Brass patented a technique for the first industrial scale distillation of metallic zinc known as "distillation per descencum" or "the English process." This local zinc was used in speltering and allowed greater control over the zinc content of brass and the production of high-zinc copper alloys which would have been difficult or impossible to produce using cementation, for use in expensive objects such as scientific instruments, clocks, brass buttons and costume jewellery. However Champion continued to use the cheaper calamine cementation method to produce lower-zinc brass and the archaeological remains of bee-hive shaped cementation furnaces have been identified at his works
Microstructurally stable nanocrystalline alloys Microstructurally stable nanocrystalline alloys Microstructurally stable nanocrystalline alloys are alloys that are designed to resist microstructural coarsening under various thermo-mechanical loading conditions. Many applications of metal materials require that they can maintain their structure and strength despite very high temperatures. Efforts to prevent deformations from long term stress, referred to as creep, consist of manipulating alloys to reduce coarsening and migration of individual grains within the metal. The small size of individual metal grains provides high interfacial surface energy which is what prompts coarsening, the increase in grain size, and eventually metallic softening. Nanocrystalline creep is considered to follow the