(Yicai Global) Dec. 30 -- Chinese scientists have come up with a superelastic and fatigue-resistant material that can work over a wide temperature range and which is thus highly desirable for diverse applications.

A research team led by Prof. Yu Shuhong and Liang Haiwei from the University of Science and Technology of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the thermal conversion of structural biological material, bacterial cellulose, into carbon nanofiber aerogels with high thermomechanical stability.

The CNFAs maintain superelasticity -- also known as pseudoelasticity -- without plastic deformation even after 2 × 106 compressive cycles and exhibit exceptional temperature-invariant superelasticity and fatigue resistance over a temperature range from -100°C to 500°C.

Superelasticity, also called pseudoelasticity, is an elastic response to an applied stress resulting from a phase transformation between the austenitic and martensitic phases of a crystal. Shape-memory alloys display its characteristics, public information shows.

An aerogel is a porous, synthetic ultralight material produced from a gel, in which gas has replaced the liquid to yield an extremely low-density solid with extremely low thermal conductivity.

Editor: Ben Armour