Chinese researchers said Thursday they have developed a simple and cost-effective way to make ultrahard and ultrastable metals, a technique that could find potential applications in a wide range of industrial manufacturing processes.

How to make metals stronger by refining their microstructure has been a challenge for scientists, as tinkering with the microstructure of metals and alloys can make them thermally and mechanically unstable.

Researchers from the Institute of Metal Research, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported in the US journal Science they refined the microstructure of pure nickel, a silvery-white metal usually used to manufacture industrial and consumer products, by what's known as plastic deformation, or putting enough stress on a metal to change its shape.

To produce the desired ultrahard and ultrastable material, they developed a technique called surface mechanical grinding treatment and used it to shear the surface of a pure nickel sample, which produced microstructures in the metal.

( from Global Times )