and co-first author Crystal S. Conn, Phd, a postdoctoral fellow in the UCSF Department of Urology,
The scientists devised a new arrangement of solar cell ingredients, with bundles of polymer donors (green rods) and neatly organized fullerene acceptors (purple, tan.
There is currently a big push to make lower-cost solar cells using plastics, rather than silicon,
you can vastly improve the retention of energy. he two components that make the UCLA-developed system work are a polymer donor and a nanoscale fullerene acceptor.
The polymer donor absorbs sunlight and passes electrons to the fullerene acceptor; the process generates electrical energy.
The plastic materials, called organic photovoltaics, are organized typically like a plate of cooked pasta a disorganized mass of long, skinny polymer paghettiwith random fullerene eatballs.
because the electrons sometimes hop back to the polymer spaghetti and are lost. The UCLA technology arranges the elements more neatly like small bundles of uncooked spaghetti with precisely placed meatballs.
The fullerenes inside the structure take electrons from the polymers and toss them to the outside fullerene
which can effectively keep the electrons away from the polymer for weeks. hen the charges never come back together,
these particles are coated with polymers, which fine-tune their optical properties and their rate of degradation in the body.
These polymers can be loaded with drugs that are released gradually. Finally, carbon nanoparticles are rather small, less than eight nanometres in diameter (in comparison,
Scientists also found that they can alter the infusion of the particles into melanoma cells by adjusting the polymer coatings.
Scientists say that they can be coated with different polymers to give them different optical properties to make them even easier to detect in the organism,
says Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT and a cofounder of 24m (and previously a cofounder of battery company A123).
and colleagues including W. Craig Carter, the POSCO Professor of Materials science and engineering. In this so-called low battery, the electrodes are suspensions of tiny particles carried by a liquid
a conductive polymer material that responds to electromagnetic fields. Wen Gao, a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Paralysis Research who worked on the project with Borgens,
The nanowire patches adhere to the site of injury through surface tension, Gao said. The magnitude and wave form of the electromagnetic field must be tuned to obtain the optimum release of the drug
and the shape change of the polymer that allows it to store and release drugs,
the polymer snaps back to the initial architecture and retains the remaining drug molecules . or each different drug the team would need to find the corresponding optimal electromagnetic field for its release,
which interact with each other within the silica fiber optic cables. The researchers note that this approach could be used in systems with far more communication channels.
and Steven P. Levitan, Phd, John A. Jurenko Professor of Electrical and Computer engineering, integrated models for self-oscillating polymer gels and piezoelectric micro-electric-mechanical systems to devise a new
and detected using ferromagnetic metal contacts with a tunnel barrier consisting of single layer graphene between the metal and silicon NW.
The ferromagnetic metal/graphene tunnel barrier contacts used to inject and detect spin appear as blue,
which depend critically on the interface resistance between a ferromagnetic metal contact and the NW.
and compatibility with both the ferromagnetic metal and silicon NW. Using intrinsic 2d layers such as graphene
or hexagonal boron nitride as tunnel contacts on nanowires offers many advantages over conventional materials deposited by vapor deposition (such as Al2o3
The use of multilayer rather than single layer graphene in such structures may provide much higher values of the tunnel spin polarization because of band structure derived spin filtering effects predicted for selected ferromagnetic metal/multi
and Dr. Berend Jonker from the Materials science and Technology Division, and Dr. Jeremy Robinson from the Electronics Science and Technology Division i
When pressure is increased in the pores of the polymer, the structure swells and expands in a preferred direction.
The walls of the cells are made of a non-swellable polymer; a swellable polymer fills the interior of the chambers.
If the pressure inside the cells increases, for example, because the swellable polymer absorbs liquids, the structure expands in one direction.
Advanced Materials Interfaces/MPI of Colloids and Interfacesif you enjoy walking in the woods, you may well be familiar with the phenomenon.
To this end, they developed a computer simulation as well as tissue-like materials from a porous polymer in
Moveable parts of such robots, the actuators, might consist of a porous polymer with precisely defined pore properties. he actual motion could then be controlled by compressed air or an expandable fluid in the pores
The researchers were delighted also that the theoretical predictions from the computer simulation almost perfectly matched the results of their tests on synthesized porous polymer materials.
says Dunlop. Synthetic polymer honeycomb structures from a 3d printerthe composition of the cell walls plays a key role in the expansion process in the relevant cells of pinecones
The researchers simulated this structure for their practical experiments by bonding two different swellable polymer layers together.
