The automotive industry has focused on the development of metallic materials with high specific strength, which can meet both fuel economy and safety goals. Here, a new class of ultrafine-grained high-Mn steels containing nano-scale oxides is developed using powder metallurgy. First, high-energy mechanical milling is performed to dissolve alloying elements in Fe and reduce the grain size to the nanometer regime. Second, the ball-milled powder is consolidated using spark plasma sintering. During spark plasma sintering, nanoscale manganese oxides are generated in Fe-15Mn steels, while other nanoscale oxides (e.g., aluminum, silicon, titanium) are produced in Fe-15Mn-3Al-3Si and Fe-15Mn-3Ti steels. Finally, the phases and resulting hardness of a variety of high-Mn steels are compared. As a result, the sintered pallets exhibit superior hardness when elements with higher oxygen affinity are added; these elements attract oxygen from Mn and form nanoscale oxides that can greatly improve the strength of high-Mn steels.

For application of nano-sized material in various fields, toxicity evaluation of nano-sized material is important. In the current study, a suspension of 50 nm-sized zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles at a dose of 1 g/kg body weight was injected intraperitonially into mice in order to identify the toxicity of ZnO nanoparticles. After 24 h, the blood and liver were taken and analyzed. According to the results of hematological analysis, white blood cell (p<0.001), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (p<0.001), and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (p<0.05) in the ZnO nanoparticle treated group showed a significant decrease, compared to the control group. In serum biochemistry analysis, alanine aminotransferase (p<0.001) and aspartate amino-transferase (p<0.05) also induced a significant increase in the ZnO nanoparticle treated group, compared with the control group. In the histopathological examination, liver in mice treated with ZnO nanoparticles showed edema and degeneration in hepatocytes. Therefore, it is concluded that the liver is the target organ for 50 nm ZnO intraperitoneal exposure. In the future, greater attention should be paid to the potential toxicity induced by various routes and doses of ZnO nanoparticles.

In chemistry, the study of sonochemistry is concerned with understanding the effect of sonic waves and wave properties on chemical systems. In the area of chemical kinetics, it has been observed that ultrasound can greatly enhance chemical reactivity in a number of systems by as much as a million-fold. Nano-technology is a super microscopic technology in which structures of 100 nanometers or smaller can be investigated. This technology has been used to develop TiO2 materials and TiO2 devices of that size. Thus far, electrochemistry methods and photochemistry methods have generally been used to create TiO2 nano-size particles. However, these methods are complicated and create pollutants as a by-product. In the present study, nano-scale silver particles (5 nm) were prepared in a sonochemistry method. Sonochemistry deals with mechanical energy that is provided by the collapse of cavitation bubbles that form in solutions during exposure to ultrasound. TiO2 powders 25 nm in size doped with Ag were formed using an ultrasonic sound technique. The experimental results showed the high possibility of removing pollution through the action of a photocatalyst. This powder synthesis technique can be considered as an environmentally friendly powder-forming processing owing to its energy saving characteristics.

Ag doped Hydroxyapatite powder in nano-scale was successfully synthesized either by co-precipitation or by ion exchange route. The fabricated powder was successfully dispersed through freeze drying due to the prevention of secondary particles. The antimicrobial effects of nano-HAp against E.coli was superior to micron ones not only in its strength but also in duration.