One Minute Mentor: Type W1 Tool Steels

W1 steels are capable of hardening to high surface hardness and soft core, which is useful in some shock applications. They are low-cost tool steels with fair to good wear resistance as carbon content increases. As they are water quenched and have poor dimensional stability, their use is limited to fairly uniform sections with a minimum amount of stress risers; in other applications quench cracking can occur. Figure 1 shows an isothermal transformation diagram for a W1 steel.

For more information, click on the link below (subscription required). Then scroll to Figure 1.Rafael Agnelli Mesquita; Reinhold Schneider; Cristiane Sales Gonçalves, *Heat Treating of Cold-Work Tool Steels — Low- and Un-Alloyed Water and Oil Hardening Steels*, ASM International, 2014 [https://doi.org/10.31399/asm.hb.v04d.a0005972](https://doi.org/10.31399/asm.hb.v04d.a0005972)

Integer to showcase neuromodulation innovations and fast-charge battery at NANS 2026

nteger Holdings Corporation, Plano, Texas, showcased its latest advancements in neuromodulation and next-generation miniaturized active implantable medical devices at the North American Neuromodulation Society Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, January 22-25, 2026.

The company highlighted the Xcellion Gen 3 Fast Charge lithium ion battery, which delivers best-in-class runtime and can recharge in as little as 30 minutes. Integer also demonstrated end-to-end contract development and manufacturing capabilities spanning high-performance batteries, fully integrated implantable pulse generators, and lead systems designed to accelerate development timelines and reduce risk for device companies bringing novel therapies to market.

“Miniaturization is transforming the future of implantable technologies, and we’re proud to partner with customers to make that future a reality,” said Jim Stephens, President of Cardiac Rhythm Management & Neuromodulation at Integer.

Integer Holdings is among the world’s largest medical device contract development and manufacturing organizations, serving cardiac rhythm management, neuromodulation, and cardiovascular markets. Its brands include Greatbatch Medical and Lake Region Medical.

[www.integer.net](https://www.integer.net)

Ilika completes first commercial Stereax electrode delivery to Cirtec Medical

Cirtec Medical, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, has received the first commercial batch of Stereax solid-state battery electrodes from Ilika, Southampton, United Kingdom, for Stereax M300 production. The delivery fulfills the first revenue-generating order under a commercial supply arrangement initiated in January 2026.

The electrodes will support Stereax M300 batteries used in validation and customer sampling across multiple active implantable medical device categories, including implanted sensors, neurostimulators, orthopedic implants, orthodontic wearables, and ophthalmology devices. The Stereax M300 is an ultra-thin, millimeter-scale, rechargeable solid-state battery containing no liquid or polymer components, designed specifically for implantable applications.

“Our close technical cooperation with Ilika has developed into an effective operational partnership, ensuring customers receive the highest quality product for device integration,” said Shawn Martin, Vice President at Cirtec Medical.

Cathode manufacturing remains at Ilika’s UK facility as the most complex production step, while primary battery manufacturing occurs at Cirtec’s facility in Lowell, Massachusetts. The milestone marks Ilika’s transition from technology development to commercial supply in the medical device battery market.

[www.cirtecmed.com](https://www.cirtecmed.com)

Nanoscale hotspots in OLEDs may shorten their lifespans in phones, TVs

University of Michigan engineers have found that the light in OLED displays comes from nanoscale hotspots—some of which flicker—rather than from a perfectly uniform surface, a behavior that could shorten device lifespans by causing certain areas to carry more current and burn out faster. The studysuggests that these uneven emission patterns may also affect the performance of organic electronics such as solar cells and transistors. As a potential fix, researchers propose using crystalline instead of amorphous structures to improve durability. The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and Universal Display Corp.

 

Charge rivers in hilly OLED energy landscapes

“The calculations that motivated us to look for this are actually pretty old. In the mid-2000s, people were predicting what they called a current channeling phenomenon,” said Chris Giebink, U-M professor of electrical and computer engineering and also senior author of the study. “You could liken it to a hilly landscape. The electrons, or charge carriers, that move through the device tend to want to follow the lowest energy pathways, so they’ll travel along the valleys.”

Charge carriers come in two flavors, electrons and positively charged “holes,” which run in opposite directions through the landscape. Where those rivers cross, light-emitting molecules convert electron-hole pairs into photons, or particles of light.

Because some valleys are deeper than others, they tend to support high-traffic rivers of charge carriers, with densities that are thought to be 10 to 100 times higher than the rest of the material. In contrast, crystalline materials are more uniform. Their landscape is flatter, leading the charge carriers to spread out more evenly, reducing the hotspot effect.

