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Physics - Materials Science - 16.04.2020

Advance could enable remote control of soft robots
An applied magnetic field (in blue) can cause magnetized particles embedded in a soft material to rearrange themselves into new patterns. By harnessing this phenomenon, researchers can fine-tune the soft material's properties. Image courtesy Xin Zou, Grainger Institute for Engineering Soft materials, such as rubber or polymers that can endure drastic changes to their shape, are promising for applications where flexibility and shapeshifting abilities are paramount.

Materials Science - Chemistry - 16.04.2020

Seeing ’Under the Hood’ in Batteries
From next-gen smartphones to longer-range electric cars and an improved power grid, better batteries are driving tech innovation. And to push batteries beyond their present-day performance, researchers want to see "under the hood" to learn how the individual ingredients of battery materials behave beneath the surface.

Physics - Materials Science - 14.04.2020

Nano-scientists get new large-scale equipment
Production of minute structures with gold and silicon ions / 840,000 euros from the German Research Foundation and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia Investigating and developing nanosystems - i.e. structures which are a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair - is something which occupies researchers collaborating from a variety of disciplines at the University of Münster.

Physics - Materials Science - 10.04.2020

First sighting of mysterious Majorana fermion on a common metal
Physicists at MIT and elsewhere have observed evidence of Majorana fermions - particles that are theorized to also be their own antiparticle - on the surface of a common metal: gold. This is the first sighting of Majorana fermions on a platform that can potentially be scaled up. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , are a major step toward isolating the particles as stable, error-proof qubits for quantum computing.

Physics - Materials Science - 09.04.2020

World’s most complex microparticle: A synthetic that outdoes nature’s intricacy
Synthetic microparticles more intricate than some of the most complicated ones found in nature have been produced by a University of Michigan-led international team. They also investigated how that intricacy arises and devised a way to measure it. The findings pave the way for more stable fluid-and-particle mixes, such as paints, and new ways to twist light-a prerequisite for holographic projectors.

Physics - Materials Science - 08.04.2020

A new lightsource for the chip industry
Photonic chips made possible by light-emitting silicon-germanium alloys For the past 50 years, researchers around the globe have been looking for a way to make lasers with silicon or germanium. A team from the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now succeeded in developing a light-emitting, silicon-germanium alloy.

Materials Science - 03.04.2020

Artificial fog helps lasers shine brighter
Laser-based lights could replace lightbulbs thanks to an artificial 'fog' that scatters laser light, producing high brightness at low power. The new and improved laser-based lights could be used anywhere from indoor lighting and projectors to car headlights and outdoor floodlights. As they produce high brightness at low power, they would be more energy-efficient than regular lightbulbs or LEDs.

Physics - Materials Science - 01.04.2020

New Superconducting Film Resists a Magnet’s Power to Thwart It
To Joseph Falson , who recently joined Caltech as assistant professor of materials science, electrons are like exotic supercars because they possess amazing capabilities. Consider the phenomenon of superconductivity, in which paired electrons fly unimpeded, resulting in materials that display zero electrical resistance.

Physics - Materials Science - 01.04.2020

Technique reveals how crystals form on surfaces
DNA-based self-assembling system sheds light on processes essential for semiconductors and nanotechnology. The process of crystallization, in which atoms or molecules line up in orderly arrays like soldiers in formation, is the basis for many of the materials that define modern life, including the silicon in microchips and solar cells.

Physics - Materials Science - 31.03.2020

Way to extract colour from black
Scientists have developed a way of extracting a richer palette of colours from the available spectrum by harnessing disordered patterns inspired by nature that would typically be seen as black. Colours that we see in nature often come from nanoscale patterns that reflect light back in particular ways.

History / Archeology - Materials Science - 31.03.2020

Mesoamerican copper smelting technology aided colonial weaponry
Spanish conquerors depended on indigenous expertise to keep up their munitions supplies, archaeologists have found. When Spanish invaders arrived in the Americas, they were generally able to subjugate the local peoples thanks, in part, to their superior weaponry and technology. But archeological evidence indicates that, in at least one crucial respect, the Spaniards were quite dependent on an older indigenous technology in parts of Mesoamerica (today's Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras).

Materials Science - Computer Science - 26.03.2020

Designing lightweight glass for efficient cars, wind turbines
FACULTY Q&A Liang Qi , a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan, answered questions about his group's new paper in npj Computational Materials. What is elastic stiffness' Elastic and glass don't seem to be two words that go together. All solid materials, including glass, have a property called elastic stiffness-also known as elastic modulus.

Materials Science - Physics - 25.03.2020

Neural networks facilitate optimization in the search for new materials
Sorting through millions of possibilities, a search for battery materials delivered results in five weeks instead of 50 years. When searching through theoretical lists of possible new materials for particular applications, such as batteries or other energy-related devices, there are often millions of potential materials that could be considered, and multiple criteria that need to be met and optimized at once.

Materials Science - 25.03.2020

Printing complex cellulose-based objects
Researchers from ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) have set a new world record: they 3D printed complex objects with higher cellulose content than that of any other additively manufactured cellulose-based parts. To achieve this, they used a clever trick.

Life Sciences - Materials Science - 23.03.2020

The growth of an organism rides on a pattern of waves
Study shows ripples across a newly fertilized egg are similar to other systems, from ocean and atmospheric circulations to quantum fluids. When an egg cell of almost any sexually reproducing species is fertilized, it sets off a series of waves that ripple across the egg's surface. These waves are produced by billions of activated proteins that surge through the egg's membrane like streams of tiny burrowing sentinels, signaling the egg to start dividing, folding, and dividing again, to form the first cellular seeds of an organism.

Materials Science - Chemistry - 23.03.2020

One Step Closer to a Fast-Charging Battery
In collaboration with Brookhaven National Lab, Berkeley Lab researchers were able to visualize a key feature of lithium titanate Berkeley Lab researchers, working with a team at Brookhaven National Laboratory, have made a key discovery about the dynamic structural changes in a material called lithium titanate, putting scientists one step closer to achieving a fast-charging lithium battery.

Materials Science - Chemistry - 20.03.2020

How to get conductive gels to stick when wet
A new way of making polymers adhere to surfaces may enable better biomedical sensors and implants. But there has been a sticking point preventing their widespread use: their inability to adhere to a surface such as a sensor or microchip, and stay put despite moisture from the body. Now, researchers at MIT have come up with a way of getting conductive polymer gels to adhere to wet surfaces.

Materials Science - Physics - 16.03.2020

Deep learning for mechanical property evaluation
New technique allows for more precise measurements of deformation characteristics using nanoindentation tools. A standard method for testing some of the mechanical properties of materials is to poke them with a sharp point. This "indentation technique" can provide detailed measurements of how the material responds to the point's force, as a function of its penetration depth.

Astronomy / Space Science - Materials Science - 12.03.2020

Puzzle about nitrogen solved thanks to cometary analogues
One of the basic building blocks of life is nitrogen. An international consortium was able to detect ammonium salt containing nitrogen on the cometary surface of Chury thanks to a method using analogues for comet material. The method on which the study on the detection of ammonium salt is based was developed at the University of Bern.

Physics - Materials Science - 12.03.2020

New materials for future refrigeration
Recerca An international team of scientists from the University of Barcelona, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), and TU Darmstadt has published an article in the journal Applied Physics Reviews , which shows the possibilities for implementing more efficient and environmentally friendly refrigeration processes using multi-caloric materials.