and then layered on top with a sheet of gold metal. Because graphene sticks better to gold than to copper,
which we can place single-layer graphene between two metals and ensure that it contains no rips,
Once the gold/graphene composite is separated from the copper substrate, the newly exposed side of the graphene layer is sandwiched with another gold sheet to produce the gold:
Except it not glass, it a special ceramic called spinel {spin-ELL} that the U s. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has been researching over the last 10 years. pinel is actually a mineral,
if I have all these crystals packed together, the crack gets deflected at the hard crystals:
you dissipate the crack energy. A manufacturing process that transferable and scalable When scientists first started trying to make glass-like spinel,
they were using a crucible instead of a press. big problem with growing crystals is that you have to melt the starting powder at very high temperatures,
and so if youe trying to make very high quality crystals, you end up with a huge amount of defects.
A ullet-proofwindow today, for example, has layers of plastic and glass perhaps five inches thick. f you replaced that with spinel,
It a lot like attaching a drop of solder on the string of a guitar it changes its vibration frequency
A common way to decipher molecular structures is to use x-ray crystallography. This complicated method involves purifying and crystallising the molecules
in order to achieve composite materials with enhanced mechanical properties for engineering body parts. Professor Hutmacher said hydrogels were favoured
Professor Hutmacher said the team had introduced organised high-porosity microfiber networks that are printed using a new technique called elt electrospinning writing e found that the stiffness of the gel/scaffold composites increased synergistically up to 54 times,
and lattice vibrations in a crystal of lithium niobate and to observe how a laser focused onto a glass plate creates a hot, rapidly expanding plume of plasma.
Palacci and colleagues wrapped pale polymer around tiny cubes of hematite, a dark mineral of iron and oxygen that protrudes from the spherical beads as a reddish dot.
The polymer beads surf forward on those flows in the direction of their hematite protrusions.
40 very fine, dielectric elastomer sensors measure compression load and distribution for diabetes patients taking over the job usually performed by the nerves in their feet. xisting systems on the market measure the pressure distribution
Electronics transmit data to your smartphone The sensors are made from a soft and very stretchy elastomer silicone film that is easy to integrate into textiles.
This film is coated on both sides with highly flexible electrodes of graphite or carbon black. When the film deforms as a result of compression or stretching,
For example, after the implantation of an artificial ureter, urease crystals often start to grow inside
the team developed a simple method to densely coat the nanoparticles with a nonsticky polymer called PEG,
In past research, Salahuddin and his colleagues found that directing electrical current through the rare metal tantalum creates polarity in magnets without an external magnetic field.
and porcelain, but their potential to create new materials remains largely untapped. Notably, DNA-coated colloids offer particular promise
plastics and fuel products. he basic idea is that we want to accelerate evolution to make awesome amounts of valuable chemicals,
but also respond to valuable products such as renewable plastics or costly pharmaceuticals and give microbes a voice to report on their own efficiency in making these products. e can communicate with cells much more effectively,
Scientists curve nanoparticle sheets into complex forms Scientists have been making nanoparticles for more than two decades in two-dimensional sheets, three-dimensional crystals and random clusters.
The sensor housing, made of a biocompatible plastic, is small enough to fit into the tip of a biopsy needle.
such as extraordinary strength (it is about 200 times stronger than steel by weight), almost transparent nature and conductivity of heat and electricity with great efficiency.
when they were exploring dramatically slowing the growth rate of the graphene crystals by decreasing the amount of methane in the chemical vapour deposition chamber.
explains Abhijeet Chaudhari, a DPHIL student in the Multifunctional Materials & Composites (MMC) Laboratory at Oxford university Department of Engineering science,
An X-ray diffraction technique confirmed that these were nanoparticles of KUST-1 a copper-based Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) notable for its very large surface area (exceeding 2000 square-metres in each gram.
biocompatible polymer film made out of polyvinylidene fluoride, or PVDF. To improve the material energy harvesting ability, they added DNA,
Fabrication and design Wang team created a screen-printed sensor using silver, Prussian blue ink and uricase,
The second step is a layer of uricase trapped in polymers, which reacts selectively with uric acid.
which is detected by the Prussian blue ink. That information is transmitted then to an electronic board as electrical signals via metallic strips that are part of the sensor.
