Aluminium oxideAluminium oxide (or Aluminium(III) oxide) is a chemical compound of aluminium and oxygen with the chemical formula . It is the most commonly occurring of several aluminium oxides, and specifically identified as aluminium oxide. It is commonly called alumina and may also be called aloxide, aloxite, or alundum in various forms and applications. It occurs naturally in its crystalline polymorphic phase α-Al2O3 as the mineral corundum, varieties of which form the precious gemstones ruby and sapphire.
YttriumYttrium is a chemical element with the symbol Y and atomic number 39. It is a silvery-metallic transition metal chemically similar to the lanthanides and has often been classified as a "rare-earth element". Yttrium is almost always found in combination with lanthanide elements in rare-earth minerals and is never found in nature as a free element. 89Y is the only stable isotope and the only isotope found in the Earth's crust. The most important present-day use of yttrium is as a component of phosphors, especially those used in LEDs.
ErbiumErbium is a chemical element with the symbol Er and atomic number 68. A silvery-white solid metal when artificially isolated, natural erbium is always found in chemical combination with other elements. It is a lanthanide, a rare-earth element, originally found in the gadolinite mine in Ytterby, Sweden, which is the source of the element's name. Erbium's principal uses involve its pink-colored Er3+ ions, which have optical fluorescent properties particularly useful in certain laser applications.
Crystal structureIn crystallography, crystal structure is a description of the ordered arrangement of atoms, ions, or molecules in a crystalline material. Ordered structures occur from the intrinsic nature of the constituent particles to form symmetric patterns that repeat along the principal directions of three-dimensional space in matter. The smallest group of particles in the material that constitutes this repeating pattern is the unit cell of the structure.
NucleationIn thermodynamics, nucleation is the first step in the formation of either a new thermodynamic phase or structure via self-assembly or self-organization within a substance or mixture. Nucleation is typically defined to be the process that determines how long an observer has to wait before the new phase or self-organized structure appears. For example, if a volume of water is cooled (at atmospheric pressure) below 0 °C, it will tend to freeze into ice, but volumes of water cooled only a few degrees below 0 °C often stay completely free of ice for long periods (supercooling).
CeriumCerium is a chemical element with the symbol Ce and atomic number 58. Cerium is a soft, ductile, and silvery-white metal that tarnishes when exposed to air. Cerium is the second element in the lanthanide series, and while it often shows the oxidation state of +3 characteristic of the series, it also has a stable +4 state that does not oxidize water. It is also considered one of the rare-earth elements. Cerium has no known biological role in humans but is not particularly toxic, except with intense or continued exposure.
Creep (deformation)In materials science, creep (sometimes called cold flow) is the tendency of a solid material to undergo slow deformation while subject to persistent mechanical stresses. It can occur as a result of long-term exposure to high levels of stress that are still below the yield strength of the material. Creep is more severe in materials that are subjected to heat for long periods and generally increase as they near their melting point. The rate of deformation is a function of the material's properties, exposure time, exposure temperature and the applied structural load.
Aluminium hydroxideAluminium hydroxide, , is found in nature as the mineral gibbsite (also known as hydrargillite) and its three much rarer polymorphs: bayerite, doyleite, and nordstrandite. Aluminium hydroxide is amphoteric, i.e., it has both basic and acidic properties. Closely related are aluminium oxide hydroxide, AlO(OH), and aluminium oxide or alumina (), the latter of which is also amphoteric. These compounds together are the major components of the aluminium ore bauxite. Aluminium hydroxide also forms a gelatinous precipitate in water.
Ordered vector spaceIn mathematics, an ordered vector space or partially ordered vector space is a vector space equipped with a partial order that is compatible with the vector space operations. Given a vector space over the real numbers and a preorder on the set the pair is called a preordered vector space and we say that the preorder is compatible with the vector space structure of and call a vector preorder on if for all and with the following two axioms are satisfied implies implies If is a partial order compatible with the vector space structure of then is called an ordered vector space and is called a vector partial order on The two axioms imply that translations and positive homotheties are automorphisms of the order structure and the mapping is an isomorphism to the dual order structure.
SuperalloyA superalloy, or high-performance alloy, is an alloy with the ability to operate at a high fraction of its melting point. Key characteristics of a superalloy include mechanical strength, thermal creep deformation resistance, surface stability, and corrosion and oxidation resistance. The crystal structure is typically face-centered cubic (FCC) austenitic. Examples of such alloys are Hastelloy, Inconel, Waspaloy, Rene alloys, Incoloy, MP98T, TMS alloys, and CMSX single crystal alloys.
