Purdue University researchers had created previously uperlatticesfrom layers of the metal titanium nitride and the dielectric, or insulator, aluminum scandium nitride.
which rely on the use of noble metals such as gold and silver, the new metamaterial is compatible with the complementary metalxideemiconductor manufacturing process used to construct integrated circuits.
#New catalyst process uses light not metal for rapid polymerization A team of chemistry and materials science experts from University of California,
Santa barbara and The Dow chemical Company has created a novel way to overcome one of the major hurdles preventing the widespread use of controlled radical polymerization.
In a global polymer industry valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars, a technique called Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization is emerging as a key process for creating well-defined polymers for a vast range of materials, from adhesives to electronics.
However, current ATRP methods by design use metal catalysts a major roadblock to applications for which metal contamination is an issue,
This new method of radical polymerization doesn involve heavy metal catalysts like copper. Their innovative, metal-free ATRP process uses an organic-based photocatalyst
How can we do this without any metals? said Craig Hawker, director of the Dow Materials Institute at UCSB. e looked toward developing an organic catalyst that is highly reducing in the excited state,
Their study was recently detailed in a paper titled etal-Free Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
but the new metal-free rapid polymerization process ushes controlled radical polymerization into new areas and new applications, according to Hawker. any processes in use today all start with ATRP.
Controlling radical polymerization processes is critical for the synthesis of functional block polymers. As a catalyst, phenothiazine builds block copolymers in a sequential manner,
achieving high chain-end fidelity. This translates into a high degree of versatility in polymer structure,
as well as an efficient process. ur process doesn need heat. You can do this at room temperature with simple LED LIGHTS,
said Hawker. ee had success with a range of vinyl monomers, so this polymerization strategy is useful on many levels. he development of living radical processes,
such as ATRP, is arguably one of the biggest things to happen in polymer chemistry in the past few decades,
he added. his new discovery will significantly further the whole field. w
#Chemists one step closer to new generation of electric car battery Lithium sulphur (Li-S) batteries can theoretically power an electric car three times further than current lithium-ion batteries for the same weight at much
These are the reasons why carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRPS) have still not yet found their path into wide-scale serial production so far to date.
however if composite materials have to be processed. his is why from a materials engineering perspective we optimize the surfaces of the fiberssays Endres.
Because when it comes to recycling fiber composite materials are a proverbial ough nut to crack.
Fibers inside these parts are embedded into a thermoplastic matrix#plastic that is which can be shaped at ultra-high temperatures
Solid Polymer Ionic Liquid (SPIL) electrolyte enables the ultra-thin lithium metal anode and improves the cell-level energy density by 50%compared to graphite anodes
parallel batches and then an array of them is transferred onto a thin sheet of glass or plastic.
and their wiring consists of acrylic plastic or Plexiglas, this system has the potential to be inexpensive to produce.
Even though the printed plastic lenses were not up to specification, they were able to demonstrate over 100 times solar concentration.
They were then able to gently scrape some of the silver to leave behind two islands of metal as electrodes, with a strip of silicene between them.
The LED device was constructed by combining different 2d crystals and emits light from across its whole surface.
we show that they can provide the basis for flexible and semitransparent electronics. he range of functionalities for the demonstrated heterostructures is expected to grow further on increasing the number of available 2d crystals
By constructing tiny irrorsto trap light around impurity atoms in diamond crystals, the team dramatically increased the efficiency with
The new findings using a layer of one-atom-thick graphene deposited on top of a similar 2-D layer of a material called hexagonal boron nitride (hbn) are published in the journal Nano Letters.
they will be manufactured from polymer-lined 5 mm-thick carbon fibre in the finished model. The lightweight lithium-polymer hybrid fuel cell that converts the hydrogen gas into electricity to power the rotors was developed by a sister company,
called Horizon Energy systems. y removing the design silos that typically separate the energy storage component from UAV frame development,
But many of the advances rely on petroleum-based plastics and toxic materials. Yu-Zhong Wang, Fei Song and colleagues wanted to seek a reenerway forward.
semiconducting crystals made out of zinc and selenium. The paper glowed at room temperature and could be rolled
the team is also considering the use of other metals, such as zinc and magnesium that could serve as the anode in a battery of this type. e also expect that other organometallic compounds with multi-valence-state metal centers (redox centers) may also function as the anode,
Gong and her students also have been based studying bio polymers for more than a decade. CNF offers many benefits over current chip substrates, she says. he advantage of CNF over other polymers is that it a bio-based material and most other polymers are based petroleum polymers.
