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 watch and download the HD (1080p, 2.0GB) version [here] Video [115] of successive heating/cooling cycles in an alloy which has been tuned, by systematically changing composition, so as to satisfy the strongest known conditions of compatibility between phases. Despite being a relatively soft alloy with an 8% transformation strain, it exhibits thermal hysteresis as low as 1/4$^{\circ}$C, and exceptional reversibility. Unlike typical polycrystal martensites, it shows completely different microstructures in successive cycles. This kind of tuning could pave the way for the use of materials with big first order phase transformations in broad areas of technology, such as energy conversion, solid-state refrigeration, sensing, actuation, photonics, microelectronics and information storage. Read more about this alloy and the tuning strategy in [114], [115], and ways in which such alloys can be used as new kinds of energy conversion devices in [106]. The tuning strategy was discovered by systematic mathematical study and development of the geometrically nonlinear theory of phase transformations, [16], [85], [114]. [About Richard D. James]

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