Welcome to the Amira-Avizo Software Use Case Gallery

Nickel-rich transition metal oxide materials […] are of great interest for achieving immediate improvements in the energy density of Li-ion batteries and for risk reduction within the Li-ion battery supply chain.
[…] An increase in Ni content in NMC materials leads to accelerated degradation […]. This potentially complicates their adoption in applications requiring extended cycle life such as in electric vehicles.

Recent developments in X-ray characterization to... Read more

Given the urgent need to move to low-carbon technologies, batteries are being increasingly used in a range of applications. Lithium-ion batteries are the most widely used chemistry, but to meet the growing demand, there is a need to move beyond lithium towards alternative battery chemistries. Metal–air batteries are a group of such battery alternatives that hold promise, especially for stationary power and flexible electronics applications.

However, barriers to their widespread adopt... Read more

The cleanliness of liquid steel is defined by the amounts of dissolved unwanted impurities and precipitated unwanted non-metallic phases.[…] Improving the cleanliness of the steel would mean a lower fraction of impurities in the final product. […] A novel approach, utilizing controlled synthetic inclusion/metal samples, has been developed to study the reactions between free inclusion-slag droplets and steel. The technique combines High-Temperature Confocal Scanning Laser Microscop... Read more

Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) technology has attracted considerable interest in large-scale metallic components, but porosity and low deposition rate are the two dominating technical challenges in WAAM of aluminum alloy. In order to effectively solve these problems, a novel method of hot-wire arc additive manufacturing is used to fabricate aluminum alloy. Systematic studies are carried out to investigate the formation mechanism of the pores, the macro/microstructures, as well as the ... Read more

High market demands related to material quality and properties strongly influence redesigning of common safety loaded aluminum alloy castings. The quality of aluminum components and associated obtained mechanical properties are strongly dependent on the casting process and parameters, as well as on the chemical composition. Therefore, the redesigning of chemical composition of high-strength aluminum alloys becomes significant for safety critical structural components in automotive industry.Read more

Material synthesis techniques have been historically used to engineer the mechanical and biological properties of biomaterials. Despite the overall success of this approach in different fronts […] there are still major unaddressed challenges due to the limited range of material properties that can be obtained through such synthesis techniques […]. Recent advances in additive manufacturing (AM) have initiated a new paradigm, which could facilitate better control of mechanical and b... Read more

Nowadays, industrial processes demand materials with specific properties and localized microstructures to improve material performance. To satisfy particular needs, the development of materials with changing mechanical properties and/or microstructures along a preferential direction has been developed. These are called Functional Graded Materials (FGMs). Among these materials, a variation on the porosity along the part is very useful for different industrial applications, such as microfiltrat... Read more

Accurate detection, characterization, and prediction of defects has great potential for immediate impact in the production of fully-dense and defect free metal additive manufacturing (AM) builds. Accordingly, this paper presents Defect Structure Process Maps (DSPMs) as a means of quantifying the role of porosity as an exemplary defect structure in powder bed printed materials. Synchrotron-based micro-computed tomography (μSXCT) was used to demonstrate that metal AM defects follow predictable... Read more

Carrier-based dry powder inhaler (DPI) formulations need to be accurately characterised for their particle size distributions, surface roughnesses, fines contents and flow properties. Understanding the micro-structure of the powder formulation is crucial, yet current characterisation methods give incomplete information. Commonly used techniques like laser diffraction (LD) and optical microscopy (OM) are limited due to the assumption of sphericity and can give variable results depending on par... Read more

The non-metallic inclusions are mostly harmful to the propertiesof the steel products. The effective characterization of the size, morphology, and distribution of the inclusions in steel is a key issue to remove and control the inclusions in the Read more

Inconel 718 (IN718) is the most popular precipitation-strengthened nickel-based superalloy introduced by the Huntington Alloys Division of INCO in 1959 (Ref Read more

