Kennametal, Latrobe, Pa., has developed Ultraflex, a new portfolio of brazed claddings for components with complex geometries in power generation, oil and gas, and many other industries. Combining tungsten carbide-based materials with super alloy-based technologies from Kennametal Stellite, UltraFlex provides metallurgical-bonded, void-free cladding that provides longer and more predictable service life for critical components in the most demanding environments.
Technology to be developed for direct wafer bonding of GaAs on silicon at room temperature
The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Germany, announces that it has joined forces with EV Group, Albany, N.Y., to develop equipment and process technology to enable electrically conductive and optically transparent direct wafer bonds at room temperature.
Slippery nanocoating makes ordinary glass tougher
Researchers at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., have developed a transparent, bioinspired coating that makes ordinary glass tough, self-cleaning, and extremely slippery. Researchers produce the ultraslippery coating by building a glass honeycomb-like structure with craters (left in the diagram), coating it with a Teflon-like chemical (purple) that binds to the honeycomb cells to form a stable liquid film. That film repels droplets of both water and oily liquids (right).
Connecting the drops with 3D printing
Researchers from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, developed 3D printing technology and techniques to create free-standing structures made of liquid metal at room temperature. “It’s difficult to create structures out of liquids, because liquids want to bead up. But we’ve found that a liquid metal alloy of gallium and indium reacts to the oxygen in the air at room temperature to form a ‘skin’ that allows the liquid metal structures to retain their shapes,” says Dr.
Siemens and LanzaTech to produce bioethanol from steel mill off-gases
Siemens Metals Technologies, Austria, and LanzaTech, New Zealand, have signed a ten-year cooperative agreement to develop and market integrated environmental solutions for the steel industry worldwide. The collaboration will utilize fermentation technology developed by LanzaTech to transform carbon-rich off-gases generated by the steel industry into low-carbon bioethanol and other platform chemicals.