We’ve all sat there in a dull moment at work stretching an elastic band between our fingers and watching it return to its original shape and size as we let it go. But how many of us would have thought of combining the elasticity of rubber with the optical properties of the liquid crystals commonly used in watches, laptops and calculators? On Monday 5th April at the Institute of Physics Condensed Matter and Materials Physics Conference in Warwick, Professor Mark Warner from the University of Camb

It looks like glass and feels like solidified smoke, but the most interesting features of the new silica aerogels made by UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers are too small to see or feel. Lighter than styrofoam, this strange material is riddled with pores just nanometers in size, leaving it 98 percent empty.

Water can soak into the material, but in the confined space the water molecules arrange themselves in unusual ways, said Subhash Risbud, professor of chemica

Virginia Tech researchers are mixing air and soybean oil to create new polymers to replace petroleum-based materials.

“These natural polymers could be used in biocompatible or biodegradable ways,” says Tim Long of Blacksburg, chemistry professor in the College of Science at Virginia Tech. “We are looking for natural products derived in the United States.”

Ann R. Fornof of Toledo, Ohio, a graduate student in Virginia Tech’s Macromolecular and Science Engineering program, will

A stable cluster of aluminum atoms, Al13, acts as a single entity in chemical reactions, demonstrating properties similar to those of a halogen, reports a research team led by A. Welford Castleman Jr., the Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry and Physics and the Eberly Family Distinguished Chair in Science at Penn State, in a paper to be published in the 2 April 2004 issue of the journal Science. Experimental results and theoretical calculations indicate that the cluster chemically resembles a “superhalo

Today’s advanced materials have become extremely complex in chemistry, structure and function, which means scientists need faster, more efficient ways to model and test new designs.

J. Carson Meredith, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has pioneered combinatorial synthesis and high-throughput screening in polymer science – techniques that allow researchers to create and evaluate thousands of polymeric materials in a

The Baltic Sea is the world’s largest brackish body of water and has many rare and unique ecosystems. It is also one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, where the oil and cargo traffic of St. Petersburg and western Russia cross paths with dozens of ferries. And it is about to get busier – Russia is building a giant oil terminal and passenger numbers are expected to increase when Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania join the EU.

There have been hundreds of minor oil spills here ever

Ames Laboratory researchers studying self-assembling polymers

A group of bioinspired polymers are being studied by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory to understand how they are able to form and react to stimuli similar to the way proteins, lipids and DNA react in nature. Unlocking how these soluble block polymers are able to self-assemble could potentially lead to a variety of uses such as controlled release systems for sustained and modulated delivery of d

Granular materials – which include everything from coal to coco pops – are physical substances that don’t quite fit into any of the known phases of matter: solid, liquid, or gas.

Keep the grains under pressure, vacuum-packed coffee for example, and you have solid-like behaviour; open the pack and pour it into a container and suddenly the grains flow freely like a liquid.

The changing personalities of granular materials can have devastating implications, for example the distur

Biasing spin statistics

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on pi-conjugated polymers offer significant advantages over other display materials. They are lightweight, flexible, easily tailored, operate on low voltages and can be deposited on large areas using simple techniques such as ink-jet printing or spin-coating.

By combining the electrical properties of metals and semiconductors with the mechanical properties of plastics, these materials are poised to provide a

Engineers from Duke University have described progress building so-called “smart nanostructures,” including billionths-of-a-meter-scale “nanobrushes” that can selectively and reversibly sprout from surfaces in response to changes in temperature or solvent chemistry.

In talks delivered during the March 28-April 1 at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Anaheim, researchers from Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering also told how they are using an atomic force microscope to creat

For two decades, chemists have been making great strides in analyzing the biological functions that drive living cells. But many biological substances still remain undetectable.

That will soon change, thanks to a biological sensor being developed by University of Arizona chemists. Their new sensor platform has many capabilities that current ones lack.

Most intracellular sensors are made from hard plastics (polymers). The plastic is formed into solid, nanometer-sized, BB-like beads,

Increases versatility of conducting polymers

A powerful one-step, “chain growth” method should make it easier to design and synthesize a variety of highly conductive polymers for different research and commercial applications, according to a presentation by the method’s developer, Carnegie Mellon University chemist Richard McCullough. McCullough, dean of the Mellon College of Science and professor of chemistry, is reporting his research Tuesday, March 30, at the 227th annual meet

A peptide called magainin, first found in the skin of the African clawed frog, holds the secret to creating bacteria-killing surfaces, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The Penn scientists have taken a joint experimental-computational approach to mimicking magainin. They designed, synthesized, tested, and then improved novel antibacterial compounds, using a combination of laboratory experiments and painstaking simulations on supercomputers. The resulting material could be an

Duke University researchers exploring ways to build ultrasmall electronic devices out of atom-thick carbon cylinders have incorporated one of these “carbon nanotubes” into a new kind of field effect transistor. The Duke investigators also reported new insights into their previously published technique for growing nanotubes in straight structures as long as half an inch.

Duke assistant chemistry professor Jie Liu will report on these and other nanotube developments during three talks at a na

Tiny machines built as part of silicon chips are all around us, and their need for lubrication is the same as large machines such as automobile engines, but conventional lubricants, like oils, are too heavy for these micro electromechanical systems (MEMS), so Penn State researchers are looking to gases to provide thin films of slippery coating.

MEMS today are mostly found in automobile air bags as the sensor that marks sudden deceleration and triggers airbag use. They can also take the for

Australian researchers who have worked quietly over several years in a long ignored area of metallurgy have been rewarded with a startling discovery, which is set to reshape the way metals are manufactured around the world.

CSIRO’s (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation) Advanced Thixotropic Metallurgy (ATM) casting technology is now in the final proving-out stage and the results herald a new age of quality high-pressure die-casting (HPDC).

ATM is particul