The scientists envisage using porous polymer materials whose pores are filled with a hygroscopic fluid, for example a superabsorbing hydrogel, in future practical applications.
but they anticipate the technique will be widely applicable to both functionality driven materials science research
The study was supported by the Department of energy Office of Science and used resources at the Center for Nanophase Materials sciences, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at ORNL.
Scientists from PML Semiconductor and Dimensional Metrology Division have performed studies on the way the interface between a ferromagnetic material (cobalt)
This is helpful in efficient injection of the spin-polarized charge carrier from ferromagnetic materials to organic materials.
#Polymer mold makes perfect silicon nanostructures Using molds to shape things is as old as humanity.
In the Bronze age, the copper-tin alloy was melted and cast into weapons in ceramic molds.
In a breakthrough for nanoscience, Cornell polymer engineers have made such a mold for nanostructures that can shape liquid silicon out of an organic polymer material.
The advance is from the lab of Uli Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering in the Department of Materials science and engineering,
whose lab previously has led the creation of novel materials made of organic polymers. With the right chemistry, organic polymers self-assemble,
and the researchers used this special ability of polymers to make a mold dotted with precisely shaped and sized nanopores..
Normally, melting amorphous silicon, which has a melting temperature of about 2, 350 degrees, would destroy the delicate polymer mold,
which degrades at about 600 degrees. But the scientists, in collaboration with Michael Thompson, associate professor of materials science and engineering, got around this issue by using extremely short melt periods induced by a laser.
The researchers found the polymer mold holds up if the silicon is heated by laser pulses just nanoseconds long.
At such short time scales, silicon can be heated to a liquid, but the melt duration is so short the polymer doesn have time to oxidize
and decompose. They essentially tricked the polymer mold into retaining its shape at temperatures above its decomposition point.
When the mold was etched away, the researchers showed that the silicon had been shaped perfectly by the mold.
This could lead to making perfect, single-crystal silicon nanostructures. They haven done it yet,
In materials science, the goal is always to get well-defined structures that can be studied without interference from material defects.
Discovery of single-crystal silicon the semiconductor in every integrated circuit made the electronics revolution possible.
It took cutting single crystals into wafers to truly understand silicon semiconducting properties. Today, nanotechnology allows incredibly detailed nanoscale etching, down to 10 nanometers on a silicon wafer.
Semiconductors like silicon don self-assemble into perfectly ordered structures like polymers Do it almost unheard of to get a 3-D structured single crystal of a semiconductor.
porous nanomaterials using specially structured molecules called block copolymers. They first used a carbon dioxide laser in Thompson lab to ritethe nanoporous materials onto a silicon wafer.
contained a block copolymer, which directed the assembly of a polymer resin. Writing lines in the film with the laser,
the block copolymer decomposed, acting like a positive-tone resist, while the negative-tone resin was left behind to form the porous nanostructure.
That became the mold. e demonstrated that we can use organic templates with structures as complicated as a gyroid, a periodically ordered cubic network structure,
The researchers found that it was possible to combine the gel with silica nanoparticles microscopic particles previously found to stop bleeding to develop an even more powerful barrier to promote wound healing. his could allow us to immediately stop bleeding with one treatment
They can also be used to communicate through objects, such as steel, that electromagnetic waves can penetrate. A canyon or pipistrelle bat
typically made of paper or plastic, that vibrate to produce or detect sound, respectively. The diaphragms in the new devices are graphene sheets a mere one atom thick that have the right combination of stiffness
2015 at a lab on KAIST campus. They used high-frequency magnetic materials in a dipole coil structure to build a thin,
with each coil having a ferrite core and connected with a resonant capacitor. Comparing to a conventional loop coil,
The ferrite cores are designed optimally to reduce the core volume by half, and their ability to transfer power is unaffected nearly by human bodies or surrounding metal objects,
as well as semiconductive and conductive polymers to tailor the behavior of natural cotton fibers. he layers were so thin that the flexibility of the cotton fibers is preserved always,
Surface plasmons are confined to the surface of a metal. In order to create wakes through them Capasso team designed a faster-than-light running wave of charge along a one-dimensional metamaterial like a powerboat speeding across a lake.