Spotting nanoscale hotspots with superresolution

Theory suggests that the hotspots are just a few tens of nanometers across. They appear as graininess in images from an optical microscope, which is limited to details of a couple hundred nanometers or bigger. 

“An initial concern was whether we were seeing a microscope artifact,” said Joshua Springsteen, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering and first author of the study. “We examined the same area of the device with our microscope using both photoluminescence and electroluminescence, confirming that it was an electrical phenomenon.”

Because some of the lights flicker and aren’t always in sync, Springsteen could take a video of the device and run it through software that keyed in on the changes in brightness when one hotspot switched off while another stayed on. This technique, called superresolution optical fluctuation imaging, helped the team confirm that the hotspots were smaller than half the wavelength of the green light they emitted.

The researchers believe the blinking is due to charge carriers that are temporarily trapped in dips in the energy landscape. When that happens, they act more like dams, repelling other charge carriers, which seek alternate routes and cause downstream hotspots to go dark. Eventually, the charge carrier absorbs enough heat to pop back out of the dip, and the original hotspot lights up again. Because the flickering hotspots aren’t in sync, the human eye perceives amorphous OLEDs as glowing steadily.

To confirm that they had the mechanism right, the team used those earlier calculations that showed where charge-carrier rivers flow and meet. Springsteen took these theoretical freeze-frames and processed them to mimic the way the hotspots would have been blurred by the superresolution microscopy technique they used. These modified modeling images resembled the experimental images well enough that the team is confident they were seeing the hotspots.

The device was built in the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility and studied at the Michigan Center for Materials Characterization, both of which are operated and maintained with support from indirect cost allocations in federal grants.

For more information:  Michigan Center for Materials Characterization

Image: Hotspots appear in an optical microscope image examining the surface of a green OLED, processed to quantify brightness. These hotspots may limit the lifetimes of amorphous OLEDs. Image: Joshua Springsteen, Optoelectronic Components and Materials Group, University of Michigan.

Terahertz microscope reveals the motion of superconducting electrons

MIT physicists have used a new imaging technique to observe terahertz-frequency vibrations—described as quantum “jiggles”—inside a superconducting fluid for the first time, revealing behavior that was previously undetectable. By shining terahertz light, which probes matter differently than optical, infrared or X-ray wavelengths, the team captured inherent quantum motions within the material, opening a new window into the fundamental properties of superconductors.

Terahertz light is a form of energy that lies between microwaves and infrared radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum. It oscillates over a trillion times per second — just the right pace to match how atoms and electrons naturally vibrate inside materials. Ideally, this makes terahertz light the perfect tool to probe these motions.

But while the frequency is right, the wavelength — the distance over which the wave repeats in space — is not. Terahertz waves have wavelengths hundreds of microns long. Because the smallest spot that any kind of light can be focused into is limited by its wavelength, terahertz beams cannot be tightly confined. As a result, a focused terahertz beam is physically too large to interact effectively with microscopic samples, simply washing over these tiny structures without revealing fine detail.

The scientists report that they have developed a new terahertz microscope that compresses terahertz light down to microscopic dimensions. This pinpoint of terahertz light can resolve quantum details in materials that were previously inaccessible.

The team used the new microscope to send terahertz light into a sample of bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide, or BSCCO (pronounced “BIS-co”) — a material that superconducts at relatively high temperatures. With the terahertz scope, the team observed a frictionless “superfluid” of superconducting electrons that were collectively jiggling back and forth at terahertz frequencies within the BSCCO material.

“This new microscope now allows us to see a new mode of superconducting electrons that nobody has ever seen before,” says Nuh Gedik, the Donner Professor of Physics at MIT.

By using terahertz light to probe BSCCO and other superconductors, scientists can gain a better understanding of properties that could lead to long-coveted room-temperature superconductors. The new microscope can also help to identify materials that emit and receive terahertz radiation. Such materials could be the foundation of future wireless, terahertz-based communications, that could potentially transmit more data at faster rates compared to today’s microwave-based communications.

“There’s a huge push to take Wi-Fi or telecommunications to the next level, to terahertz frequencies,” says Alexander von Hoegen, a postdoc in MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory and lead author of the study. “If you have a terahertz microscope, you could study how terahertz light interacts with microscopically small devices that could serve as future antennas or receivers.”

