Materials Sciences

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

Russian researchers produce crystals of various colors and shades based on yttrium, aluminium and oxygen. Outwardly, they practically do not differ from well-known semiprecious garnet stones. However, artificially produced crystals possess higher solidity, and the color variety is much wider than that of their natural “relatives”.

Sometimes a minor thing is sufficient to change the situation beyond recognition. That is particularly important in chemistry, especially in chemistry of crystals.

Like spiders spinning webs, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are creating complex, three-dimensional structures with micron-size features using a robotic deposition process called direct-write assembly.

As reported in the March 25 issue of the journal Nature, Jennifer Lewis and her research team have developed novel inks that readily flow through micro-capillary nozzles and then rapidly solidify to retain their shape. Patterning such fine structures could be use

The development of new types of artificial materials, known as “metamaterials” and with electromagnetic properties not found in nature, is the aim of the Metamorphose Excellence European Network, of which the Public University of Navarre forms part, together with twenty-one other research institutions from 13 European countries.

Perfect plane lenses

Metamaterials are electromagnetic and multifunctional artificial materials, created in order to comply with certain specificati

Researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Materials Science Institute of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), and various German and North American institutions have developed a simple method for measuring the maximum current that coated superconductors can carry. The material will, most likely, be used to manufacture the superconductor wires of the future. The research has been published in the journal, Applied Physics Letters.

Electric currents pass through superconductor materials wi

Wires, tubes and brushes make it possible to build and maintain the machines and devices we use on a daily basis. Now, with help from a surprising source, these same building blocks can easily be created on a scale 10,000 times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

Researchers at Argonne have figured out the basics of using electrochemistry to control the architecture of nanocrystals – small structures with dimensions in billionths of meters. Their findings, published in the