Materials Sciences

It may soon be possible to produce a low cost, high-value, high-strength fiber from a biodegradable and renewable waste product for air filtration, water filtration and agricultural nanotechnology, report polymer scientists at Cornell University. The achievement is the result of using the recently perfected technique of electrospinning to spin nanofibers from cellulose.

“Cellulose is the most abundant renewable resource polymer on earth. It forms the structure of all plants,” says Margaret

Creating unique structures

Researchers have developed a laser-based technique for creating patterns in self-assembled colloidal crystals produced from hydrogel nanoparticles – soft spheres that respond to heat by changing size. The development could make possible the fabrication of waveguides, three-dimensional microlenses and other photonic structures from the unusual crystals.

In related work, the Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have also learned to use weak at

When Benjamin in “The Graduate” was told to go into plastics, computers were in their infancy and silicon technology ruled. Now, conducting organic polymers are infiltrating the electronics sphere and the watchword is once again plastics, according to Penn State researchers.

“For plastic circuits we cannot use the old processing,” says Dr. Qing Wang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering. “Photolithography and silicon technologies require harsh environments and plastics ca

Carbon-fiber reinforced polymer matrix composite materials are strong without being brittle and retain their integrity over a wide temperature range while being impervious to most environments. While the materials’ qualities make them important to the aerospace industry, present processing technology makes carbon fiber too expensive for broader use, such as in the automotive industry.

Chemistry and chemical engineering researchers at Virginia Tech and Clemson University have been worki

As scientists shrink materials down to the nanometer scale, creating nanodots, nanoparticles, nanorods and nanotubes a few tens of atoms across, they’ve found weird and puzzling behaviors that have fired their imaginations and promised many unforeseen applications.

Now University of California, Berkeley, scientists have found another unusual effect that could have both good and bad implications for semiconductor devices once they’ve been shrunk to the nanometer scale.

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A research team in Austria has been unravelling the secrets of the charging of plastic foams. Its findings open the way for the development of flat microphones and loudspeakers, as well as “smart” surfaces that could be used as floor coverings, among other things. The interest in the success of the group´s work – which was co-funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) – has resulted in the integration of the project in a European interdisciplinary research network.

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