In addition to Gedik and von Hoegen, the study’s MIT co-authors include Tommy Tai, Clifford Allington, Matthew Yeung, Jacob Pettine, Alexander Kossak, Byunghun Lee, and Geoffrey Beach, along with collaborators at Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems and the Brookhaven National Lab.

Hitting a limit

Terahertz light is a promising yet largely untapped imaging tool. It occupies a unique spectral “sweet spot”: Like microwaves, radio waves, and visible light, terahertz radiation is nonionizing and therefore does not carry enough energy to cause harmful radiation effects, making it safe for use in humans and biological tissues. At the same time, much like X-rays, terahertz waves can penetrate a wide range of materials, including fabric, wood, cardboard, plastic, ceramics, and even thin brick walls.

Owing to these distinctive properties, terahertz light is being actively explored for applications in security screening, medical imaging, and wireless communications. In contrast, far less effort has been devoted to applying terahertz radiation to microscopy and the illumination of microscopic phenomena. The primary reason is a fundamental limitation shared by all forms of light: the diffraction limit, which restricts spatial resolution to roughly the wavelength of the radiation used.

With wavelengths on the order of hundreds of microns, terahertz radiation is far larger than atoms, molecules, and many other microscopic structures. As a result, its ability to directly resolve microscale features is fundamentally constrained.

“Our main motivation is this problem that, you might have a 10-micron sample, but your terahertz light has a 100-micron wavelength, so what you would mostly be measuring is air, or the vacuum around your sample,” von Hoegen explains. “You would be missing all these quantum phases that have characteristic fingerprints in the terahertz regime.”

Zooming in

The team found a way around the terahertz diffraction limit by using spintronic emitters — a recent technology that produces sharp pulses of terahertz light. Spintronic emitters are made from multiple ultrathin metallic layers. When a laser illuminates the multilayered structure, the light triggers a cascade of effects in the electrons within each layer, such that the structure ultimately emits a pulse of energy at terahertz frequencies.

By holding a sample close to the emitter, the team trapped the terahertz light before it had a chance to spread, essentially squeezing it into a space much smaller than its wavelength. In this regime, the light can bypass the diffraction limit to resolve features that were previously too small to see.

The MIT team adapted this technology to observe microscopic, quantum-scale phenomena. For their new study, the team developed a terahertz microscope using spintronic emitters interfaced with a Bragg mirror. This multilayered structure of reflective films successively filters out certain, undesired wavelengths of light while letting through others, protecting the sample from the “harmful” laser which triggers the terahertz emission.

As a demonstration, the team used the new microscope to image a small, atomically thin sample of BSCCO. They placed the sample very close to the terahertz source and imaged it at temperatures close to absolute zero — cold enough for the material to become a superconductor. To create the image, they scanned the laser beam, sending terahertz light through the sample and looking for the specific signatures left by the superconducting electrons.

“We see the terahertz field gets dramatically distorted, with little oscillations following the main pulse,” von Hoegen says. “That tells us that something in the sample is emitting terahertz light, after it got kicked by our initial terahertz pulse.”

With further analysis, the team concluded that the terahertz microscope was observing the natural, collective terahertz oscillations of superconducting electrons within the material.

“It’s this superconducting gel that we’re sort of seeing jiggle,” von Hoegen says.

This jiggling superfluid was expected, but never directly visualized until now. The team is now applying the microscope to other two-dimensional materials, where they hope to capture more terahertz phenomena.

“There are a lot of the fundamental excitations, like lattice vibrations and magnetic processes, and all these collective modes that happen at terahertz frequencies,” von Hoegen says. “We can now resonantly zoom in on these interesting physics with our terahertz microscope.”

For more information: Nature

Argonne National Laboratory’s new facility is giving researchers an inside look at irradiated nuclear materials

Argonne National Laboratory has opened its Activated Materials Lab, a radiological facility next to the Advanced Photon Source that lets scientists use an ultrabright X-ray beam to safely examine the inner structure of irradiated metals and nuclear fuels. The new capability allows researchers to see how radiation affects reactor materials in real time, supporting advances in reactor component design and helping utilities better plan maintenance and repair schedules.

Activated Materials Lab

Equipped with fume hoods, glove boxes, shielded containers, and approved sample containments, the new Activated Materials Lab can safely handle samples with higher radioactivity than previously allowed at the facility.

Staffed with a dedicated team that is responsible for receiving radioactive samples and transferring them safely to the Advanced Photon Source x-ray beamlines for measurements, the lab is able to reduce the turnaround time on user experiments while allowing researchers to focus on data collection and interpretation.

