Scientists at DWI – Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials have come one step closer to the objective of producing functional synthetic cells. The research group is probing the necessary ingredients for the design and development of materials with the ability to communicate and function with living matter. Such materials are used to study and develop antimicrobial surfaces or coatings that interact with blood for example. The research at DWI was directed by former working group leader César Rodriguez-Emmenegger, who is…
Just like a pianist who learns to play their instrument without looking at the keys or a basketball player who puts in countless hours to throw a seemingly effortless jump shot, UCLA mechanical engineers have designed a new class of material that can learn behaviors over time and develop a “muscle memory” of its own, allowing for real-time adaptation to changing external forces. The material is composed of a structural system made up of tunable beams that can alter its…
Photocatalysis-based prompt and complete removal of trace amount of alcohol in water. Alcohols are used to remove impurities on the surface of semiconductors or electronics during the manufacturing process, and wastewater containing alcohols is treated using reverse osmosis, ozone, and biological decomposition. Although such methods can lower the alcohol concentration in wastewater, they are ineffective at completely decomposing alcohols in wastewater with a low alcohol concentration. This is because alcohol is miscible in water, making it impossible to completely separate…
What if the cloth changes its visual appearance when you stretch your hand?… such mechanoresponsive material has enormous potential in a large range of transformative applications in the beauty and health industry. Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Elastomer (CLCE) is a structurally coloured polymer system capable of changing its colour by mechanical deformation, due to the coupling of colour of helically aligned liquid crystal molecules and the viscoelasticity of rubber. Prof. Jan Lagerwall, Dr. Yong Geng and Rijeesh Kizhakidathazhath at the University…
They will be useful in creating electric motors for pacemakers. Scientists from the Ural Federal University and the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences are determining the optimal conditions for 3D printing of permanent magnets from hard magnetic compounds based on rare-earth metals. This will make it possible to start small-scale production of magnets, give them any shape during manufacturing, and create complex configurations of magnets. Such magnets are suitable for miniature electric motors and electric generators, on…
Joining forces: Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence “3D matter made to order” print microstructures by crossing red and blue laser beams – publication in Nature Photonics. Printing objects from plastic precisely, quickly, and inexpensively is the goal of many 3D printing processes. However, speed and high resolution remain a technological challenge. A research team from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Heidelberg University, and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has come a long way toward achieving this goal….
Inspired by living things from trees to shellfish, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin set out to create a plastic much like many life forms that are hard and rigid in some places and soft and stretchy in others. Their success — a first, using only light and a catalyst to change properties such as hardness and elasticity in molecules of the same type — has brought about a new material that is 10 times as tough as…
New approach creates metamaterials that are light, thin and flexible. Researchers have developed an automatic drawing machine that uses pens and pencils to draw metamaterials onto paper. They demonstrated the new approach by using it to make three metamaterials that can be used to manipulate the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Metamaterials are artificially engineered composite materials that derive their properties from patterned microstructures, rather than the chemical composition of the materials themselves. The exact shape, geometry, size, orientation and…
A new type of insect-repellent delivery device has been developed by scientists from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). With the help of a 3D printer, the active ingredient is first “encapsulated” and formed into the desired shape, such as a ring, which can then be worn and releases an agent designed to repel mosquitoes for a long time. The team has presented its work in the “International Journal of Pharmaceutics”. The researchers have developed their prototypes using “IR3535”, an…
New Caltech research demonstrates how the honeycombed material can enhance electronics. At 200 times stronger than steel, graphene has been hailed as a super material of the future since its discovery in 2004. The ultrathin carbon material is an incredibly strong electrical and thermal conductor, making it a perfect ingredient to enhance semiconductor chips found in many electrical devices. But while graphene-based research has been fast-tracked, the nanomaterial has hit roadblocks: in particular, manufacturers have not been able to create…
A series of buzzing, bee-like “loop-currents” could explain a recently discovered, never-before-seen phenomenon in a type of quantum material. The findings from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder may one day help engineers to develop new kinds of devices, such as quantum sensors or the quantum equivalent of computer memory storage devices. The quantum material in question is known by the chemical formula Mn3Si2Te6. But you could also call it “honeycomb” because its manganese and tellurium atoms form a…
Stability is one of the core requirements and at the same time an important potential weak point for components manufactured in layer-by-layer 3D printing such as Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM). One key to greater stability is to improve the adhesion between the individual layers, and the researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST achieve this through targeted chemical modification of the surface by using atmospheric pressure plasmas. Various plasma sources have been developed at the…
Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are a class of materials with physical properties that make them ideally suited for use in flexible optoelectronic applications, such as light detectors, light-emitting diodes and solar cells. For such applications to perform well, the crystalline quality of the TMDCs needs to be extremely high, however; defects in the crystal structure worsen device performance. The crystalline quality of a sample is related to the number of grain boundaries — interfaces between different grains, or domains, within…
The ceramic-based material could be used for highly efficient actuators for aircraft or other uses, with minimal moving parts. Shape-memory metals, which can revert from one shape to a different one simply by being warmed or otherwise triggered, have been useful in a variety of applications, as actuators that can control the movement of various devices. Now, the discovery of a new category of shape-memory materials made of ceramic rather than of metal could open up a new range of…
… for extreme conditions. An innovative research project of the Chair of Ceramic Materials at the University of Bayreuth in cooperation with the SKZ Plastics Centre is investigating the transformation of additively manufactured green bodies into high-quality ceramics. A recently launched research project is investigating a novel process route to produce ceramics more cost-efficiently, sustainably and with greater geometric freedom. The special feature of the chosen approach is that a thermoplastically processable material is used for green body production. In…
Potassium copper fluoride KCuF3 is considered the simplest model material realising the so-called Heisenberg quantum spin chain: The spins interact with their neighbours antiferromagnetically along a single direction (one-dimensional), governed by the laws of quantum physics. “We carried out the measurements on this simple model material at the ISIS spallation neutron source some time ago when I was a postdoc, and we published our results in 2005, 2013 and again in 2021 comparing to new theories each time they became…
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