Materials Sciences

Intriguing Structural Strategy Aims at Making Designer Plastics Affordable

The future was supposed to be “plastics,” according to advice given in a 1960s movie The Graduate. Many a company thought that future meant the gradual ascendancy of “designer” or specialty plastics, but almost 40 years later the market is still dominated by plastics that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk.

Six researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) and one at Helsinki U

University of Minnesota researchers have made the first-ever hardness measurements on individual silicon nanospheres and shown that the nanospheres’ hardness falls between the conventional hardness of sapphire and diamond, which are among the hardest known materials. Being able to measure such nanoparticle properties may eventually help scientists design low-cost superhard materials from these nanoscale building blocks.

Up to four times harder than typical silicon-a principal ingredient o

Reinforced high-strength concrete can crack due to stresses that develop during the hardening process. However, this has been found to be surprisingly less quick than previously thought. Due to Dutch research, extra steps during the hardening process can be omitted. This will result in cheaper concrete.

Maya Sule from Delft University of Technology tested specimens of high strength concrete (concrete with little water) in a temperature stress testing machine (TSTM). Such tests indicate the

Technical Insights’ materials and chemicals research service: Advanced materials technology

Advanced materials look set to revolutionize numerous applications in the 21st century. Scientists and engineers are undertaking extensive research activities in their quest to develop sophisticated new materials that are more durable, environmentally friendly, and energy efficient.

“Advanced materials and chemicals are the enabling building blocks for future devices and systems,

The development of a new generation of membranes based on conducting polymers has been the subject of a recent line of research in the Department of New Materials at CIDETEC, in association with the LEIA Technological Centre.

This involves a field of work wherein the excellent advantages presented by electro-dialysis conventional membranes (continuous separation, low energy consumption, ease of combination with other separation processes, absence of additives) are combined with other, highl

An Ohio State University engineer and his colleagues have discovered something new about a 50-year-old type of fiberglass: it may be more than one and a half times stronger than previously thought.

That conclusion, and the techniques engineers used to reach it, could help expand applications for glass fibers.

Though the glass fiber industry is currently suffering the same economic woes as many other businesses, the time is right to lay the groundwork for future applications, said P