The standard approach to squeezing light involves firing an intense laser beam at a material, usually a nonlinear crystal,
The same design principle can be extended easily to other materials beyond silicon, such as metals glass ceramics and plastics.
The authors believe this work will open the search for a new, unified model of wetting physics that explains wetting phenomena on rough surfaces e
#acterial Litmus Testprovides Inexpensive Measurement of Micronutrients A bacterium engineered to produce different pigments in response to varying levels of a micronutrient in blood samples could give health officials an inexpensive way to detect nutritional
and the researchers have tuned it to trigger the production of purple, red and orange pigments.
Genetic machinery for the production of those pigments was taken from other biological sources and introduced into the E coli.
and pigment-producing genetic machinery can be introduced. ltimately, we hope to be able to test for a whole suite of nutrients in a reasonably short period of time
As part of their research, Styczynski and graduate research assistants Daniel Watstein and Monica Mcnerney engineered pigment producing machinery into the E coli.
Genes for producing the pigments were placed onto a plasmid and introduced into the bacterium. The researchers used two zinc-sensing proteins within the E coli
which those proteins could turn the pigment producing genes on and off. This approach made the zinc-sensing proteins responsive to levels of zinc close to that expected to be found in blood plasma,
while producing pigment quickly enough to be visible to the naked eye. And because the orange and red pigments are generated in the same metabolic pathway,
the researchers needed to establish ways to produce only one or the other at a time a challenge that their work shows can be addressed feasibly,
#New method for modifying natural polymers could help bring lifesaving medications to market In drug-delivery research,
a natural polymer often used for drug delivery. According to Kevin Edgar, a professor of sustainable biomaterials and Meng doctoral adviser, the new method an get drugs to market,
Suspending the drug in a polymer matrix can help. Polymers are long chains of repeating units.
Many familiar materials are polymers including proteins, DNA, and cellulose, a sugar-based polymer which gives plant cell walls their structure.
Dispersing a drug in a polymer matrix protects it and suppresses the formation of insoluble crystals.
The polymer eventually swells and releases the drug, allowing it to be absorbed into the bloodstream.
Because medications have broadly diverse chemical structures, properties, and dosing and delivery requirements, finding the right polymer matrix to work well with most drugs involves making
and testing many different options. Meng chemistry offers a new way to make a wide variety of polymer matrices using cellulose as a starting material.
Cellulose is an attractive material for drug delivery because it nontoxic breaks down into components that are already present in the body,
is water-permeable, and can survive the stomach acidic environment. Unlike many synthetic polymers, which are made often from petrochemicals,
cellulose is derived from wood, a renewable resource supporting the mission of the College of Natural resources
and Environment to advance the science of sustainability. When Meng first took on the project,
there were only a handful of methods to make cellulose derivatives, limiting the number of options for drug delivery.
renewable starting material to develop a wide variety of polymers specifically tuned to carry many different pharmaceutical targets.
The spectrum of different polymers available is like arvesting apples this year, peaches next year,
In this case, the antenna is made from two metal plates placed in parallel to form a waveguide.
Finally, physical vapor deposition is used to deposit optically-transparent thin layers of calcium then aluminum metals atop the nanotube forest.
So the ideal structure uses the antenna as one of the metals in the diode
The researchers used a combination of X-ray crystallography techniques and in-vitro analysis to study the bacteria.
Jost performed crystallography to establish the shapes of the structures, while the Spanish researchers, Drennan notes, id all of the control experiments to show that we were really thinking about this right,
The skeletal onesare 3-D-printed hard plastic and incorporate eight sensors for detecting force.
and even polymer fibers stretch typically only 20-25 percent, Park noted. That is a limiting factor in a device such as a hand
as the silicone is stretched, cracks develop in the reflective layer, allowing light to escape. By measuring the loss of light,
#Scientists grow organic semiconductor crystals vertically for first time Our smartphones, tablets, computers and biosensors all have improved because of the rapidly increasing efficiency of semiconductors.
a building block of a conductive polymer called tetraaniline. The scientists showed for the first time that tetraaniline crystals could be grown vertically.
The advance could eventually lead to vastly improved technology for capturing solar energy. In fact, it could literally reshape solar cells.
The UCLA team grew the tetraaniline crystals vertically from a substrate so the crystals stood up like spikes instead of lying flat as they do produced
when using current techniques. They produced the crystals in a solution using a substrate made of graphene,
a nanomaterial consisting of graphite that is extremely thin measuring the thickness of a single atom.
