A METALLIC compound that does not expand when heated could pave the way to a range of exotic new alloys. These materials would be invaluable to engineers building devices such as space probes that have to operate over temperature ranges of hundreds of degrees.
Most materials expand when they are heated because the atoms they are made of vibrate more vigorously, increasing the distance between them. But a new metallic material made up of the elements ytterbium (Yb), gallium (Ga) and germanium (Ge) remains the same size when heated from 100 to 400 kelvin.
James Salvador and Mercouri Kanatzidis at…
