Tuesday, 29 April, 2025 / Edition 56

In almost any sector, pioneering advancements can come from two places: Entrepreneurship/bootstrapping (startups, research, small companies with great ideas) or industry giants (big-name corporations). The tech space is no exception. One isn’t better than the other, it’s just a case of different strokes for different folks... or perhaps more realistically, different funding sources for different folks.

Today, we will look at examples of both kinds of innovation—a new discovery led by university research and how one major is utilizing technology and innovation to drive business forward. Let’s go. 

Sarah Compton

Editor, Enspired

A New Super Strong Metallic Alloy

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Observing technology and processes at scales larger than previously possible enables new insights, and grain boundary complexions is one of those.

Driving the news: Researchers at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and Lehigh University recently developed a new nonstructured metallic alloy that holds its shape under extreme conditions.

• Findings suggest it is one of the most resilient copper-based materials ever created. It can withstand extreme heat without degrading.

How it works: Part of how the new alloy works is by combining copper with a complexion-stabilized nanostructure. Specifically, it forms copper lithium precipitates, stabilized by a tantalum-rich atomic bilayer complexion.

What is a complexion? Defined in this paper, a complexion is interfacial material or strata that is in thermodynamic equilibrium with the abutting phase(s) and has a stable, finite thickness, typically on the order of 0.2–2 nanometers.

Recall from physics (or igneous petrology…whichever is your frame of reference) how materials undergoing phase changes do not change temperature: boiling water is at 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) plus or minus a few degrees, depending on pressure and composition regardless of time or temperature exposure. The energy in that system is spent causing water to undergo a phase change from water to gas.

What complexions do: The best I can deduce is that a complexion improves strength of materials by taking up energy that would have otherwise destabilized the material.

• The complexion then puts that energy toward a phase shift at the boundary layer.

• It stops there, rather than propagating through the rest of the material.

What’s next: The article states, “By merging the high-temperature resilience of nickel-based superalloys with copper—which is known for exceptional conductivity—the material paves the way for next-generation applications, including heat exchangers, advanced propulsion systems and thermal management solutions for cutting-edge missile and hypersonic technologies.”

Why it matters: The article mentioned this tech could redefine high-temperature materials for aerospace, defense, and industrial applications.

• My brain went to geothermal applications and maybe fusion reactors, but not with a focus on copper specifically, rather the method of these grain boundary complexions.

Where geos come in: There’s a lot of space for geoscientists here. We eat complex, multiphase systems with fluctuating pressure, temperature, and chemical conditions for breakfast and have developed a high understanding of such things without being able to directly observe them. Imagine what we could do if we could see the processes!

For more info on the copper breakthrough specifically, read here.

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How The Majors Are Doing It: BP’s Approach to Tech

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Sometimes, we can look to leaders in the field for a glimpse into how they are using tech to get a sense of both industry standards and the latest advancements.

Driving the news: BP’s Executive Vice President of Technology, Emeka Emembolu, gave an overview of some of the ways the company is using tech to improve business.

Here are some highlights:

• Seismic tech: Seismic technology is a bit of a poster child for integration of advanced tech, and BP has fully committed to the intelligent application of seismic to help optimize production.

• Biofuels: Using biofuels to produce bioenergy is surging as the demand for more energy grows, and maximizing the energy yield from crops like sugarcane holds high promise.

• Digital twins: BP creates and maintains digital twins of key production assets in the cloud. This allows the company to plan maintenance jobs remotely and simulate new engineering processes before field implementation, which increases safety.

  • Combining AI with the cloud and digital twins allows for near-prescient responses, because things like pipeline corrosion can be actively monitored and proactively mitigated.

• Digitization and AI: Where there’s a long history of operations, there’s a lot of well logs and other data that are likely stacked up in some room collecting dust or otherwise not as accessible as they could be, and digitization plus AI hold big promise to bring analog records into the digital worlds and workflows.

The bottom line: Emeka closed out his insights with this, “I think to succeed in technology, you need to be excited about the future, but also willing to challenge the way things are now, asking: ‘How could this process be simpler? How could we make work better? How could we make this data more accessible?’”

A Message from AAPG 

AAPG is thrilled to announce that Tom Wilker will take on the role of executive director at the Association beginning 5 May. 

Wilker has had an impressive career in the private sector, including former leadership roles at Devon Energy, Burlington Resources, The Carlyle Group, Wood Mackenzie, EP Energy, and PetroSkills Oil and Gas Training. 

He is also the president and founder of his own energy consultancy, Curator Upstream Solutions based in The Woodlands, Texas and is a Texas State Licensed Geophysicist.

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✉️ To get in touch with Sarah or suggest a topic for Enspired, send an email to editorial@aapg.org.