Materials Sciences

To date, machines carrying out electroerosion-based machining processes have only had use of automated parameters for metallic materials such as steel. In his thesis, Navarre Public University researcher and lecturer, Iñaki Puertas, presents technologies for those applications using ceramic material, a highly interesting development from a technological viewpoint as it enables the use of ceramics in the fabrication of parts requiring great hardness and durability such as medical prothesis or those de

Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed a new type of adhesive, which mimics the mechanism employed by geckos (a type of lizard) to climb surfaces, including glass ceilings.

Researchers within the newly opened Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology at the University have been working on the new adhesive since 2001, after learning the mechanism of gecko’s climbing skills from biophysicists. Now they have been able to manufacture self-cleaning, re-attachab

A new imaging technique that uses electron diffraction waves to improve both image resolution and sensitivity to small structures has been developed by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The technique works on the same principle as X-ray diffraction, but can record structure from a single nanostructure or macromolecule.

Determining the structure of materials — such as protein crystals — is currently performed using X-ray diffraction. However, many small structur

There is more to mother-of-pearl than good looks. Also called nacre, the gleaming, white material is renowned in scientific circles for its strong, yet flexible, properties. Now researchers have developed a nanoscale, layered material that comes close to nacre’s properties, including its iridescence.

The ability to nanomanufacture artificial nacre may provide lightweight, rigid composites for aircraft parts, artificial bone and other applications.

Reporting online in Nature Mater

Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Teddington, Middlesex, UK have good news for manufacturers and users across the optical instrumentation industry. Based on existing processes developed in the US and Japan, a team of researchers at NPL has developed a new technique for commercial manufacturing of ultra-black coatings, which represent one of the blackest, lowest reflectance surfaces developed so far.

Performance of optical instrumentation depends on the quality of material

University of Toronto researchers have developed a hybrid plastic that can produce light at wavelengths used for fibre-optic communication, paving the way for an optical computer chip.

The material, developed by a joint team of engineers and chemists, is a plastic embedded with quantum dots – crystals just five billionths of a metre in size – that convert electrons into photons. The findings hold promise for directly linking high-speed computers with networks that transmit information using