The Advanced Photon Source recently underwent a major upgrade project which enhanced its brightness over 100-fold and built nine new x-ray beamlines, including the High-Energy X-ray Microscope beamline at 20-ID which is adjacent to the Activated Materials Lab. With enhanced access to upgraded x-ray capabilities, researchers now have the ability to pursue a wider range of experiments. 

“By safely enabling higher activity samples at the Advanced Photon Source, this new capability allows for clearer views of how materials change during their time in a reactor, speeding progress toward safer, longer-lasting components,” said Brenden J. Heidrich, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Science User Facilities program. 

Going Granular 

The new facility recently completed its first-ever user experiments examining the origins of stress corrosion cracks in irradiated materials.

Researchers looked at stainless steel parts that after decades of use were removed from a light-water reactor. The parts had developed microcracks due to a combination of irradiation, mechanical stress, and exposure to a corrosive environment.

Using a combination of three-dimensional x-ray techniques, researchers were able to examine the metal at the polycrystal grain level to see if they could find characteristics that correlated to cracking.

Finding the mechanisms that contribute to this behavior in alloys used in nuclear reactors will inform future material designs and long-term performance of existing reactors.

“This first experiment shows that the Activated Materials Laboratory can safely bridge irradiated samples to world-class X-ray tools, lowering barriers for the nuclear materials community,” said Xuan Zhang, Principal Materials Scientist at Argonne and facility lead of the AML. ​“By coordinating shipping, encapsulation, and safety reviews, AML helps users make the most of beam time and investigate questions that were out of reach before.”

“Access to higher-activity samples at beamline 1-ID, under strict controls, lets us probe grain-level behavior in materials that reflect real conditions,” said Jon Almer, Group Leader and Scientist, Materials Physics and Engineering Group, at Argonne. ​“Combining tomography with far-field and near-field high-energy diffraction microscopy gives a fuller picture that can inform models and materials design.”

The experiment was led by the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign’s Professor James Stubbins, with collaborators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, The University of Alabama, and Argonne National Laboratory, and was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program and the Light Water Reactor Sustainability program. 

What’s Next?

The Activated Materials Lab stands ready to receive its next user experiment, adding its capacity to the list of innovative resources and capabilities the U. S. Department of Energy provides to researcher and industry to advance nuclear materials and technologies.

The Activated Materials Laboratory is supported by the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) program. The Advanced Photon Source is a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility operated by Argonne National Laboratory.

For more information: NSUF

Resonetics to Acquire Resolution Medical, Expanding Neuromodulation and Structural Heart Capabilities

Resonetics, Nashua, New Hampshire, announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Resolution Medical, a medical device design and manufacturing firm headquartered in Fridley, Minnesota, with additional operations in the Netherlands. The transaction is expected to close in 2026, pending regulatory approvals.

The acquisition adds complementary capabilities in high-growth therapeutic markets including neuromodulation, structural heart, and interventional cardiology. Resolution Medical brings integrated design engineering, new product introduction, and cleanroom production capabilities for Class II and Class III devices, along with a team of more than 240 employees, including over 100 engineers.

“This acquisition will enhance our ability to deliver fully integrated solutions for customers in high-growth markets,” said Kevin Kelly, chief executive officer of Resonetics. The deal marks Resonetics’ third acquisition in the past 12 months as the company continues to broaden its medical device manufacturing platform.

Resonetics specializes in laser processing, nitinol components, and advanced manufacturing for the medical device industry.

Read further here

New editors for Metallurgical and Materials Transactions

ASM International, Materials Park, Ohio, and The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), Warrendale, Pa., announced two new editors for the Metallurgical and Materials Transactions journals: Steven J. Zinkle, FASM, of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Sridhar Seetharaman of the University of Warwick.   Zinkle Named Editor for Metallurgical and Materials Transactions E   Steven J.

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Musical manuscript restored with x-rays

Scientists at Stanford University, Calif., x-rayed a damaged musical score to reveal the musical notes hidden beneath a layer of black carbon. The beautifully bound 1797 Luigi Cherubini opera Médée looks like an impeccably preserved relic of opera’s golden age. However, the final pages of the aria “Du trouble affreux qui me dévore” (“The terrible disorder that consumes me”) are blackened with carbon that completely obscures the closing lines.

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Thermal spray equipment based on advances in data acquisition, remote diagnostics

TAFA Inc., a Praxair Surface Technologies Co., Concord, N.H., has developed and improved  equipment for coating performance and repeatability, as reported in “Equipment Advances for Advanced Coatings,” a presentation at the thermal spray conference announced below. Advanced features such as recipe storage, data acquisition, and remote diagnostics are playing larger and more important roles in process development and control.

