TELF AG explores the potential of new resources discovered with AI
New resources for the industry
Mining sciences and metallurgical technology could find themselves in a very fertile era for their development, mainly due to today’s possibility of combining traditional industrial knowledge with innovations brought about by algorithms and artificial intelligence. From this synergy, new materials could arise that can be useful in numerous industrial sectors, composing the technological and electronic devices that we use every day, which we will most likely continue to use in the future. After the recent discovery of millions of new mineral compounds, thanks to an assembly process powered by artificial intelligence, a group of American universities (including Duke University) has found a way to discover 900 ceramic compounds characterized by formidable resistance to the most extreme contexts, so much to make it possible to create electrical devices capable of functioning while immersed in incandescent substances.
In a historical situation characterized by the continuous increase in demand for some specific materials, such as all mineral raw materials intended to fuel the energy transition, one of the possible sources of these resources could be represented by the new materials discovered thanks to the support of technology, substances that do not exist in nature and which, however, after being assembled, could prove to be of great practical use for the needs of industry.
The properties of new materials
The ceramic compounds discovered by US universities are made up of metal alloys and some chemical elements such as nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen and have already been shown to possess astonishing mechanical and thermal properties. For example, their resistance to high temperatures would make them perfectly functional even within volcanic magma or other equally extreme contexts characterized by high temperatures. For their actual creation, the team of researchers from American universities used advanced sintering and metallurgy techniques, thanks to which it is possible to obtain an object starting from the processing of metal powders, which are placed in a mold and heated to very high temperatures. At this point, the different dust grains fuse thanks to the high temperature and give life to the final object. Once the potential of these new materials has been fully understood, particularly regarding their specific properties, their application spaces would include future uses in the field of electricity conduction, satellite telecommunications, and similar advanced technologies.
The characteristics of these new compounds were illustrated in a recent study published in the journal Nature and have already attracted the attention of several industry players. As stated in the report, their fundamental characteristic is linked to the anthropic nature of their chemical composition. The presence of five, six, or even more chemical elements inside them would help these materials find a certain degree of stability, thus increasing their thermal resistance. A disordered, or anthropic, chemical composition contrasts with a fundamentally ordered structure, which in turn can contribute to these materials’ resistance and main properties. Technical and mechanical devices capable of resisting fire and very high temperatures, until now, had remained relegated to the realm of science fiction, but thanks to the future uses of these new high entropy ceramic compounds, they could soon become a solid reality.