Rather than carrying a bunch load of plastics and paper money throughout the day and through all sorts of streets and roads you pass through,
#Miniature Technology, Large-scale Impact The postage stamp-sized square of fused silica Kjeld Janssen is holding may not look like a whole lot to the untrained eye,
The heat storage ceramic discovered by the research group of Professor Ohkoshi at the University of Tokyo Graduate school of Science preserves heat energy for a prolonged period.
and release a large amount of heat energy (230 kj L#1). This heat energy stored is large at approximately 70%of the latent heat energy of water at its melting point.
The present heat-storage ceramic is expected to be a new candidate for use in solar heat power generation systems,
a physicist in the Center for Computational Materials science at NRL and expert in density-functional theory, pointed out that,
which are coated with a charged polymer layer that helps them adhere to the target microbes,
and Staphylococcus epidermis, a bacterium that can cause harmful biofilms on plastics like catheters in the human body.
Previous research has evaluated the use of microneedles made of silicon or metal, but they were shown not to be safe.
Lithium ion batteriescathodes typically contain heavy metal ions like manganese, cobalt or iron, but in lithium air batteries, the much lighter oxygen in a sense acts as the cathode, creating a more efficient design.
Typically, scientists who study these circuits have to choose between injecting drugs through bulky metal tubes
said John A. Rogers, Ph d.,professor of materials science and engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a senior author. ltra-miniaturized devices like this have tremendous potential for science and medicine. ith a thickness of 80 micrometers and a width of 500 micrometers,
faster and easier to produce than those made from only a single crystal. Yet single-crystal cells have boasted traditionally better efficiency
partly because they feature far fewer grains fragments akin to microscopic puzzle pieces. The barriers between these grains reduce cell efficiency by trapping
The researchers have developed a method for growing combinations of different materials in a needle-shaped crystal called a nanowire.
The researchers have found out how to grow smaller crystals within the nanowire, forming a structure like a crystal rod with an embedded array of gems.
kinking and crystal structure can be controlled by tuning the self-assembly conditions. As nanowires become better controlled,
These tiny crystals form in the liquid, but later attach to the nanowire and then become embedded as the nanowire is grown further.
This catalyst mediated docking process can elf-optimiseto create highly perfect interfaces for the embedded crystals.
resulted in complex structures consisting of nanowires with embedded nanoscale crystals, or quantum dots, of controlled size and position. he technique allows two different materials to be incorporated into the same nanowire,
even if the lattice structures of the two crystals don perfectly match, said Hofmann. t a flexible platform that can be used for different technologies. ossible applications for this technique range from atomically perfect buried interconnects to single-electron transistors, high-density memories, light emission, semiconductor lasers,
These materials include activated carbons, zeolites, metal-organic framework materials and certain porous polymers which act as olecular sponges Solid-like behaviour Using inelastic neutron scattering,
#Scientist discovers magnetic material unnecessary to create spin current It doesn happen often that a young scientist makes a significant and unexpected discovery,
What he foundhat you don need a magnetic material to create spin current from insulatorsas important implications for the field of spintronics and the development of high-speed,
said Anand Bhattacharya, a physicist in Argonne Materials science Division and the Center for Nanoscale Materials (a DOE Office of Science user facility),
scientists have kept typically electrons stationary in a lattice made of an insulating ferromagnetic material, such as yttrium iron garnet (YIG).
You can use either a paramagnetic metal or a paramagnetic insulator to do it now
#Scientists Stretch Electrically Conducting Fibers to New Lengths An international research team based at The University of Texas at Dallas has made electrically conducting fibers that can be stretched reversibly to over 14 times their initial length and
demonstrated that the conducting elastomers can be fabricated in diameters ranging from the very small about 150 microns,
string-like polymers storing the genetic information of life and, in a cell, are packed tightly into structures called chromosomes.
and provides an excellent guide for developing new drugs with fewer side effects. esearchers at the Center for Applied Structural Discovery helped to pioneer a new technique called femtosecond crystallography,
Contributions from ASU researchers included crystallization and biophysical characterization of the rhodopsin-arrestin constructs and crystals, X-ray data collection and evaluation,
However, these devices, often created with nondegradable elastic polymers, bear an inherent risk of intestinal obstruction as a result of accidental fracture or migration.
