Materials Properties and Performance Archives - Page 25 of 33

Feather-like airplane wing skin for flying efficiency

When the Wright brothers accomplished their first powered flight more than a century ago, they controlled the motion of their Flyer 1 aircraft using wires and pulleys that bent and twisted the wood-and-canvas wings.

University at Buffalo receives $2.9 million for modeling/simulations lab

The University at Buffalo, N.Y., has received a $2.9 million National Science Foundation grant to transform the traditional role of a database as a repository for information into an automated computer laboratory that rapidly collects, interprets, and learns from massive amounts of information.

3D-printed metamaterial shrinks when heated

Members of Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Additive Manufacturing Initiative, Calif, are among a group of researchers who have developed 3D printed materials with a unique property—instead of expanding when heated, they shrink.

Carbon fiber project partnership

Harper International, Cheektowaga, N.Y. and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Tenn., were awarded funding for a project through the DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office’s HPC4Mfg Program.

Growing gold for biomedical procedures

Grown like a snowflake and sharpened with a sewing machine, a novel device by Kansas State University researchers may benefit biomedical professionals and the patients they serve during electrode and organ transplant procedures.

Smart buildings sense damage

A new system predicts how MIT’s tallest structure responds to vibrations, may help monitor stress over time.

MS&T 2016 Features Panel Discussions on Advanced Manufacturing

A special panel session has been scheduled at MS&T’16 on Tuesday, October 25, at 2:00 p.m. at the Salt Palace Convention Center, Room 355B.

Introducing a new program from the ASM Materials Education Foundation

Already well known for the Materials Camp Program for both high school students and teachers, the ASM Materials Education Foundation has launched the Materials Matter program for middle school students.

Sensing skin spots cracks in structures

Researchers have developed a multi-layered “sensing skin” to detect corrosive or otherwise harmful substances in structures. The skin can also detect cracks and other structural flaws that are invisible to the naked eye.

Extreme microscopes inspire new materials

Researchers are pushing the limits of electron microscopy into the tens of picometer scale, a fraction of the size of a hydrogen atom.

Material could help electric cars charge faster

An electric car currently relies on a complex interplay of both batteries and supercapacitors to provide the energy it needs to go places. But chemists are developing a new material that could change that.

Finding alloys to form bulk metallic glass

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Cambridge, Mass., in collaboration with colleagues from Duke and Yale universities, recently developed a method to predict which alloys might form a bulk metallic glass.

New wetsuit inspired by beavers

Inspired by beavers, engineers at MIT fabricated fur-like, rubbery pelts and used them to identify a mechanism by which air is trapped between individual hairs when the pelts are plunged into liquid.

NSF center focuses on real-time functional imaging

The National Science Foundation (NSF), Arlington, Va., announced $24 million in funding to support a new science and technology center at the University of Colorado Boulder, expanding the university’s role as a national leader in imaging, materials, nano, bio, and energy sciences.

Self-healing crystal mimics skin

Scientists developed a smart crystal that can heal itself after breaking without any chemical or biological intervention. The crystal relies on its own molecular structure and physical contact to heal—similar to cuts on skin.

Video: Smart threads could save lives

Engineers are joining forces with designers, scientists and doctors at Drexel University, Philadelphia, to produce new biomedical textiles, which are not only fashionably functional, but could also be life savers.

Fluorescence boosts cool colored pigment performance

Elementary school science teaches us that in the sun, dark colors get hot while white stays cool. Now new research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Calif., has found an exception: Certain dark pigments can stay just as cool as white by using fluorescence, the re-emission of absorbed light.

Coffee foam cleans contaminated water

Scientists report an innovative way to reduce coffee waste and help address another environmental problem.

Understanding how things deform (with video)

Every material can bend and break. Through nearly a century’s worth of research, scientists have had a pretty good understanding of how and why.

New material holds promise for low power electronics

Scientists have successfully paired ferroelectric and ferrimagnetic materials so that their alignment can be controlled with a small electric field at near room temperatures, an achievement that could open doors to ultralow-power microprocessors, storage devices, and next-generation electronics.

How water moves glass

Scientists at the Science Center Straubing base new sensoric materials on petrified pine cones.

Lead paint test uses molecular gel recipe (with video)

The prototype test makes it easy to see whether a paint chip contains more than the regulated 5000 parts per million of the poisonous metal that was banned from pigments in 1978.

Graphene goes into silicon at room temperature

Materials researchers at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, developed a technique that allows the integration of graphene, graphene oxide (GO), and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) onto silicon substrates at room temperature by using nanosecond pulsed laser annealing.

Enhanced 3D look inside batteries

A team of chemists has developed a method to yield highly detailed, 3D images of the insides of batteries. The technique, based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), offers an enhanced approach to monitor the condition of these power sources in real time.

ASM Appoints New Managing Director

The ASM International Board of Trustees announces the appointment of William T. (Bill) Mahoney as Managing Director effective immediately.

Understanding semiconductor stability aids next generation materials development

While metal oxide semiconductors have been widely considered to exhibit outstanding durability, performance degradation in these solar energy harvesting components happens frequently. Understanding the degradation is essential for developing stable, efficient photosystems. To address the failure, a team at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, Calif., uncovered the mysteries of photochemical instability in a widely used semiconductor. Their results reveal previously unpredicted pathways to degradation and provide insights.

Production of fuels from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water relies on semiconductors that can resist corrosion in harsh operating conditions. Predicting and understanding the origin and pathways associated with the degradation of semiconductors is crucial to designing a next generation of robust and efficient materials.

Artificial photosynthesis, which is the process of conversion of sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into fuels, relies on chemically stable materials that can efficiently harvest solar energy under harsh operating conditions. Artificial systems must be constructed from robust components that can sustain years of operation without the need for energy-intensive and costly repairs. Currently, the lack of durable and efficient semiconductors and the complexity of fabricating stable assemblies are major roadblocks to the realization of viable artificial photosystems. In recent years, significant effort has been directed at developing novel protection schemes that can prolong the lifetimes of otherwise unstable materials.

While these approaches have met with success, understanding—and then predicting—corrosion processes of semiconductors will greatly aid the discovery and development of materials that are inherently stable. To promote such understanding, scientists from the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis used experimental and theoretical tools to assess the mechanisms underlying the degradation of bismuth vanadate in the working conditions present in a solar fuels device. Bismuth vanadate is currently one of the best materials available for fabricating semiconductor photoanodes to split water into hydrogen fuel and oxygen.

The study reveals that kinetic factors play a critical role in defining corrosion pathways. Indeed, accumulation of light-generated charge at the surface of the bismuth vanadate destabilizes the material. These and other insights will guide approaches to stabilization and aid the search for durable, visible-light-absorbing materials for the next generation of solar-to-fuel conversion systems.

This study is based on work performed at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, a DOE Energy Innovation Hub, supported through the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences under award number DE-SC0004993. Imaging work at the Molecular Foundry was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under contract number DE-AC02-05CH11231. The in situ electrochemical atomic force microscopy part of this work was supported in part by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under U.S. Department of Energy contract number DE-AC02-05CH11231. V.K. and F.M.T. acknowledge support from the Bavaria California Technology Center programme, project number 2015-1.

Image caption — A solar simulator illuminates a photoelectrochemical cell that contains a bismuth vanadate thin-film electrode to harvest light. Courtesy of Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis and Paul Mueller (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory).