Materials Sciences

A ceramic material reinforced with carbon nanotubes has been made by materials scientists at UC Davis. The new material is far tougher than conventional ceramics, conducts electricity and can both conduct heat and act as a thermal barrier, depending on the orientation of the nanotubes.

Ceramic materials are very hard and resistant to heat and chemical attack, making them useful for applications such as coating turbine blades, said Amiya Mukherjee, professor of chemical engineering and mater

Ames Laboratory researchers identify non-brittle intermetallics

To material scientists the phrase “ductile intermetallic compounds” has long been considered an oxymoron. Although these compounds possess chemical, physical, electrical, magnetic, and mechanical properties that are often superior to ordinary metals, their potential has gone untapped because they are typically quite brittle at room temperature. Until now.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames

A tailored, cage-like silica structure, developed by Penn State researchers, is easier and less expensive to make than previous materials and is tunable in size.

“Previous attempts at synthesizing materials like PSU-1 involved specially designed templates making the process expensive,” says Dr. Sridhar Komarneni, professor of clay mineralogy. “The processes also require stringent conditions for the synthesis to work.” Komarneni, working with Dr. Bharat L. Newalkar, postdoctoral fellow in Pe

Using molecules resembling 60-sided soccer balls, a joint team of researchers from the University of Toronto and Carleton University has created a new material for processing information using light.

Led by U of T electrical and computer engineering professor Ted Sargent and Carleton University chemistry professor Wayne Wang, the team developed a material that combines microscopic spherical particles known as “buckyballs” with polyurethane, the polymer used as a coating on cars and furnitur

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