Materials Sciences

Advanced ceramics are wonderful materials – they withstand temperatures that would melt steel and resist most corrosive chemicals. If only they weren’t so brittle. Poor resistance to fracture damage has been the major drawback to the widespread use of advanced ceramics as structural materials. Help, however, may be on the way.

A collaboration of scientists led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has uncovered cl

A new technology developed by Russian scientists with support of the International Science & Technology Center allows to produce antennas and telescope mirrors, walls and partitions for a space station, solar panels and even houses on the Moon or the Mars. All the above can be produced quickly, strongly, reliably, with minimal consumption of time, place, energy and money.

These building materials or rather peculiar semi-manufactured articles for future constructions will be brou

Corrugated cardboard is an excellent packaging material that is widely used for transporting, storing and protecting goods. Through the new process developed by EUREKA project E! 1929 FACTORY FOLDHEX, corrugated cardboard can be transformed into a new honeycomb core that offers reduced weight, uses less raw material and achieves better crash absorption and higher compression resistance than double flute corrugated cardboard.

Honeycomb cores are already used in a variety of appl

Spider silks could become the intelligent materials of the future, according to a review article published this month in the journal Microbial Cell Factories. The characteristics of spider silk could have applications in areas ranging from medicine to ballistics.

The distinctive toughness of spider silk could allow manufacturers to improve wound-closure systems and plasters, and to produce artificial ligaments and tendons for durable surgical implants. The silk could also be wo

In the future, the phrase smarty pants might be taken quite literally, referring to trousers embedded with electronic “intelligence” so that they change color, for example, in response to their surroundings.

The timing of this vernacular twist will depend on when plastic “chips” become practical–so cheap and reliable that electronic circuits can be printed not only on clothing but also on paper, billboards and nearly anything else. Unlike today’s largely silicon-based tech

Sending your favorite suit to the dry cleaners could one day become an infrequent practice. Researchers at Clemson University are developing a highly water-repellant coating made of silver nanoparticles that they say can be used to produce suits and other clothing items that offer superior resistance to dirt as well as water and require much less cleaning than conventional fabrics.

The patented coating — a polymer film (polyglycidyl methacrylate) mixed with silver nanoparticles —