Skoltech researchers have investigated the procedure for catalyst delivery used in the most common method of carbon nanotube production, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), offering what they call a “simple and elegant” way to boost productivity and pave the way for cheaper and more accessible nanotube-based technology. The paper was published in the Chemical Engineering Journal. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT), tiny rolled sheets of graphene with a thickness of just one atom, hold huge promise when it comes to applications in…

As a vehicle travels through space at hypersonic speeds, the gases surrounding it generate heat at dangerous temperatures for the pilot and instrumentation inside. Designing a vehicle that can drive the heat away requires an understanding of the thermal properties of the materials used to construct it. A recent two-part study at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a method to create 3D models of the fibers within composite materials then used that information to predict the thermal conductivity of…

Sustainable processes could replace valuable metals in silicone crosslinking. Silicones are tried and tested in the private and professional domains. In many applications, however, expensive precious metals are required as catalysts to transform the liquid intermediate products to durable elastic polymers. A research team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Munich-based WACKER Group has now developed a curing process that works without precious metals. Silicones are synthetic polymers consisting of an inorganic silicon-oxygen backbone modified with organic…

A new electronic module safeguards self-driving vehicles against the total failure of onboard electrical systems. Autonomous electric vehicles draw power from two sources: a high-voltage battery and, additionally, a conventional 12-volt battery that supplies the vehicle when idling or in high-load situations while driving. Safety-critical systems such as brakes and steering can therefore be connected to two sources of power. But what happens when one of these has a fault – a short circuit, for example? In order to safeguard…

Medical products such as blood bags and tubing are often made from soft PVC, a plastic that contains phthalate plasticizers, which are suspected to be harmful to human health. These substances are not chemically bound to the polymer, which means they can leach into the blood bags and thus come into contact with human cells. A new method developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST prevents these harmful substances from migrating into the surrounding media….

A material that mimics human skin in strength, stretchability and sensitivity could be used to collect biological data in real time. Electronic skin, or e-skin, may play an important role in next-generation prosthetics, personalized medicine, soft robotics and artificial intelligence. “The ideal e-skin will mimic the many natural functions of human skin, such as sensing temperature and touch, accurately and in real time,” says KAUST postdoc Yichen Cai. However, making suitably flexible electronics that can perform such delicate tasks while…

Battery in Focus They are about the size of a shoebox, high-tech, and soon tens of thousands of them will be orbiting the earth – so called nano-satellites. They can, for example, take high-resolution photos of our planet, or reinforce telecommunications networks. However, these actions take energy and this resource is scarce in the compact high-tech devices. Computer scientists at Saarland University now show how the energy consumption of satellites can be planned in such a way that they always…

The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM in Dresden is part of the initiative “HySpeedInnovation”, which brings together a number of leading organisations in research and technology (RTOs) that offer pro-posals to speed up the development of water electrolysis as a green energy technology. Green hydrogen produced by electrolysis using renewable sources such as the sun and the wind plays a crucial role in the energy transition. But much remains to be done to produce this clean…

European project “Spartacus” launched Faster charging, longer stability of performance not only for electric vehicles but also for smartphones and other battery powered products. What still sounds like science fiction today might be feasible in the future, not least thanks to innovations the recently started “Spartacus” research project wants to achieve. By utilizing advanced sensors and cell management systems, “Spartacus” aims to reduce charging times by up to 20 percent without compromising the reliability and service life of batteries. The…

What if we didn’t have skin? We would have no sense of touch, no detection of coldness or pain, leaving us inept to respond to any situation. The skin is not just a protective shell for organs, but rather a signaling system for survival that provides information on the external stimuli or temperature, or a meteorological observatory that reports the weather. Tactile receptors, tightly packed throughout the skin, feel the temperature or mechanical stimuli – such as touching or pinching…

Scientists from NUST MISIS have improved the technology of 3D printing from aluminum, having achieved an increase in the hardness of products by 1,5 times. The nanocarbon additive to aluminum powder, which they have developed, obtained from the products of processing associated petroleum gas, will improve the quality of 3D printed aerospace composites. The research results are published in the international scientific journal Composites Communications Today, the main field of application for aluminum 3D printing is the creation of high-tech…

Nature-inspired material designed by Berkeley Lab scientists removes copper from wastewater with atomic precision. We rely on water to quench our thirst and to irrigate bountiful farmland. But what do you do when that once pristine water is polluted with wastewater from abandoned copper mines? A promising solution relies on materials that capture heavy metal atoms, such as copper ions, from wastewater through a separation process called adsorption. But commercially available copper-ion-capture products still lack the chemical specificity and load…

Understanding how particles travel through a device is vital for improving the efficiency of solar cells. Researchers from KAUST, working with an international team of scientists, have now developed a set of design guidelines for enhancing the performance of molecular materials. When a packet of light, or photon, is absorbed by a semiconductor, it generates a pair of particles known as an exciton. An electron is one part of this pair; the other is its positively charged equivalent, called a…

With an innovative research project, Hof University of Applied Sciences has declared war on one of the biggest annoyances of German motorists: marten damage. At the Institute for Applied Biopolymer Research (ibp) at Hof University of Applied Sciences, headed by Prof. Dr. Michael Nase, in cooperation with the automotive supplier UNIWELL Rohrsysteme GmbH & Co. KG, materials are currently being investigated and tested that are expected to withstand the bite of the common marten far better than the materials currently…

An exciting research project with current relevance and a wide range of possible applications is currently underway at Hof University of Applied Sciences: The Institute for Material Sciences (ifm) is doing research on antibacterial surface coatings. In the future, these paint compounds are going to be used in hospitals, doctors’ surgeries or even in public transport systems in particular and will inhibit the spread of bacteria and viruses. For the first time, a natural substance, which can be obtained by…

The greatest potential of digitalization in companies in which materials play a prominent role lies in the cross-process linking of materials data. This promises to shorten component development times, faster optimization of complex manufacturing processes and more reliable plant operation. The problem is the very heterogeneous nature of materials data, which makes linking within this data extremely complex. The research project MaterialDigital of the state of Baden-Württemberg under the leadership of the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in…