Material Science

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…

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University (SBU) and other collaborating institutions have uncovered dynamic, atomic-level details of how an important platinum-based catalyst works in the water gas shift reaction. This reaction transforms carbon monoxide (CO) and water (H2O) into carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen gas (H2) — an…

RHOBARR 320 Polyolefin Dispersion, from the Dow Chemical Company, is a unique solution to the global problem of waste management and recycling for single-use paper articles. It provides comparable liquid and grease barrier to incumbent technology but at lower raw material use, resulting in finished articles that are compatible with existing paper recycling infrastructure. Further,…

In an exciting new advance, a team of scientists from Hiden Isochema in the UK and Cleveland State University in Ohio have developed a new way of analyzing materials for separating gases. Although gas separation using porous materials is an established technology, analytical techniques for assessing the performance of materials tend to be slow and…

DOWSIL EC-6601, from Dow Performance Silicones, provides a step-change in performance of electrically conductive adhesives, critical for emerging applications in autonomous driving, cameras and 5G base-station applications. It provides high elongation, superior shielding, strong adhesion, durability and conductive performance. Its unique siloxane matrix, enabled by Dow’s backward integration of raw materials, provides novel electrical and…

  Marking a major achievement in the field of spintronics, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Yale University have demonstrated the ability to control spin dynamics in magnetic materials by altering their thickness. The study, published today in Nature Materials, could lead to smaller, more energy-efficient electronic devices. “Instead…

ShAPE (Shear Assisted Processing and Extrusion), from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is a revolutionary new manufacturing process for a new generation of high-performance materials. Because ShAPE is radically different from conventional extrusion methods — eliminating the need for heating and melting to alloy and form metal products — it offers a scalable pathway to entirely…

A new carbon fiber material could bring cost and performance benefits to the wind industry if developed commercially, according to a study led by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories. Wind blades containing carbon fiber weigh 25% less than ones made from traditional fiberglass materials. That means carbon fiber blades could be longer than fiberglass ones…

The M2R2 CLLBC Multimode Radioisotope Identification Detector (RIID), from the Kromek Group, is the first product of its kind incorporating the dual-mode, gamma-neutron sensitive CLLBC crystal. This next-generation material, developed by RMD, previously won this award and this is the first instrument to move the technology from material to product. The M2R2 is an all-in-one,…

The animation depicts the controlled transport of a single molecule between two scanning tunneling microscope tips in an experiment at ORNL. Credit: Michelle Lehman/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, or CNMS, contributed to a groundbreaking experiment published in Science that tracks the real-time transport of individual molecules.…

Nicca Chemical Co.’s NEOSEED NR-8800, silicone-based water repellent (DWR) for textiles, provides breakthrough performance as a sustainable, durable water repellent option in the textile market, which is moving away from Perfluoro chemicals (PFC). It is the first product on the market which embraces silicone technology as a main component resulting in a fine performance balancing…

By Stephanie G Seay, ORNL In the quest for advanced vehicles with higher energy efficiency and ultra-low emissions, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are accelerating a research engine that gives scientists and engineers an unprecedented view inside the atomic-level workings of combustion engines in real time. The new capability is an engine built specifically to…

Group14 Technologies, a global provider of silicon-carbon composite materials for lithium-ion markets, today announced it has secured $17 million in Series B funding led by SK Materials, a manufacturer of special gases and industrial gases, with participation from returning investor OVP Venture Partners. Group14 will use this operating capital to scale production to meet the…