moderate voltage, however, kicks off a reaction between the gallium alloy and the surrounding electrolyte, a solution of sodium hydroxide in water. The metal’s surface becomes oxidised, which lowers its surface tension in the same way soap lowers the surface tension of water. As gravity spreads the metal out into a disc, disturbances on its surface break it up into individual ‘petals’. As they grow, the petals break up into more branches, creating a fractal pattern.

References

C B Eaker et al, Phys. Rev. Lett., 2017, 119, 174502 (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.174502)

A stunning example of a Stibnite made of antimony

Caption reads: With hundreds of individual bladelike crystals, this stunning object is the largest specimen of stibnite on public display in the world. Stibnite is a mineral containing the elements antimony and sulphur. In 2003, this specimen, which weighs almost half a ton, was removed from Wuling Mine is south-eastern China. Because the crystals formed in a large cavity underground, they could grow to the impressive lengths you see. Complete stibnite crystals this long are rare. More typically, miners find deposits of stibnite in large masses with few freestanding crystals. The rocks are then crushed and ‘roasted’- a process that releases the antimony. The metal can then be used in engine bearings, matches, semiconductors, pottery enamels and some medications.

Photo taken at the American Museum of Natural History, New York 14

NEW MMTA Guide Available Thinking about Responsible Sourcing? A beginner’s guide to help you get started

What’s Responsible Sourcing?

Responsible Sourcing is when a business looks at not only the cost, quality and consistent supply of their raw materials, but also considers other supply chain issues such as, conflict minerals, green-house gas emissions, human rights, corruption, and environmental impact amongst other challenges, when sourcing.

Increasingly, Responsible Sourcing initiatives are being initiated by consumers and passed down the supply chain. Consequently, many Responsible Sourcing guidelines tend to be directed principally at producers rather than intermediaries so the challenge MMTA members face is how to comprehensively and commercially ensure these responsibilities are passed on.

What are the MMTA doing?

 Consolidating and simplifying information on Responsible Sourcing to create a straightforward and easy-to-understand guide for MMTA Members, in particular SMEs.

 Raising awareness. Making members aware of their responsibilities. If you have any contracts with large corporate companies there are likely to be some commitments in the small print, even if you’re not expressly required to sign a code of conduct.

 Encouraging a review of existing policies. Showing how members can consolidate or incorporate any existing written policies on things like conflict minerals, sustainability etc., without very much trouble into a ‘Responsible Sourcing’ policy.

What do end-users have to say?

We expect our suppliers to support us in being trusted to deliver excellence and help them to do so through our Global Supplier Code of Conduct. We expect our suppliers to be ethical, responsible and to fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations. Rolls-Royce

FICTION: Responsible Sourcing is just about conflict minerals

It’s true that most legislation around Responsible Sourcing deals with conflict minerals; however, truly Responsible Sourcing includes issues such as carbon footprint, environmental impact, health and safety and tackling corruption amongst other indicators.

To access the full report– visit the MMTA website