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Squid inspires comfortable implants

Led by scientists at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, researchers turned to an unlikely model to make medical devices safer and more comfortable: a squid’s beak. Many medical implants require hard materials that have to connect to or pass through soft body tissue. This mechanical mismatch leads to problems such as skin breakdown at abdominal feeding tubes in stroke patients and where wires pass through the chest to power assistive heart pumps. Enter: the squid.

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Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron to merge and form new company

Applied Materials Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., and Tokyo Electron Ltd., Japan, announce a definitive agreement to merge into a new company whose name has not been released. This combination brings together complementary leading technologies and products to create an expanded set of capabilities in precision materials engineering and patterning. The companies expect the transaction to close in mid to second half of 2014.

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Innovative thermal spray coatings for turbine engines to improve heat protection and fuel efficiency

Thermal Spray Technologies, Sun Prairie, Wis., in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, helped to develop innovative thermal spray coatings to improve heat protection and fuel efficiency in the next generation of jet turbine engines. The team’s experimental results were published in the August issue of the Journal of Thermal Spray Technologies in an article titled “Application of Plasma Spraying as a Precursor in the Synthesis of Oxidation Resistant Coatings.

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Beralcast beryllium-aluminum alloys under consideration for F-35 Lightning II optical components

IBC Advanced Alloys Corp., Wilmington, Mass., reports that its wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, IBC Engineered Materials Corp., is working directly with Lockheed Martin to develop specific investment-cast optical components on the F-35 Lightning II aircraft to demonstrate the technical and commercial viability of Beralcast beryllium-aluminum alloys. Beralcast principal alloys are more than three times stiffer than aluminum, with 22% less weight. They can be precision cast for simple and complex three-dimensional stability. These high modulus alloys are ideal for high-performance industrial and high-tech components, as well as for a wide range of aerospace applications.

 

This collaboration enables IBC to demonstrate its expertise and industry leadership in offering rapid prototyping and advanced materials solutions to provide investment cast parts to aerospace customers with short lead times and competitive pricing.

“IBC Engineered Materials is excited to be collaborating with Lockheed Martin and believe we will demonstrate the viability of our Beralcast alloys and cast components as mechanically compliant and cost effective components for the F-35 Lightning II program,” said Ray White, President of IB-EMC. “We hope that IBC’s partnership and collaboration with Lockheed Martin will advance the potential for our engineered materials products for other aerospace industry initiatives where modulus, weight, and cost are important design criteria.”

Read the complete release.

Unconventional method strengthens metal in extreme conditions

Blacksmiths fire metals before hammering them, as heat always softens metal, making it more malleable and easier to reshape. Or does it? In a surprising new study, engineers from Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) discovered that, in extreme conditions, heat does not soften pure metals—it strengthens them.

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Stacking up: A new take on diamond electronics

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have overcome a critical barrier in diamond-based electronics and microelectronics by using nanotechnology to integrate two-dimensional materials for efficient n-type doping, a breakthrough in electronic materials designed to operate in high-temperature environments and other harsh environments.

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Microscopic mirrors for future quantum networks

Researchers at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have developed a new method for making some of the smallest and smoothest curved optical mirrors used to control individual photons. The team, led by professors Marko Lončar, Mikhail Lukin and Kiyoul Yang, created high-performance mirrors that can trap light between them to form state-of-the-art optical resonators operating at near-infrared wavelengths—crucial for manipulating single atoms in quantum computing. The advance could benefit future quantum computers, quantum networks, integrated lasers and environmental sensing technologies.

Optical resonators, also known as optical cavities, are fundamental building blocks of countless light-based devices today, from precision instruments for timekeeping and spectroscopy, to lasers and optical interconnects in data centers. They are like guitar strings, but for light: Only certain wavelengths of light (as opposed to sounds) can fit inside the space between two mirrors and intensify. Increasingly, quantum applications require these same types of optical cavities, but much smaller and with lower signal loss. 

The Harvard team’s new microfabrication method, led by first author and former graduate student Sophie Ding, was inspired by a practical problem facing colleagues in experimental physics who are trying to build quantum networks out of ultracold single atoms. They were in search of optical cavities with extremely smooth mirrors that would strongly couple atoms to photons, work at specific wavelengths, and could be scaled and shaped. 

