Materials Sciences

Materials fortified with carbon nanotubes are strongest when the embedded filaments run parallel to each other, but electronic and thermal conductivity are best when the nanotubes are oriented randomly. That the finding from a team of engineers at the University of Pennsylvania who have developed a production technique that permits a finer and more precise dispersion of nanotubes within a material.

The results, which could give scientists the tools to customize nano-tube-laced materials to

Engineers at Ohio State University have overcome a major barrier in the manufacture of high quality light emitting devices and solar cell materials.

Steven Ringel, professor of electrical engineering, and his colleagues have created special hybrid materials that are virtually defect-free — an important first step for making ultra-efficient electronics in the future.

The same technology could also lead to faster, less expensive computer chips.

Ringel directs Ohio Sta

Engineers at Ohio State University and their colleagues have taken an unprecedented look at the interface between layers of silicon and other materials in electronic devices.

What they have learned may help traditional microelectronics remain vital to industry longer than most experts expect. It may even aid the design of other devices where one material meets another — including medical implants.

Using computer simulation, the engineers demonstrated for the first time how

Ultimate goal: a public online database

A computational technique used to predict everything from books that a given customer might like to the function of an unknown protein is now being applied by MIT engineers and colleagues to the search for new materials.

The team’s ultimate goal: a public online database that could aid the design of materials for almost any application, from nanostructure computer components to ultralight, high-strength alloys for airplanes.

A research team led by engineers at Purdue University and physicists at the University of Chicago has made a discovery about the formation of drops that could lead to new methods for making threads, wires and particles only a few nanometers wide.

Such nano-threads, wires and particles could, in turn, have numerous applications, including new kinds of composite materials, electronic circuits and pharmaceutical products, said Osman Basaran, a professor in Purdue’s School of Chemical Engineeri

Discovery of new property in commonly used plastic leads to invention

Engineers at Princeton University and Hewlett-Packard have invented a combination of materials that could lead to cheap and super-compact electronic memory devices for archiving digital images or other data.

The invention could result in a single-use memory card that permanently stores data and is faster and easier to use than a compact disk. The device could be very small because it would not involve movi