Bio-based materials are sustainable biocompatible and biodegradable, Gong says. nd, compared to other polymers,
CNF actually has a relatively low thermal expansion coefficient. The group work also demonstrates a more environmentally friendly process that showed performance similar to existing chips.
In the normal non-superconducting phase, the electrons in most metals move independentlyhe scattering of electrons causes electrical resistance.
we noticed that it was almost invisible and very flexible like a polymer and could literally be sucked into a glass needle or pipette.
researchers lay out a mesh of nanowires sandwiched in layers of organic polymer. The first layer is dissolved then, leaving the flexible mesh,
The global market for polymers such as this approaches $7 billion, and there are estimates the U s. spends up to $120 billion a year on probiotic products such as yogurt, sour cream and buttermilk.
beginning in the early 1990s when a novel polymer with an ability to rapidly thicken milk was discovered by an OSU microbiologist.
The polymer is known as Ropy 352 and produced by a non-disease-causing bacterium. his is one of many naturally occurring,
never-before reported grouping of genes that code for a unique polymer that naturally thickens milk.
In basic research, wee also broadened our understanding of how and why non-disease-causing bacteria produce polymers.
This polymer appears to give fermented foods a smooth thick, creamy property, and may initially find uses in sour cream, yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, cream cheese and artisan soft cheeses.
And unlike other polymers that are used now commonly as thickeners, it may add probiotic characteristics to foods,
non-disease-causing bacterial strains that produce unique polymers with characteristics desirable and safe for food products,
One of the most common polymers, xanthum gum, has been in use since 1969 and is found in a huge range of food products, from canned foods to ice cream, pharmaceuticals and beauty products.
Trempy research program has determined the new polymer will thicken whole and nonfat milk, lactose-free milk, coconut milk, rice milk,
Beyond that, the polymer may have a wide range of applications such as thickening of pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, fruit juices, cosmetics and personal care products.
In their broader uses, microbial polymers are used for food production, chemical production, detergents, cosmetics, paints, pesticides, fertilizers, film formers, lubricants, explosives, pharmaceutical production and waste treatment.
Polymer material produced by a 3-D printer includes soft, flexible material (clear or lighter tone) with particles of hard material (black) embedded, in predetermined arrangements.
involves a material that is composed of two different polymers with different degrees of stiffness: More rigid particles are embedded within a matrix of a more flexible polymer.
When squeezed, the material surface changes from smooth to a pattern determined by the spacing and shapes of the implanted harder particles;
#Centimeter-long origami robot At the recent International Conference on Robotics and Automation, MIT researchers presented a printable origami robot that folds itself up from a flat sheet of plastic
The middle layer always consisted of polyvinyl chloride, a plastic commonly used in plumbing pipes, which contracts when heated.
In the acetone-soluble prototype, the outer layers were polystyrene. Slits cut into the outer layers by a laser cutter guide the folding process.
If two slits on opposite sides of the sheet are of different widths then when the middle layer contracts, it forces the narrower slit edges together,
which a tiny layer of magnetic material is sandwiched between tantalum and tantalum-oxide layers. Long stripes of magnetic domains appear in the magnetic material on one side of a tiny channel.
When the scientists applied an electric current to the metal layers, the stripes stretched through the channel
rare-earth metals are, as their name suggests, hard to come by. Mining and purifying them is an expensive,
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have pioneered now a process that could enable the efficient recycling two of these metals, neodymium and dysprosium.
and Patrick J. Carroll, director of the University of Pennsylvania X-ray Crystallography Facility, also contributed to the study.
the two metals need to be separated and remixed before they can be reused. t, in principle, easier to get the neodymium
The technique, known as liquid-liquid extraction, involves dissolving the composite material and chemically filtering the elements apart.
The process is repeated thousands of times to get useful purities of the rare-earth metals,
Rather than this liquid-liquid method, Schelter team has devised a way to separate the two metals by having neodymium stay dissolved in a solution
enabling the two metals to be separated easily. Once apart, an acid bath can strip the ligand off both metals,
enabling it to be recycled as well. f you have the right ligand, you can do this separation in five minutes,
so it is less likely to fall off before the metals are separated. Further modification of the ligand could enable other rare earths in technology products,
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).
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
This could lead to making perfect, single-crystal silicon nanostructures. They haven done it yet,
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.
The present heat-storage ceramic is expected to be a new candidate for use in solar heat power generation systems,
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
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,
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
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