Scientists had grown previously crystals vertically in inorganic semiconducting materials, including silicon, but doing it in organic materials has been more difficult.
which are determined by the orientation of very small crystals it contains. Devices such as solar cells and photosensors work better
if the crystals grow vertically because vertical crystals can be packed more densely in the semiconductor,
making it more powerful and more efficient at controlling electrical current. hese crystals are analogous to organizing a table covered with scattered pencils into a pencil cup,
said Yue essicawang, a former UCLA doctoral student who now is a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford university
Once Kaner and his colleagues found they could guide the tetraaniline solution to grow vertical crystals,
vertically aligned crystals for a variety of organic semiconductors using the same graphene substrate. he key was deciphering the interactions between organic semiconductors and graphene in various solvent environments,
growing vertical organic crystals became simple. Kaner said the researchers also discovered another advantage of the graphene substrate. his technique enables us to pattern crystals wherever we want,
he said. ou could make electronic devices from these semiconductor crystals and grow them precisely in intricate patterns required for the device you want, such as thin-film transistors or light-emitting diodes. a
#Medical device Breakthrough: UV-light enabled catheter fixes holes in the heart without invasive surgery Researchers from Boston Children Hospital, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard university,
This degeneration is caused by the destruction of the cones and cells in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE),
Through the use of this new ink, more versatile devices on paper or plastic can be made at a rate of 300 per minute, at a very low cost.
If the number of zinc ions increases following transient severe brain damage, these ions dock in greater numbers onto a switch, the so-called metal-regulatory transcription factor 1 (MTF1.
Researchers found that sections of metal can be made to either promote bubbling (the two rectangles at the edges)
simply by switching the polarity of voltages applied to the metal. Image courtesy of the researchersthe system
or repelled by, a metal surface by changing the polarity of the voltage applied to the metal.
in turn, allows control over the rate of heat transfer between the metal and the liquid.
Unlike small chemical tablets that dissolve in water and leave a chlorine aftertaste, Madidrop is made of a continuously reusable ceramic that is simply placed in a water vessel,
Biological Crystallography and Chemical engineering Science. The chemistry of sequestering works this way: The enzyme, carbonic anhydrase, catalyzes a chemical reaction between carbon dioxide and water.
made of a silicon-like material called an elastomer, to easily remove the sensors, made of gold and chromium, from the silicon wafer.
In this stage a reflective metal layer ends up being on the bottom. In this structure coming light is blocked not by any metal layers or other materials.
and then determined the structure employing synchrotron protein crystallography at the Advanced Photon Source, a DOE Office of Science User Facility (both at Argonne).
The flexible, carbon nanotubeaced polymer detects pressure and translates the sensation into pulses of electricity that can be interpreted by the mammalian nervous system,
Thermoelectric graphene composite, with graphene fragments ringed in the 2 m-scale image Internal combustion engines lose about 70 per cent of the energy from their fuel as heat,
and Robert Freer has found that making it into a composite with grapheme could be advantageous.?
Other graphene-related automotive research at Manchester includes using the material in composites for lightweight bodywork
Previously, Salahuddin and his colleagues had discovered that passing a current through the rare metal tantalum creates polarity in magnets without an external magnetic field.
The results, published in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, describe the array as consisting of five superelastic wires made from nitinol, an alloy of nickel and titanium.
The paper, tretch-Triggered Drug Delivery from Wearable Elastomers Containing Therapeutic Depots, is published online in the journal ACS Nano.
#K scientists create magnetism in nonmagnetic metals Scientists at Leeds University have discovered a method to create magnetism in metals that aren naturally magnetic,
opening up the possibility of using a range of abundant metals for magnetic applications. The study, published in the journal Nature, details a way of altering the quantum interactions of matter
However, only three metals iron cobalt and nickel-are naturally ferromagnetic, meaning they remain magnetic in the absence of a field. aving such a small variety of magnetic materials limits our ability to tailor magnetic systems to the needs of applications without using very rare
or toxic materials, said Tim Moorsom from the School of Physics & Astronomy at Leeds University,
co-lead author on the paper. aving to build devices with only the three magnetic metals naturally available to us is rather like trying to build a skyscraper using only wrought iron.
