Materials Sciences

Rice engineers find evidence of little-understood force in everyday emulsions

Scientists at Rice University have discovered that a little-understood tensile force, which was previously thought to be an oddity found only in the types of plastics used to make bulletproof vests, occurs in everyday emulsions like mayonnaise and salad dressing.

First identified about 25 years ago, the phenomenon known as “negative first normal stress difference” refers to an attractive force that

Hyperbranched polymers – tree-like molecules – are not particularly useful for the creation of plastic films and molded parts because they don’t entangle. So Virginia Tech researchers have created segmented hyperbranched plastics, which do entangle and result in high-performance polymers.

Virginia Tech chemistry professor Timothy E. Long of Blacksburg will describe the configuration and functionality of the new family of polymers at the 227th Annual Meeting of the American Chemical Soc

High-quality nanopowders made of refractory ceramics are a rare and very expensive material. All known methods of their manufacturing face the same problems – scanty quantities, extensive variety of particle sizes and expensive production. Researchers from the town of Tomsk have invented and manufactured a device to produce a choice selection of particles – all particles are equal to the required size and inexpensive. The project has been funded by two foundations – the Russian Foundation for Basic R

A new class of fibers

Strong and versatile carbon nanotubes are finding new applications in improving conventional polymer-based fibers and films. For example, composite fibers made from single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and polyacrylonitrile – a carbon fiber precursor – are stronger, stiffer and shrink less than standard fibers.

Nanotube-reinforced composites could ultimately provide the foundation for a new class of strong and lightweight fibers with properties such a

Innovative polymer chemistry employed

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have developed an attractive way to make discrete carbon nanoparticles for electrical components used in industry and research. This method, which employs polyacrylonitrile (PAN) as a nanoparticle precursor, is being presented by Chuanbing Tang, a Carnegie Mellon graduate student, on Sunday, March 28, at the 227th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, Calif. (POLY69, Garden A). The resear

In what may sound like a project from a high school science fair, scientists are using a household humidifier to create porous spheres a hundred times smaller than a red blood cell. The technique is a new and inexpensive way to do chemistry using sound waves, the researchers say.

In the home, ultrasonic humidifiers are used to raise humidity, reduce static electricity and ease discomfort from the common cold or cough. In the lab, chemists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ar