Materials Science
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology want to put your signature up in lights – tiny lights, that is. Using thousands of nanometer-scale wires, the researchers have developed a sensor device that converts mechanical pressure – from a signature or a fingerprint – directly into light signals that can be captured and processed optically.
| 4 min read
Spiders weave amazing creations from self-made materials human engineers envy. Witness a delicate web covered in rain droplets. How does the arachnid build a structure that’s simultaneously feather-light, incredibly strong, more elastic than nylon and moisture-proof?
| 3 min read
Scientists would like to apply the same principles by which baking soda removes food odors from refrigerators or silica powder keeps moisture away from electronic devices to scrub carbon dioxide from the exhaust gases of fossil fuel power plants. An excellent candidate for this task is the class of materials known as multivariate metal organic frameworks or MTV-MOFs.
| 3 min read
Researchers have discovered a synthetic, high-performance polymer that behaves differently from other tested materials and could make inexpensive, highly efficient organic solar panels a reality.
| 3 min read
Researchers at North Carolina State University have created a new flexible nano-scaffold for rechargeable lithium ion batteries that could help make cell phone and electric car batteries last longer.
| 2 min read
One chemical forms two colors of crystals, sheds insight on agostic bonds important in industrial catalysis.
| 3 min read
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Ames Laboratory has announced that it will acquire a Dynamic Nuclear Polarization-NMR spectrometer, a giant step forward in the laboratory’s world-class solid state NMR capabilities.
| 2 min read
Advanced x-ray technique reveals surprising quantum excitations that persist through materials with or without superconductivity.
| 5 min read
Fluorescent tetrapod nanocrystals could light the way to the future design of stronger polymer nanocomposites.
| 4 min read
Brian Shoemaker is helping a national team of scientists answer a million dollar question. Could a substance that resembles baby powder curb global carbon emissions?
| 3 min read
The use of plasmonic black metals could someday provide a pathway to more efficient photovoltaics (PV) -- the use of solar panels containing photovoltaic solar cells -- to improve solar energy harvesting, according to researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
| 2 min read
Aluminum recycling has become a successful business since its inception a century ago. Nearly a third of the aluminum produced in the United States is made from aluminum scraps that have been recycled in a process—usually remelting—that uses only 5 to 10 percent of the energy it takes to extract aluminum from mined bauxite ore.
| 3 min read
