Material Science

By Julie Fornaciari, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Titanium is strong and lightweight, boasting the highest strength to weight ratio of any structural metal. But processing it while maintaining a good balance of strength and ductility – the ability of a metal to be drawn out without breaking – is challenging and expensive. As a result,…

DuPont celebrated the inauguration of its new medical elastomers mixers at the Healthcare Industries Materials Site (HIMS) in Hemlock, Mich., with a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony. The investment in the new mixers responds to increased supply needs from DuPont Liveo Healthcare Solutions customers. The capacity expansion will: Expand in-house medical-grade silicone elastomer (Liquid Silicone Rubber and…

Materials and mechanical scientists are using machine learning to rapidly vet combinations of elements that could be used in next-generation environmental barrier coatings needed to protect vehicles traveling in the extreme conditions of aerospace and space environments. The project, led by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is supported by the National Science Foundation. Environmental barrier…

From Argonne National Laboratory  How do we make battery recycling cost effective? Scientists at the ReCell Center have taken another step towards that goal. Lithium-ion batteries are the engines of our technological present and future. They power portable electronics, such as smartphones and laptops and electric vehicles (EVs), which are growing in popularity. But the…

From Brookhaven National Laboratory A multidisciplinary team of scientists has used the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User facility located at the DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, to investigate how high-temperature molten salts corrode metal alloys. The group found a novel approach for using molten salts…

From Argonne National Laboratory By confining the transport of electrons and ions in a patterned thin film, scientists find a way to potentially enhance material properties for design of next-generation electronics. Like ripples in a pond, electrons travel like waves through materials, and when they collide and interact, they can give rise to new and…

Creator and supplier of realistic artificial green walls, Vistafolia, has launched a collaboration with the University of Surrey to create a new base polymer, the material that their artificial plants are made from, using renewable sources, while maintaining the established safety and design standards of its original product. Co-funded by Innovate U.K., as part of…

A team led by Tania Betancourt, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Texas State University, has received a six-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) grant of nearly $4 million to establish the Center for Intelligent Materials Assembly (CIMA). The PREM CIMA is a…

Accurate predictive simulations of the electrochemical reactions that power solar fuel generators, fuel cells and batteries could advance these technologies through improved material design, and by preventing detrimental electrochemical processes, such as corrosion. However, electrochemical reactions are so complex that current computational tools can only model a fraction of all relevant factors at one time…

Researchers at Art-Science production company, Ohme, in Brussels, have created a choreographed audio-visual performance, ‘Tales of Entropy’, following the physical changes of organic materials as temperature changes (from crystal, to liquid crystal, to liquid), using Linkam temperature controlled stages. Founded in 2017 by a team of engineers and culture professionals, Ohme is an organization developing…

By Theresa Duque, Berkeley Lab Crystallization is one of the most fundamental processes found in nature – and it’s what gives minerals, gems, metals and even proteins their structure. In the past couple of decades, scientists have tried to uncover how natural crystals self-assemble and grow – and their pioneering work has led to some…

In a new study, researchers from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) in Korea investigated the transformation dynamics induced by an electric field in mixed-phase lanthanum-doped bismuth ferrite (BLFO) epitaxial thin films. They observed a connection between the presence of S/Stilt phases in BLFO film and their high piezoelectricity. These findings can help…

From ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Small pieces of plastic are everywhere, stretching from urban environments to pristine wilderness. Left to their own devices, it can take hundreds of years for them to degrade completely. Catalysts activated by sunlight could speed up the process but getting these compounds to interact with microplastics is difficult. In…

by Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology The fabrication device for the battery revolution looks quite inconspicuous: It is a modified, commercially available 3D printer, located in a room in the Empa laboratory building. But the real innovation lies within the recipe for the gelatinous inks this printer can dispense onto a…

By Luke Frank, Sandia National Laboratory There’s a tiny hidden gem at Sandia National Laboratories that tests the strength and evaluates the impact properties of any solid natural or manmade material on the planet. From its humble beginnings as a small storage room, mechanical engineer Bo Song has built a singular Experimental Impact Mechanics Lab…

U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory is presenting “Materials for Printed Hybrid Electronics.” a free webinar in the “Frontiers in Materials Manufacturing” webinar series, Wednesday, May 19, 2021 • 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. CT (2 – 4 p.m. E.T.) Advancements in material and device fabrication technologies have enabled the proliferation of low-cost, low-power, printed…

By Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office When you save an image to your smartphone, those data are written onto tiny transistors that are electrically switched on or off in a pattern of “bits” to represent and encode that image. Most transistors today are made from silicon, an element that scientists have managed to switch…

By Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office A lobster’s underbelly is lined with a thin, translucent membrane that is both stretchy and surprisingly tough. This marine under-armor, as MIT engineers reported in 2019, is made from the toughest known hydrogel in nature, which also happens to be highly flexible. This combination of strength and stretch helps…

 By Theresa Duque Despite our efforts to sort and recycle, less than 9% of plastic gets recycled in the U.S., and most ends up in landfill or the environment. Biodegradable plastic bags and containers could help, but if they’re not properly sorted, they can contaminate otherwise recyclable #1 and #2 plastics. What’s worse, most biodegradable…

For manufacturers and injection and blow molders that work with different kinds of plastics (for instance polycarbonate, polyethylene and polypropylene), utilizing plasma treatments can create competitive advantages and transform specific parts into specialized, engineered components, greatly increasing their value. Plasma is a state of matter, like a solid, liquid or gas, created by combining energy…

By Laura Millsaps Scientists at the Institute for Cooperative Upcycling of Plastics (iCOUP), an Energy Frontier Research Center led by Ames Laboratory, have discovered a chemical process that provides biodegradable, valuable chemicals, which are used as surfactants and detergents in a range of applications, from discarded plastics.  The process has the potential to create more…

By Mike Williams This could be where the rubber truly hits the road. Rice University scientists have optimized a process to convert waste from rubber tires into graphene that can, in turn, be used to strengthen concrete. The environmental benefits of adding graphene to concrete are clear, chemist James Tour said. “Concrete is the most-produced…

Materials science likes to take nature and the special properties of living beings that could potentially be transferred to materials as a model. A research team led by chemist Professor Andreas Walther of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has succeeded in endowing materials with a bioinspired property: Wafer-thin stiff nanopaper instantly becomes soft and elastic…

By Michael Langley Tim Briggs has built a career at Sandia National Laboratories tearing and breaking things apart with his team of collaborators. Now, he’s developed a fracture-testing tool that could help make everything from aircraft structural frames to cellphones stronger. Briggs has filed a patent for a device associated with bonded structural composite materials…

ACS Materials Letters Exposure to some odorless, colorless and tasteless gases, such as nerve agents, can be toxic or even lethal. And having the ability to detect other types of vapors could save people from eating spoiled or rotten food. Easy-to-use portable devices could, therefore, go a long way toward protecting the public. Now researchers…