OxPDE Visting Professor Richard James has discovered a new shape-changing metal crystal, a prototype of a new family of smart materials that could be used in applications ranging from space vehicles to electronics to jet engines. Called a "martensite", the crystal has two different arrangements of atoms, switching seamlessly between them. The material was discovered by Dick and colleagues at the University of Minnesota as an outgrowth of joint work with Sir John Ball which identified certain mathematical relations which would potentially allow unusual patterns of microstructure.
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