“We needed these high-quality photonic interfaces to create efficient ways to have single photons interact with single atoms, allowing for fast, high-fidelity quantum networking,” said paper co-author Brandon Grinkemeyer, a postdoctoral researcher in the Lukin lab.

But most lithography or etching methods today cannot produce sufficiently smooth mirror surfaces for the most demanding quantum applications. 

Ding’s new method is an example of working smarter, not harder. 

The researchers started with a silicon wafer and used thermal oxidation to grow a thin layer of silicon oxide on the surface, which works to flatten bumps and grooves. When removed, the oxide leaves behind a smooth silicon surface. On that surface, the researchers deposited a precisely engineered stack of transparent oxide layers, called a dielectric mirror coating. When a hole is etched through the back and the coating is freed from the silicon wafer, it buckles into a perfectly curved shape because of built-in mechanical stress, that naturally forms a high-quality mirror. 

This process allows the researchers to control the radius of the mirror’s curvature and the wavelengths of light the mirror will reflect, making the method highly scalable and relatively simple. 

“In microfabrication, we are sometimes confined by the thought that surface roughness is defined by the etch or the mask, and we try very hard to optimize them,” Ding said. “But when we are using the properties of the materials, we can do a lot less of that and have more robust results.”

The researchers showed their microfabricated resonators could reach a record “finesse” of 0.9 million at a wavelength of 780 nanometers, meaning light can bounce back and forth inside the cavity nearly a million times before scattering. By contrast, optical telecommunications signals transmit at 1550 nanometer wavelengths. 

The optical cavities created with Ding’s new method could be used in modular quantum computing applications, in which many atoms are linked together by photons in optical fibers. The cavities would be the critical interfaces that let an atom’s quantum state be converted into light, transmitted, and written back into another atom. 

The potential impact of the work extends beyond quantum computing. Due to its versatility and scalability, it could be adapted for other wavelengths that serve ultra-compact lasers, spectroscopic sensors, and integrated photonics in which many optical resonators can be built directly onto chips. 

For more information: Optica

Image: Microcavities of two different lengths, 45 microns and 1 millimeter, placed on a finger tip.

Scientists achieve sub-second 3D printing using rotating light field

Researchers have developed a new sub-second volumetric 3D printing technique that eliminates the need to rotate the printed sample, a long-standing mechanical challenge in the field. The system, called Digital Incoherent Synthesis of Holographic Light Fields, or DISH, instead rotates the illumination using a high-speed periscope, allowing millimeter-scale structures to be printed in 0.6 seconds with about 19-micrometer resolution across a 1-centimeter depth range. The advance addresses a persistent trade-off in volumetric additive manufacturing between resolution, stability and printable volume.

Volumetric 3D printing has long hoped to fabricate entire objects simultaneously – rather than layer by layer. But established approaches, such as computed axial lithography, typically rotate the resin container during exposure.

Fast rotation introduces vibration and alignment errors. Slow rotation, meanwhile, requires highly viscous resins, often thousands of centipoise, to prevent features from drifting before polymerization completes.

When it comes to optics, higher resolution demands higher numerical aperture (NA) objectives. Yet higher NA optics come with a shallow depth of field.

The system used in the study has an intrinsic NA of 0.055 at 405 nm, with a native depth-of-field of roughly 0.4 mm. That’s far smaller than the centimetre-scale volumes desirable for practical manufacturing. 

DISH tackles both precision and scale at once.

In their method, instead of moving the resin container the researchers mounted a rotating periscope on a hollow stage to deliver synchronized angular illumination while keeping the sample stationary.

A 405 nm coherent laser is modulated by a Digital Micromirror Device operating at 17 kHz, projecting optimized binary patterns as the periscope rotates at speeds up to 10 revolutions per second.

The demonstrated sub-second fabrication corresponds to the specific exposure timing used in the reported experiments.

The team abandoned conventional ray-based approximations and implemented a wave-optics model that explicitly incorporates diffraction and refraction at the air–material interface.

A coarse-to-fine iterative optimization algorithm generates projection patterns that maintain intensity modulation well beyond the native focal plane.

An adaptive calibration scheme using two orthogonal cameras corrects single-pixel misalignments in the synthesized 3D light field, improving angular registration and exposure fidelity.

Performance tests show that DISH maintains approximately 19 μm feature fidelity across a 1 cm depth range, far exceeding the objective’s intrinsic 0.4 mm depth of field.

Relief-structure experiments demonstrated approximately 11 μm uniform linewidth across the full centimeter span, while the smallest independently resolved positive feature measured 12 μm.

