A novel magnet half the size of a cardboard toilet tissue roll usurped the title of “world’s strongest magnetic field” from the metal titan that had held it for two decades at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. And its makers say we ain’t seen nothing yet: By packing an exceptionally high-field…
Skinflow: A Soft Robotic Skin Based on Liquid Transmission
Using sound vibrations and pulses of near-infrared light, a Rutgers University scientist has developed a new “virtual biopsy” device that can quickly determine a skin lesion’s depth and potential malignancy without using a scalpel. The ability to analyze a skin tumor non-invasively could make biopsies much less risky and distressing to patients, according to a…
Mitigating defects in metal AM parts
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers, along with scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) have discovered a solution to a major type of defect in metal 3D-printed parts. Combining high-performance computer simulations with X-ray imaging of the laser powder bed fusion (LBPF) metal additive manufacturing (AM) process obtained with SLAC’s synchrotron, researchers have found…
Injection-Molding Wood Powder for Sustainable Fabrication
Biomass materials such as wood are environmentally-friendly alternatives to fossil resources. As an example, wood is typically non-toxic and carbon neutral. Furthermore, wood can be produced in a sustainable manner by appropriate planting and trimming of trees. Therefore, the use of wood resources as industrial materials is an important aspect for realizing a sustainable society.…
Penn Engineers Design Nanostructured Diamond Metalens for Compact Quantum Technologies
At the chemical level, diamonds are no more than carbon atoms aligned in a precise, three-dimensional (3D) crystal lattice. However, even a seemingly flawless diamond contains defects: spots in that lattice where a carbon atom is missing or has been replaced by something else. Some of these defects are highly desirable; they trap individual electrons…
Dow launches next generation of silicone optical bonding materials for displays
Dow Performance Silicones is unveiling at CES Asia 2019 (booth N1-1014) two new optical bonding solutions for automotive and consumer displays exposed to harsh environmental conditions. They include DOWSIL VE-2003 UV Optical Bonding Material, designed to bond a glass or plastic display cover and touch panel to the LCD or OLED display module, and DOWSIL VE-4001…
How Do Foams Collapse?
Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have successfully found two distinct mechanisms by which foams can collapse, yielding insight into the prevention/acceleration of foam rupture in industrial materials e.g. foods, cosmetics, insulation, stored chemicals. When a bubble breaks, they found that a collapse event propagates via impact with the receding film and tiny scattered droplets breaking…
Researchers ‘Stretch’ the Ability of 2D Materials to Change Technology
Two-dimensional (2D) materials – as thin as a single layer of atoms – have intrigued scientists with their flexibility, elasticity, and unique electronic properties, as first discovered in materials such as graphene in 2004. Some of these materials can be especially susceptible to changes in their material properties as they are stretched and pulled. Under…
UCI Scientists Create New Class of Two-Dimensional Materials
In a paper published this week in Nature, materials science researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions unveil a new process for producing oxide perovskite crystals in exquisitely flexible, free-standing layers. A two-dimensional rendition of this substance is intriguing to scientists and engineers, because 2D materials have been shown to possess remarkable electronic…
A Polar-Bear-Inspired Material for Heat Insulation
For polar bears, the insulation provided by their fat, skin, and fur is a matter of survival in the frigid Arctic. For engineers, polar bear hair is a dream template for synthetic materials that might lock in heat just as well as the natural version. Now, materials scientists in China have developed such an insulator,…
How to Speed up the Discovery of New Solar Cell Materials
A broad class of materials called perovskites is considered one of the most promising avenues for developing new, more efficient solar cells. But the virtually limitless number of possible combinations of these materials’ constituent elements makes the search for promising new perovskites slow and painstaking. Now, a team of researchers at MIT and several other…
A Virtual Substrate Opens Path to Oxide Films on Silicon for Application in 5G, MEMS, Sensors and Quantum Computation
Proof that a new ability to grow thin films of an important class of materials called complex oxides will, for the first time, make these materials commercially feasible, according to Penn State materials scientists. Complex oxides are crystals with a composition that typically consists of oxygen and at least two other, different elements. In their…
Chemists Could Make ‘Smart Glass’ Smarter by Manipulating it at the Nanoscale
“Smart glass,” an energy-efficiency product found in newer windows of cars, buildings and airplanes, slowly changes between transparent and tinted at the flip of a switch. “Slowly” is the operative word; typical smart glass takes several minutes to reach its darkened state, and many cycles between light and dark tend to degrade the tinting quality…