and make steel? In the new study, the researchers have shown how to alter the behaviour of nonmagnetic materials by removing some electrons using an interface coated with a thin layer of the carbon molecule C60,
which is also known as a uckyball The movement of electrons between the metal and the molecules allows the nonmagnetic material to overcome the Stoner Criterion
and antifouling Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) have developed a new coating for steel,
The coating is applied using an electrochemical technique that deposits an ultrathin film of tungsten oxide islands on to the steel.
and the steel retains both its durability and its antifouling properties. During testing, the team scratched the material with stainless steel tweezers, screwdrivers, diamond-tipped scribers
and pummeled it with hundreds of thousands of hard, heavy beads. A variety of liquids was applied then to the material to test its repellency,
with the tungsten oxide actually making the steel stronger than steel without the coating. It is claimed the material could have a wide range of applications,
the researchers designed lenses no larger than the head of a pin and embedded them within flexible plastic.
They then seeped a polymer between the silicon nanowire pillars. After the plastic support solidified, they etched away the silicon backing, leaving bull-eye patterned black silicon embedded in supple plastic.
This approach is said to have given their lenses unprecedented crisp focusing capabilities plus the flexibility that enables them to capture a large field of view.
Aluminium is also a cheaper metal than lithium. p
#Streaming helps digital music match global physical sales Fuelled by the popularity of streaming, digital music has matched
and a rigid plastic protector to cover body parts. hen you put on the sportswear, you are constrained automatically, some more than others.
the thread is coated in silicone which then solidifies. When the desired shape is completed, the tray at the bottom of the machine is slid out and the mesh
which in the early testing is silicone. As there is one continuous piece of thread which is used through the whole structure,
and cut down on the number of materials used. retty much everyone sports companies has a neoprene on the inside a nice soft stretchy material on the inside then layers of foam
the researchers describe how they used ultrasound to move tiny polystyrene beads measuring only 3mm across
#Boffins have made optical transistors that can reach 4 TERAHERTZ Aluminum-doped zinc oxide is the key to building faster, optical chips, according to researchers at Purdue University, Indiana.
The use of aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) opens up the opportunity for both. It is aimed very much at optical switching rather than building processors,
*Expanded polystyrene particles ranging from 0. 6 to 3. 1m diameter are levitated above single-sided arrays.
The dark red polymer material is made using limonene, a compound found in orange peels, and sulphur. It turns yellow
The researchers found that the material can also remove other toxic metals from water and it safely stores the pollutants until it can be removed.
Hybrid Silica Changing Sol-Gel Supercapacitors A new material made from a common fatty acid, octylphosphonic acid,
"Our flagship product, the BCN3D Sigma, works very well with plastic, "but"chocolate is a difficult one as it has to keep a certain temperature".
and his collaborators systematically evaluated the size-dependent biological profiles of three monodisperse drug-silica nanoconjugates at 20 50 and 200 nm.
For the Nature study Hone's team placed thin flakes of Mos2 on flexible plastic substrates
In fact Mos2 is just one of a group of 2d semiconducting materials known as transition metal dichalcogenides all of
and his colleagues 2d materials can be stretched much farther than conventional materials particularly traditional ceramic piezoelectrics
As a result of our work designers can now specify location specific crystal structure orientations in a part. Other contributors to the research are ORNL's Mike Kirka and Hassina Bilheux University of California Berkeley's Anton Tremsin and Texas A&m University's William Sames.
At the core of this development is wide bandgap material made of silicon carbide with qualities superior to standard semiconductor materials.
The research group's first prototype a liquid-cooled all-silicon carbide traction drive inverter features 50 percent printed parts.
The synthetic coatings are called often polymer brushes because of their bristlelike appearance when attached to the particle surface.
To create the biological equivalent of a polymer brush the researchers turned to neurofilaments pipe cleaner-shaped proteins found in nerve cells.
By acting as tiny cylindrical polymer brushes neurofilaments collectively assemble into a structural network that helps keep one end of the nerve cell propped open
and turned it into a polymer brush by cloning a portion of a gene that encodes one of the neurofilament bristles re-engineering it such that we could attach the resulting protein to surfaces in a precise and oriented way
Historically platinum and its alloys have frequently been used as anodic and cathodic catalysts in fuel cells
The explanation for the very high efficiency is the unique morphology of the alloy It is neither a homogeneous alloy nor a fully segregated two-phase system but rather something in between.