Comparative tests against conventional back-projection approaches showed sharper edges and improved consistency, particularly in off-center regions where optical blur typically increases.

The single-sided illumination geometry does introduce a missing-cone trade-off that slightly affects axial resolution. The authors note that alternative periscope geometries could mitigate this limitation in future implementations.

One of the more practically significant findings is material compatibility. The system printed successfully in aqueous solutions of polyethylene glycol diacrylate with viscosities as low as 4.7 cP. Because polymerization completes within 0.6 seconds, gravitational drift occurs only after solidification.

By contrast, conventional volumetric systems often require viscosities between 6,000 and 10,000 cP to maintain positional stability during slower exposures.

The researchers also demonstrated printing in higher-viscosity resins and bio-derived hydrogels, including gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) and silk fibroin methacrylate (SilMA).

The single-sided geometry further enables in situ fabrication on fixed substrates and within confined environments such as petri dishes.

Integration with a fluidic channel allowed successive fabrication of multiple structures, pointing toward continuous production workflows.

The authors estimate voxel rates on the order of 1.25 × 108/second, calculated for a defined voxel size and build volume. They suggest that higher-power lasers and faster modulation hardware could further increase build rates.

Surface analysis indicates that inclined projection reduces the prominence of stripe-like speckle artefacts compared with perpendicular illumination systems.

However, the hologram optimization process currently requires substantial offline computation. The authors propose GPU acceleration or neural-network-based approaches as pathways to reduce processing time and enable more automated deployment.

By decoupling angular illumination from sample motion and synthesizing holographic light fields through wave-optics modeling, DISH demonstrates a way to extend effective depth performance without sacrificing resolution.

While industrial deployment remains prospective, the work outlines a credible pathway toward faster, continuous volumetric manufacturing using both acrylate-based systems and selected biomaterials.

Future efforts are likely to focus on accelerating hologram computation, refining optical geometries to address missing-cone effects, and scaling projection hardware.

For more information: Nature

Bouncy balls and beyond: collaborative project connects science with community

A simple bouncy ball has become a key teaching tool for Penn State graduate students working to show children how materials behave and how science connects to daily life. Through “Mission: Materials Science,” an outreach program supported by Penn State’s NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, students collaborate with museum educators and media professionals to turn materials research into free, hands-on learning activities. The newest online collection introduces four experiments designed for children ages 8 to 13.

MRSEC and the Franklin Institute have partnered on projects since 2001. The project began as a collaboration with the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, where MRSEC researchers helped create tabletop exhibits for museum visitors. Over time, it evolved into a digital platform of do-it-yourself activities that can be completed at home or used in classrooms with commonly available supplies. Today, the initiative is led in close partnership with Discovery Space of Central Pennsylvania.

The four new activities explore how materials store and exchange energy, how their structure affects behavior and how environmental conditions can change material properties. Experiments such as mixing bouncy ball recipes, building candy crystals and modeling how ocean chemistry affects coral-like materials were designed to encourage young learners to test ideas, observe results and connect science to the real world.

Each activity includes step-by-step instructions and short videos that guide learners through the experiment and explain the science behind it. Penn State’s public media partner, WPSU, produced the videos in collaboration with Discovery Space and MRSEC researchers, educators and students to ensure the content is accurate, engaging and accessible. Since each activity is mapped to the K-12 science standards with which it aligns, teachers can easily use the content in classrooms, too.

Some videos feature high school students demonstrating the activities, while others — which are titled “Scientist in Action” — highlight Penn State researchers explaining how the experiments connect to real materials science research. Together, the videos help bridge the gap between academic research and everyday experience, according to Vincent Crespi, distinguished professor of physics, of materials science and engineering, and of chemistry, who serves as the primary investigator on the Penn State MRSEC grant. Crespi also directs the Center for Nanoscale Science (CNS), which administers the NSF grant at Penn State, including the “Mission: Materials Science” project at Penn State.

Crespi explained that graduate students are central to the project’s success, and the initiative plays an important role in graduate education.

“Current graduate students are our future scientific leaders,” Crespi said. “For them to be successful, it is vital that they become skilled at connecting authentically with many types of audiences and learn how to work well across disciplines. This outreach project has been rich with opportunities to build those transferable skills and experiences.”

Graduate students in chemistry and in materials science and engineering and the CNS’s K-12 Outreach Team worked closely with other outreach staff and educators at Discovery Space and the Franklin Institute. They test activities with local children and refine them to be both scientifically rigorous and approachable.