Now, researchers at MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have created a polymer gel that overcomes this safety concern
This polymer is ph-responsive: It is stable in the acidic stomach environment but dissolves in the small intestine near-neutral ph,
and folding of devices into easily ingestible capsules meaning this polymer can be used to create safe devices designed for extremely prolonged residence in the stomach. ne of the issues with any device in the GI TRACT is that there the potential for an obstruction,
polymer gel for creating gastric devices. Shiyi Zhang, a postdoc at the Koch Institute, is the paper lead author.
the researchers were interested in developing a polymer with elastic properties. n elastic device can be folded into something small,
But the size and shape of existing devices with elastic polymers have been limited by safety concerns,
Because of this, the researchers wanted their polymer to also be enteric or have a mechanism that would enable it to pass through the stomach unaltered before disintegrating in the intestines. o lower any possible risk of obstruction,
the researchers synthesized an elastic polymer and combined it in solution with a clinically utilized enteric polymer.
Adding hydrochloric acid and centrifuging the solution resulted in a flexible, yet resilient, polymer gel that exhibits both elastic and enteric properties.
The researchers used the gel polycaprolactone (PCL), a nontoxic, degradable polyester, to construct several device prototypes.
They first created ring-shaped devices by using the gel to link arcs of PCL in a circular mold.
the polymer gel dissolved, allowing for the safe passage of the small PCL pieces without obstruction.
Improving adherence The combined enteric and elastic properties of this polymer gel could significantly improve the design and adoption of gastric-resident devices.
With further work in adjusting the polymer composition or the design of the system they say that they could tailor devices to release drugs over a specific timeframe of up to weeks or months at a time.
#Speedy crystal sponges to clean up waste Close up of the metal organic framework crystals. New sponge-like crystals that clean up contaminants in industrial waste
and soil can now be made rapidly and for 30 per cent of the cost. CSIRO new method, developed in collaboration with The University of Padova (Italy)
and The University of Adelaide, makes the crystals viable to manufacture for the first time by reducing the production time from up to two days down to as few as 15 minutes.
The crystals are made of extremely porous metal organic frameworks (MOFS) and have an internal storage capacity of 7,
This means that the crystals can filter huge volumes of industrial wastewater, trapping large amounts of contaminants including carcinogenic material and heavy metals.
CSIRO research team leader, Dr Paolo Falcaro, said the length of time it takes to produce MOFS has been a barrier to their manufacture until now. ee estimated that this process could cut the cost to make MOFS by thousands of dollars for Australian manufacturers,
Dr Falcaro said. hile wee initially used the method to create zinc oxide-based MOFS, it could be applied to a range of different MOFS with applications spanning energy and pharmaceuticals.
and cost-effective way to grow metal organic frameworksproducing MOF crystals has traditionally been an energy-intensive process due to the heating and cooling required,
and explore turning the crystals into a sustainable industrial waste management product, Dr Falcaro said. CSIRO has used already MOFS to develop a molecular shell to protect
Semiconductors, usually a solid chemical element or compound arranged into crystals, are used widely for computer chips or for light generation in telecommunication systems.
Liu said. e have not been able to grow different semiconductor crystals together in high enough quality,
High quality crystals can be grown even with large mismatch of different lattice constants. Recognizing this unique possibility early on,
and then convert the materials into the right alloy contents to emit the blue color.
Ribo-T may be able to be tuned to produce unique and functional polymers for exploring ribosome functions
or producing designer therapeutics and perhaps one day even non-biological polymers. No one has developed ever something of this nature. e felt like there was a small very small chance Ribo-T could work
the mesh is composed of nanoscale metal wires and polymers. Tiny electronic devices, such as sensors and electrode stimulators, can be built into it.
see-through overlay called WYSIPS Crystal (the acronym stands for hat you see is photovoltaic surface that sits between the glass
WYSIPS Crystal marketing director Matthieu de Broca says that Sunpartner is working with Kyocera, which makes a number of ruggedized handsets,
to get WYSIPS Crystal into phones next year. But while De Broca says the energy WYSIPS Crystal can produce depends on the kind of light it exposed tontense natural light will work better than diffuse indoor lightingn its current form it can boost battery life by only about 10 to 15 percent. t
will never be able to produce enough to charge the phone from scratch, he says. Much clunkier but perhaps more suited to that job is a wearable charger from Ampy,
The Birth of a New Wonder Material In the last few years, two-dimensional crystals have emerged as some of the most exciting new materials to play with.
Consequently, materials scientists have been falling over themselves to discover the extraordinary properties of graphene, boron nitride, molybdenum disulphide, and so on.
and even to reinforce composite materials to make them stronger. In bulk form, black phosphorus is made of many layers, like graphite.
