Materials management deals with the research, development, manufacturing and processing of raw and industrial materials. Key aspects here are biological and medical issues, which play an increasingly important role in this field.
innovations-report offers in-depth articles related to the development and application of materials and the structure and properties of new materials.
The hassle of removing and cleaning your contacts every night, or even every month, could become a thing of the past, based on a study involving a new contact lens coating that kills bacteria.
The study involved rabbits. The coating: an extremely thin layer of selenium, a naturally occurring element found in soil, some plants and many foods we eat.
The rabbits showed no ill effects after two consecutive months of wearing the coated lenses, according to Ted Reid, Ph.D., of Texas Te
A new way to assemble complex, three-dimensional structures from specially formulated colloidal inks could find use in advanced ceramics, sensors, composites, catalyst supports, tissue engineering scaffolds and photonic materials.
As will be reported in the July 9 issue of the journal Langmuir, scientists have developed colloidal, gel-based inks that form self-supporting features through a robotic deposition process called robocasting. A computer-controlled robot squeezes the ink out of a s
Walls and curtains could sport liquid-crystal digital displays.
Homes of the future could change their wallpaper from cream to cornflower blue at the touch of a button, says Dirk Broer. His team has developed paint-on liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that offer the technology.
Liquid crystals are peculiar liquids: their molecules spontaneously line up, rather than being randomly orientated as in a normal liquid. Passing a voltage across the molecules switches their alignment, b
Whether it will compete for the title of a girls best friend remains to be seen but the element osmium can already challenge diamond in at least one respect: stiffness. According to a report published in the current issue of Physical Review Letters, osmium can withstand compression better than any known material. The results provide a potentially new lead in the search for superhard materials.
Diamonds ability to resist scratches, dents and chipping–in short, its hardness–makes
Neue Materialien mit nichtlinearen optischen Eigenschaften
Fensterscheiben und Brillengläser, die sich bei zunehmender Helligkeit dunkler färben, sind besonders im Sommer eine feine Sache. Optische Eigenschaften, die sich mit der Lichtstärke verändern, so genannte nichtlineare optische Eigenschaften, sind ihr Geheimnis. Auch als optoelektronische Bauteile sind derartige Materialien von Interesse. Voraussetzung für die besonderen optischen Eigenschaften ist eine sehr regelmäßigen Mikrostruktu
A new spin-out from Oxford University, Spinox, is aiming to devise novel ways to copy spiders` ability to spin silks. The new silks may be used for sutures or woven material for surgical implants, protective clothing and in sports equipment.
Spinox has been set up to fully develop a spinning process to create high performance fibres from natural or artificial proteins based on the principles used by spiders and insects to create natural silk fibres. This approach – biomimetic (mimicking biology)