Nader Ameli, Jaya Verma, Beth Muthoni Irungu, Sepideh Aliasghari, Andrei Shishkin, Allan Matthews, Saurav Goel
{"title":"Design and development of a novel polymer coating system with exceptional creep resistance.","authors":"Nader Ameli, Jaya Verma, Beth Muthoni Irungu, Sepideh Aliasghari, Andrei Shishkin, Allan Matthews, Saurav Goel","doi":"10.1038/s44296-025-00063-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44296-025-00063-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Polymer coatings often suffer from poor mechanical properties, including low strength and modulus, making them prone to creep failure under minimal loads. To address these challenges, this study introduces a novel polyurethane (PU) coating reinforced with 4 wt% hollow ceramic microspheres (HCM) coated with a TiO₂ shell (HCM@TiO₂). The modified coating exhibited a 111% increase in nanoindentation hardness, along with significant reductions in creep displacement (31%), indentation creep rate (19%), and creep strain rate sensitivity (28%) compared to the base PU. In contrast, a second additive, solid silica nanospheres with TiO₂ shells (SSN@TiO₂), did not improve mechanical performance and even increased creep displacement by 31%, likely due to polymer chain sliding. Notably, the HCM@TiO₂ coating maintained and even improved its creep resistance under higher loads. These findings suggest that HCM@TiO₂-enhanced coatings could be highly beneficial for applications requiring resistance to high-cycle creep-fatigue failure.</p>","PeriodicalId":520010,"journal":{"name":"Npj materials sustainability","volume":"3 1","pages":"21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12208877/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144556427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sophia Roy, Hossam Moustafa, Ketan Vaidya, Jean-Philippe Harvey, Louis Fradette
{"title":"Improving process granularity of life cycle inventories for battery grade nickel.","authors":"Sophia Roy, Hossam Moustafa, Ketan Vaidya, Jean-Philippe Harvey, Louis Fradette","doi":"10.1038/s44296-025-00059-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44296-025-00059-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Batteries are essential to transition to a fossil-free energy system, but only if coherently planned will their manufacturing generate minimal environmental impacts. Aggregated life cycle inventories for battery-grade nickel prevent life cycle analysts from easily pinpointing key impact contributors. The present work reconstructs inventories via disaggregation of current and emerging processing routes. Improving process granularity demonstrates variability in climate impacts of 74 kgCO<sub>2eq</sub>/kWh for nickel sourcing of an NMC-811 cell. Furthermore, the global ecoinvent v.3.9.1 dataset for nickel sulfate could gravely underestimate climate impacts by 120 kgCO<sub>2eq</sub>/kg Ni equivalent. Major contributors to climate impacts are readily identified for six nickel processing pathways, spanning two mineral families - laterite and sulfide - and three main processing routes - hydrometallurgy, bioleaching and pyrometallurgy. A preliminary assessment of all impact categories highlights the need for both improved fate models and data collection on inventory parts such as tailings management which are often neglected in carbon-focused studies.</p>","PeriodicalId":520010,"journal":{"name":"Npj materials sustainability","volume":"3 1","pages":"15"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12133587/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144236712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Catalysts for electrochemical CO<sub>2</sub> conversion: material sustainability perspective.","authors":"Chenyang Wang, Hung Lai, Hugh Warkentin, Cao-Thang Dinh, Qian Zhang","doi":"10.1038/s44296-025-00065-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44296-025-00065-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The electrochemical reduction of CO<sub>2</sub> (eCO<sub>2</sub>R) presents a promising pathway for addressing climate change by converting CO<sub>2</sub> into value-added chemicals and fuels. A crucial aspect of this technology is the choice of catalyst materials, which directly influences the selectivity, stability and sustainability of the process. Here we introduce a streamlined supply risk assessment coupled with life-cycle environmental impact associated with various catalysts used in eCO<sub>2</sub>R for products, including formate, carbon monoxide, ethylene, and ethanol to provide a well-rounded perspective for catalysts' sustainability assessment. We compare more than 68 case studies in eCO<sub>2</sub>R using various metal-based catalysts. Our results show that Bi-based catalysts for formate production have the highest supply risk and environmental burdens, while Sn-based catalysts show overall better durability and much lower sustainability concerns. Copper-based catalysts' supply risk for ethylene conversion is lower and more concentrated, whereas the supply risk for ethanol conversion is more dispersed. Our findings further confirm that improving catalyst performance-especially the stability-can substantially mitigate both supply risks and environmental impacts. This highlights the urgent need for standardized methodologies to assess catalyst stability and novel strategies to further improve catalyst stability using both material and system approaches. We call for stronger cross-sector collaboration to further integrate criticality and sustainability assessment frameworks with more granular datasets and dynamic spatial and temporal representation, for continuous eco-design improvement of eCO<sub>2</sub>R catalysts.</p>","PeriodicalId":520010,"journal":{"name":"Npj materials sustainability","volume":"3 1","pages":"22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12208916/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144556426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}