New Laser Technique Binds Aluminum with Plastic in Injection Molding
As developers in the automotive and airline industries push to make more efficient vehicles, they are turning their attention to designing sturdy, lightweight machines. Designing lightweight materials, however, requires carefully joining together different types of materials like metals and polymers, and these additional steps drive up manufacturing costs. New work in laser technology recently increased…
A Bar Magnet Creates Chaos in Plasma
Placing a magnet on your refrigerator might hold up your calendar, but researchers from India’s Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics found that placing one outside a plasma chamber causes a localized, fireball-like structure. This work may help understand plasma dynamics under these north-south, or dipolar, magnetic fields. They present their results this week in the…
Engaging Diamonds for Next-Era Transistors
‘Inverse Designing’ Spontaneously Self-Assembling Materials
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are exploring how molecular simulations with the latest optimization strategies can create a more systematic way of discovering new materials that exhibit specific, desired properties. More specifically, they did so by recasting the design goal to the microscopic, asking which interactions between constituent particles can cause them…
New Method Takes 3D Images of Molecules in Action
Quantum mechanics rules. It dictates how particles and forces interact, and thus how atoms and molecules work — for example, what happens when a molecule goes from a higher-energy state to a lower-energy one. But beyond the simplest molecules, the details become very complex. “Quantum mechanics describes how all this stuff works,” said Paul Hockett…
