Effects of tensile loading during annealing of alnico melt spun ribbons

Conventional magnetic annealing (MA) of the permanent magnet alloy alnico involves application of an external magnetic field at temperatures within the spinodal decomposition range. This field biases the growth of the Fe-Co rich, ferromagnetic α 1 -phase in an energetically favorable 〈001〉 direction in alignment with the applied field within an Al-Ni rich, paramagnetic α 2 -phase. Utilizing a magnetic field to bias the α 1 -phase may limit alnico from reaching theoretical coercivity due to (1) the field having maximum biasing ability at temperatures near the Curie temperature where large α 1 -phase nanorods form and (2) connectivity of the α 1 -phase occurs unavoidably during MA. Both decrease the effective shape anisotropy of the α 1 -phase, thereby reducing coercivity. Herein, we explore tensile-loading as a biasing mechanism to control and optimize the final alnico nanostructure beyond that achieved by MA. Two samples of melt-spun alnico were heat-treated at 860 °C for 5 minutes: one sample was subjected to 10 MPa tensile stress for comparison with a stress-free control sample. Structural and magnetic characterization revealed that the stress-annealed ribbon sample possessed expected phase assemblages, but was distinguished by a ∼2× larger grain diameter and an elongated anisotropic α 1 -phase within grains that were oriented to a shear stress along 〈001〉 directions at an angle of ∼45° relative to the loading direction. Both types of annealing produced a similar increase in the coercivity and remanence, but a decrease in saturation magnetization.This article is published as Rinko, E. A., X. Zhang, W. Tang, L. H. Lewis, M. J. Kramer, and I. E. Anderson. "Effects of tensile loading during annealing of alnico melt spun ribbons." AIP Advances 12, no. 3 (2022): 035338. DOI: 10.1063/9.0000356. Copyright 2022 The Author(s). Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Posted with permission. DOE Contract Number(s): AC02-07CH11358

Synthetic RNA–protein complex shaped like an equilateral triangle

Synthetic nanostructures consisting of biomacromolecules such as nucleic acids have been constructed using bottom-up approaches. In particular, Watson-Crick base pairing has been used to construct a variety of two- and three-dimensional DNA nanostructures. Here, we show that RNA and the ribosomal protein L7Ae can form a nanostructure shaped like an equilateral triangle that consists of three proteins bound to an RNA scaffold. The construction of the complex relies on the proteins binding to kink-turn (K-turn) motifs in the RNA, which allows the RNA to bend by ∼ 60° at three positions to form a triangle. Functional RNA-protein complexes constructed with this approach could have applications in nanomedicine and synthetic biology