By advanced experimental and theoretical investigations the researchers show that the alloy is composed of metallic Pd-islands embedded in the Pd-W alloy.
The DNASE an enzyme that would normally cut up the DNA cocoon is coated in a thin polymer that traps the DNASE like a sword in a sheath.
Once inside the cancer cell the cell acidic environment destroys the polymer sheath containing the DNASE.
A typical lithium-ion battery consists of two tightly packed electrodes--a carbon anode and a lithium metal-oxide cathode--with an ultrathin polymer separator in between.
Manufacturing defects such as particles of metal and dust can pierce the separator and trigger shorting as Sony discovered in 2006.
and his colleagues applied a nanolayer of copper onto one side of a polymer separator creating a novel third electrode halfway between the anode and the cathode.
The copper coating on the polymer separator is only 50 nanometers thick about 500 times thinner than the separator itself said Wu a postdoctoral fellow in the Cui group.
The coated separator is quite flexible and porous like a conventional polymer separator so it has negligible effect on the flow of lithium ions between the cathode and the anode.
To decorate the bottles manufacturers grind these special glasses together with inorganic pigments print them as pastes on the base glass and melt them on.
The basis of these novel decorative paints is a glass that consists mainly of zinc oxide.
Zinc oxide ensures that this glass already melts below 650 degrees Celsius. It therefore takes over the task that previously fell to the lead oxide.
But the results should apply to many different metals says Li senior author of the paper and the BEA Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering.
By contrast if the droplets were to melt to a liquid state the orderliness of the crystal structure would be eliminated entirely--like a wall tumbling into a heap of bricks.
The phenomenon of plasticity by interfacial diffusion was proposed first by Robert L. Coble a professor of ceramic engineering at MIT
For example in circuits where electrical contacts need to withstand rotational reconfiguration particles designed to maximize this effect might prove useful using noble metals
The coating repelled blood from more than 20 medically relevant substrates the team tested--made of plastic to glass
and metal--and also suppressed biofilm formation in a study reported in Nature Biotechnology. But that's not All the team implanted medical-grade tubing
and genetic diseases by combining the chemical specificity of the DNA with the signal readout of the metal.
#Unusual skin cancer linked to chronic allergy from metal orthopedic implant In rare cases patients with allergies to metals develop persistent skin rashes after metal devices are implanted near the skin.
Metal alloys help make orthopedic implants stronger and more durable. But people with sensitivity to these metals which include nickel cobalt
and chromium can develop chronic inflammation that promotes the development of skin cancers report researchers at Washington University School of medicine
but for some patients with sensitivity to metals they may be the best option. Similar to metal implants some dental restoration materials and tattoo inks contain substances associated with allergic reactions and cancers on the skin or in the mouth.
and in particular metals such as gold. Localized surface plasmons of metal nanostructures result in unique optical properties with characteristics that depend upon the metal composition,
An important material used in their construction is electrical steel. Researchers have found a way to improve the performance of electrical steel
and manufacture it more efficiently using an optimized laser process. Transformers convert the standard voltage from the wall outlet into the lower voltages required by electronic devices.
To minimize the energy loss associated with this process special types of iron-silicon alloy known as electrical steel are used to make the core.
In their native state these alloys have a grainoriented structure which determines their magnetic properties.
which each crystal or grain is arranged in a regular periodic order. By heating selected areas of the material it is possible to reduce the size of the domains with the same magnetic orientation
which in turn alters the magnetic structure of the steel. This results in a lower heat development and thus reduces the material's hysteresis loss says Dr. Andreas Wetzig who heads the laser ablation
While the steel sheet measuring around one meter in width moves forward at a rate of more than 100 meters per minute a focused laser beam travels at very high speed (approximately 200 meters per second) from side to side
In a further effort to reduce hysteresis loss in electrical steel the researchers have started recently working with a new type of solid-state laser:
that of expanding the applications of their technology to electrical steel for engine components. However unlike transformer steel these materials do not have oriented a grain structure
and therefore possess different magnetic properties. This means that we cannot transfer our process one-to-one without modification explains Wetzig.
The benefits of laser processing in the case of non-grain-oriented electrical steel vary according to the working point of the specific engine or motor.
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