In the 6th century BC different techniques of coin manufacture were employed by mints in mainland Greece and in the Greek colonies in Southern Italy. In Greece these techniques were evidently derived from the Lydians and consisted in striking a piece of cast metal of predetermined weight (a ‘blank’ or flan) between two engraved dies made of hardened bronze. Colonies in Magna Graecia, however, uniquely developed another set of minting techniques to produce what today is called incuse coina... Read more

Drop-on-demand jetting of metals offers a fully digital manufacturing approach to surpass the limitations of the current generation powder-based additive manufacturing technologies. However, research on this topic has been restricted mainly to near-net shaping of relatively low melting temperature metals. Here it is proposed a novel approach to jet molten metals at high-temperatures (>1000 °C) to enable the direct digital additive fabrication of micro- to macro-scale objects. […] ... Read more

Additive manufacturing (AM) of aluminum alloy components has drawn broad attention from industrial customers in recent years. With the advantages of low cost and high deposition rate, wire + arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) has been recognized as a promising AM technology in producing large-scale aluminum alloy structural parts. However, the adverse effect of internal defects on mechanical properties has limited the application of WAAM aluminum alloys. Micropores, as one of the most harmfu... Read more

Understanding the microstructural morphology of Li–ion battery electrodes is crucial to improving the electrochemical performance of current Li–ion battery systems and in developing next-generation power systems. The use of 3D X-ray imaging techniques, which are continuously evolving, provides a noninvasive platform to study the relationship between electrode microstructure and performance at various time and length scales. In addition to characterizing a weakly (X-ray) absorbing graphite... Read more

In aqueous solutions, electro/chemically deposited metals usually grow outward into electrolyte. Here we report that the reduced Al grows inward into the sample, surprisingly, while Mg (in pure Mg and Al₂Mg₃ alloy) is galvanically replaced with Al in an ionic liquid. The galvanic replacement reaction (GRR) of Al₂Mg₃ involves a dealloying process that generates a nanoporous Al skeleton, and simultaneously the inward-growth plating of Al that thicke... Read more

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and metal nanoparticles are two classes of materials that have received considerable recent attention, each for controlling chemical reactivities, albeit in very different ways. Here, we report the growth of MOF shell layers surrounding aluminum nanocrystals (Al NCs), an Earth-abundant metal with energetic, plasmonic, and photocatalytic properties. The MOF shell growth proceeds by means of dissolution-and-growth chemistry that uses the intrinsic surface oxide o... Read more

Despite the importance of studying the instability of delithiated cathode materials, it remains difficult to underpin the degradation mechanism of lithium-rich cathode materials due to the complication of combined chemical and structural evolutions. Herein, we use state-of-the-art electron microscopy tools, in conjunction with synchrotron X-ray techniques and first-principle calculations to study a 4d-element-containing compound, Li2Ru0.5Mn0.5O3. We find surprisingly, after cycling, ruthenium... Read more

Positive-strand RNA viruses, which can be devastating pathogens in humans, animals and plants, replicate their genomes on intracellular membranes. Here, we describe the three-dimensional ultrastructural organization of a tombusvirus replicase in yeast, a valuable model for exploring virus–host interactions…

Analysis of neuronal arborization and connections is a powerful tool in fundamental and clinical neuroscience. Changes in neuronal morphology are central to brain development and plasticity and are associated with numerous diseases. Golgi staining is a classical technique based on a deposition of metal precipitate in a random set of neurons. Despite their versatility, Golgi methods have limitations that largely precluded their use in advanced microscopy. We combined Golgi staining with fluore... Read more

Electron Beam Melting (EBM) is an Additive Manufacturing (AM) process which can be used to fabricate complex 3D metal components. Ti-6Al-4V is one of the high value aerospace materials that has been widely used in the EBM process. However, defects such as gas pores and lack of fusion are often found in the as-built components, which can make a significant difference to the fatigue resistance of the parts. The Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) uses X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT) and 3D im... Read more