Material Science News and Discussions

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Fully reusable bricks could allow old buildings to be taken apart and rebuilt
By Maryna Holovnova
June 04, 2026
https://newatlas.com/materials/reusable ... t-rebuilt/

Demolition of old structures at the end of their service life results in large amounts of waste and carbon emissions, not to mention the labor involved and the cost of producing new materials. According to official statistics, construction and demolition waste accounts for more than one third of all waste generated in Europe.

A team from Austria's Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) questioned if there might be a better, more sustainable approach to dealing with old brick buildings. What if instead of being demolished, they could be carefully deconstructed, so that the bricks could be reused in future construction projects?

This concept is similar to taking apart a Lego structure and rebuilding it elsewhere with the same parts. Obviously, using conventional mortar is not going to work in such a case. Instead of binding bricks together permanently, the researchers developed prefabricated brick wall elements connected through so-called reversible joints.

As of now, there is unfortunately not much information disclosed about the design or any technical details of the reversible joints. We've reached out to the researchers, but are still waiting to hear back.

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World-first 'super alloy' is 2x as strong as steel
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
June 22, 2026

Combining metals to produce alloys that are stronger or tougher requires extremely high temperatures as part of the process. Researchers in Australia recently found that a radically different approach could yield even better alloys with a lot less heat.

Engineers at Monash University have created the first ever large piece of Refractory High-Entropy Alloy (RHEA). This alloy is not only twice as strong as steel with a compressive yield strength of more than 2 gigapascals, but it's also the result of a method that uses lower temperatures, and that could be easier and cheaper to scale.

The RHEA is composed of titanium, hafnium, tantalum, niobium and zirconium. Thanks to a slower heating process at a lower temperature than what you'd apply to melt metals in conventional alloy production, the atoms of these elements organized themselves into a strongly connected structure comprising three distinct components with nanocrystals in different periodic arrangements.

https://newatlas.com/materials/super-alloy-monash-rhea/

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Physicists Just Set A Major New World Record For Superconductor Materials
By Michael Irving
July 8, 2026

Introduction:

(Science Alert) Superconductive materials could revolutionize electronics – if only they weren't so fussy.

Coaxing materials into this state, where electrical currents flow freely with no resistance at all, requires either extremely low temperatures or extremely high pressures, or both.

That means that any advantages you could get in the real world – such as electric vehicles that recharge instantaneously – would be offset by needing to pack a cryogenic freezer or a diamond anvil cell in your back seat.

But now, scientists are one step closer to making superconductive materials that operate near everyday temperatures and pressures.

A team led by physicists at the University of Houston has just set a new world record for superconductivity, achieving the highest temperature under ambient pressure.

Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/physicist ... nductors

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