New Interaction Between Thin Film Magnets for Faster Memory Devices
Breakthrough discovery in the field of electromagnetism opens up to the design of three-dimensional spin structures, which could be the basic units of the magnetic storage units of the future. Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology, Germany and South Korea discovered a new interaction between thin film magnets, which lays the foundations for faster and…
Cracking Open the Black Box of Automated Machine Learning
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed an interactive tool that, for the first time, lets users see and control how automated machine-learning systems work. The aim is to build confidence in these systems and find ways to improve them. Designing a machine-learning model for a certain task—such as image classification, disease diagnoses, and stock…
Researchers Can Now Predict Properties of Disordered Polymers
Thanks to a team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, scientists are able to read patterns on long chains of molecules to understand and predict behavior of disordered strands of proteins and polymers. The results could, among other things, pave the way to develop new materials…
Quick Liquid Packaging: Encasing Water Silhouettes in 3-D Polymer Membranes for Lab-In-A-Drop Experiments
The ability to confine water in an enclosed compartment without directly manipulating it or using rigid containers is an attractive possibility. In a recent study, Sara Coppola and an interdisciplinary research team in the departments of Biomaterials, Intelligent systems, Industrial Production Engineering and Advanced Biomaterials for Healthcare in Italy, proposed a water-based, bottom-up approach to encase facile,…
Flexible Generators Turn Movement into Energy
Wearable devices that harvest energy from movement are not a new idea, but a material created at Rice University may make them more practical. The Rice lab of chemist James Tour has adapted laser-induced graphene (LIG) into small, metal-free devices that generate electricity. Like rubbing a balloon on hair, putting LIG composites in contact with…
Texas A&M Researcher Makes Breakthrough Discovery in Stretchable Electronics Materials
With a wide range of healthcare, energy and military applications, stretchable electronics are revered for their ability to be compressed, twisted and conformed to uneven surfaces without losing functionality. By using the elasticity of polymers such as silicone, these emerging technologies are made to move in ways that mimic skin. This sheds light on why…
Origami-Inspired Materials Could Soften the Blow for Reusable Spacecraft
Space vehicles like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 are designed to be reusable. But this means that, like Olympic gymnasts hoping for a gold medal, they have to stick their landings. Landing is stressful on a rocket’s legs because they must handle the force from the impact with the landing pad. One way to combat this is…
Using Wood to Cool a House
When people think of wood in a house, the first thought is logs in a fireplace to provide extra warmth. But researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of California have another idea—harnessing the intricate structure of processed wood to develop a passive cooling method that could save homeowners energy. The method involves…
Carnegie Mellon Researchers Create Soft, Flexible Materials with Enhanced Properties
A team of polymer chemists and engineers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new methodology that can be used to create a class of stretchable polymer composites with enhanced electrical and thermal properties. These materials are promising candidates for use in soft robotics, self-healing electronics and medical devices. The results are published in the…
Charging Into the Future— Novel Rock Salt for Use in Rechargeable Magnesium Batteries
Life today depends heavily on electricity. However, the unrelenting demand for electricity calls for increasingly greener and “portable” sources of energy. Although windmills and solar panels are promising alternatives, the fluctuation in output levels depending on external factors renders them as unreliable. Thus, from the viewpoint of resource allocation and economics, high-energy density secondary batteries…
Building Next Gen Smart Materials with the Power of Sound
Researchers have used sound waves to precisely manipulate atoms and molecules, accelerating the sustainable production of breakthrough smart materials. Metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, are incredibly versatile and super porous nanomaterials that can be used to store, separate, release or protect almost anything. Predicted to be the defining material of the 21st century, MOFs are ideal…
Mathematical Technique Quickly Tunes Next-Generation Lenses
Most of us know optical lenses as curved, transparent pieces of plastic or glass, designed to focus light for microscopes, spectacles, cameras, and more. For the most part, a lens’ curved shape has not changed much since it was invented many centuries ago. In the last decade, however, engineers have created flat, ultrathin materials called…