For Michele Crowl, executive director of Discovery Space and its affiliated adult makerspace called the Rivet, the collaboration helps make advanced research accessible.

“The most meaningful part has been helping translate real, current materials science research into hands-on experiences that feel fun and approachable for kids and families,” Crowl said. “With MRSEC’s help, we can reach more kids in our area for STEM learning and show them that science doesn’t have to feel abstract or intimidating.”

For many graduate students, the experience reshaped how they see their role as scientists. Gayathri Ayyagari, a graduate research assistant in materials science and engineering, said working across disciplines changed how she communicates.

“Working with educators, scientists and media professionals created a truly interdisciplinary environment,” Ayyagari said. “It pushed me to listen carefully to different perspectives and find common language across those worlds.”

Katherine Thompson, a postdoctoral researcher in nanomaterials who was involved in the project when she was a graduate research assistant in chemistry, viewed the project as a way to give back.

“As a kid, I participated in science outreach activities that motivated me to pursue a career in STEM,” Thompson said. “Creating something that could inspire future scientists in the same way has been incredibly meaningful.”

For more information: Mission Materials Science

Image: Lilly Clarke, left, a Franklin Institute STEM Scholar, and Trent Rodgers, also a Franklin Institute STEM Scholar, guide viewers through an experiment to make homemade bouncy balls as part of the Mission: Materials Science project, a joint effort between the Center for Nanoscale Science in partnership with The Franklin Institute, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation via the interdisciplinary Materials Research Science and Engineering Center program.

Tescan acquires FemtoInnovations and launches Laser Technology Business Unit

Tescan Group, Czech Republic, acquired FemtoInnovations, a leading innovator in ultrafast laser technologies, and created a new dedicated Laser Technology Business Unit headquartered at the University of Connecticut Tech Park that expands Tescan’s correlative and multimodal portfolio for semiconductor, biomedical device manufacturing, and advanced research markets. 

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Building a sustainable metals infrastructure: NIST report highlights key strategies

NIST has released a report outlining strategies to build a more efficient, sustainable, and resilient U.S. metals processing infrastructure, emphasizing the need for improved standards for recycled content and stronger supply chains for critical materials. Covering the full lifecycle—from mining and alloy design to manufacturing, reuse, and recycling—the report highlights that addressing these challenges is essential for innovation, industrial competitiveness, and national security. The findings stem from a NIST workshop held in July 2024.

“The workshop brought together a diverse group of experts from industry, academia and the policy world to take on some of the biggest challenges in the metals processing space,” said NIST materials research engineer Andrew Iams, a co-author on the report. “Meeting these challenges requires a new approach in how to source, process, use and recycle metals.”

The report covers various topics related to metals manufacturing, from new technologies for extracting and processing bulk materials, like aluminum and steel, to developing new modeling and data tools to design advanced alloys.

The report highlights the importance of critical materials, including minerals containing lithium and cobalt that are key manufacturing elements for smartphones, batteries, semiconductors and medical devices, as well as superalloys used in military hardware and jet engines.

These materials can be challenging to obtain due to limited availability and the risk of supply chain disruptions. Industries can address these issues by diversifying their supply chains with new sources, identifying substitute materials, and improving recycling methods to enable greater recirculation of existing materials.

The report also highlights the need to improve standards for metals reuse and recycling. Better standards can make the separation of metals for recycling more efficient, reducing industry costs. New certification programs can help ensure that products made with recycled content meet performance standards, which could expand the market for recycled materials.

The report highlights five strategies that would help the industry tackle these and other challenges:

  • Advance measurement science for sustainable metals manufacturing, including new separation techniques for recycling.
  • Develop the technical basis to support standards development, including the data needed to create or improve performance-based standards for highly recycled metals, such as aluminum and steel.
  • Enhance data and modeling tools for addressing supply risks and designing products for improved recyclability.
  • Promote workforce development and education by establishing training programs and creating partnerships between universities, labs and industry.
  • Convene stakeholders to establish collaborations that foster knowledge-sharing and innovation.

The NIST workshop brought together manufacturers, technology companies, researchers and other experts from all stages of the metals processing chain. NIST has a long history of convening stakeholders across industrial sectors to solve shared problems through better technology and standards.

“We are always seeking ways to help industrial partners solve tough engineering or scientific problems,” Iams said. “Part of NIST’s mission is to help keep U.S. industry competitive. We can do that by identifying promising technologies and helping to move them out of the lab so they can be implemented on an industrial scale.”

For more information: Material Challenges in Developing a Sustainable Metal Processing Infrastructure – Workshop Report