For example, they added the nanosheets to a film of polyvinyl chloride, thereby doubling its strength and increasing its tensile toughness sixfold.
The researchers have been studying bio-based polymers for more than a decade. While they showed some promise,
One interesting quirk of their physics is that they can behave as a composite of matter and antimatter inside a crystal
and steer themselves without scattering,"said M. Zahid Hasan, who led the research team.""These are very fast electrons that behave like unidirectional light beams
Heavy metals like mercury, lead and arsenic are released into the oceans through manufacturing and industrial processes.
(which has previously proved useful in cleaning up heavy metals) curled up into a coral-like formation.
when placed around a central silica bead. Each etalis a ocal conic domain a structure that can be used as a simple lens. ur first question was
transmitting an elastic energy cue that causes the crystal focal conic domains to line up in concentric circles around the posts.
said Shu Yang, a professor in Penn Engineering departments of Materials science and engineering and Chemical and Biomolecular engineering.
#Semiconductor crystals could be key to extending Moore Law IBM researchers have developed a process for growing crystals made from semiconductor materials,
including alloys of indium, gallium and arsenide. III-V semiconductors are believed to be a potential future material for computer chips
The crystals were grown using a technique called template-assisted selective epitaxy (TASE) using metal organic chemical vapour deposition.
It allowed the team to develop defect-free crystals, and to lithographically define oxide templates and fill them via epitaxy, making nanowires, cross junctions,
They do this using dedicated pigment-containing cells in their skin called chromophores, which they can expands
The skin the team has developed is made from a soft electroactive dielectric elastomer, coated with black carbon grease.
Applying a current makes this elastomer expand and contract. Arranging these artificial chromatophores in a linear array, the team devised mathematical algorithms to control how the cells react to changes in state of neighbouring cells,
rubbery polymer with carbon grease electrodes, expand and contract in response to elextric current In a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface,
which consist of hollow metal spheres of one metal dispersed in a matrix which can be of the same or a different metal,
for military transport applications. They are mechanically strong, thermally insulative and lightweight, with their structure reducing the density compared with a bulk material,
Her research involved comparing foamsshielding properties against pure lead and the A356 grade of aluminium, metals that are used currently for shielding purposes.
A sample of high-Z steel-steel foam The best results were obtained from a foam called high-Z steel-steel,
which consists of stainless steel spheres dispersed in a matrix of high-speed T15 steel, an alloy containing trace amounts of vanadium and tungsten.
The term High-Z refers to all the metals in the alloy having a large number of protons in their atomic nuclei;
Rabiei team chose this alloy because tungsten and vanadium both have good radiation shielding properties.
The tungsten-containing foam was modified so that its density was the same as a foam made entirely from stainless steel.
The researchers found that the high-Z foam was as good as the bulk materials at blocking high-energy gamma rays,
The size of the hollow steel spheres seemed to have little effect, as long as the ratio of wall thickness to diameter stayed constant;
The transistor is made of a single molecule of phthalocyanine surrounded by ring of 12 positively charged indium atoms placed on an indium arsenide crystal,
When billions of these spores were glued together on several plastic tapes called HYDRAS (hygroscopic-driven artificial muscles),
Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT, was of the view that the existing technology is not perfect
#Researchers Develop Super-Hydrophobic Metal Surfaces Using Lasers Researchers have turned metal surfaces water repellent using femtosecond laser pulses.
Researchers from the University of Rochester have used femtosecond laser pulses to turn metals waterproof or super-hydrophobic.
said, his is the first time that a multifunctional metal surface is created by lasers that is super-hydrophobic (water repelling),
titanium and brass to short bursts of lasers. These short burst lasted for only millionth of a billionth of a second.
The optical and wetting properties of the surfaces of the three metals were altered by these nanostructures.
According to the researchers, properties they provide to the metal will not deteriorate. The super-hydrophobic properties of the laser-patterned metals are similar to the famous nonstick coating.
The project was financed by The Bill & Melissa Gates Foundation and Air force Office of Scientific research and is published in the Journal of Applied Physics y
#Superabsorbent Polymer Blows Up Brain Samples To Give a Better View Researchers have come up with an inexpensive technique for enlarging brain samples
They want to find more substances that can expand the specimens even more. ne thing we want to do is figure out how to expand the polymers even more.
Another priority for us is to build stronger polymers, or find a way of reinforcing them in the expanded state,
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