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Call for Papers—2016 MRS Spring Meeting
The abstract submission period for the 2016 MRS Spring Meeting begins September 15. Visit www.mrs.org/spring-2016-technical-sessions today for details.
Abstract Deadline: October 15, 2015 |
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Discounted Lodging for the 2015 MRS Fall Meeting is Now Available!
Special rates have been negotiated at several hotels near the Meeting venue. For information on these lodging options, including room rates and deadlines, visit www.mrs.org/fall-2015-hotels.
Preregistration Opens: Mid-September |
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Call for Papers—JMR Focus Issue
April 2016 Issue
Two-Dimensional Heterostructure Materials
Submission Deadline: September 1, 2015 |
MATERIALS NEWS
Keep up with materials research news through MRS!
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Materials in Focus
Research highlights: perovskites |
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Research on perovskites has progressed rapidly since the first solar cells with less than 4% efficiency were reported in 2009. MRS Bulletin presents the impact of a selection of recent advances in this burgeoning field. |
Demands are high for low-power electronics |
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Never have our personal gadgets been so small and yet expected to do so much. The thirst for energy of our multifunctional cell phones and personal computers has a frustrating impact on their battery lives and also drives up energy usage. |
Materials hurdles for advanced nuclear reactors |
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The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) lists 440 operating nuclear plants in 31 countries providing 11% of the world’s electricity. Many of these have been in service for 40 years or more, and relicensing to extend their lifetimes another 20 years is ongoing. But to continue providing reliable base-load electricity to satisfy the world’s ever-growing energy appetite, the nuclear fleet will eventually have to be replaced and expanded. Generation IV (GEN-IV) nuclear reactors, foreseen to gradually come into service after 2030, promise improved efficiency, safety, and proliferation resistance, along with longer lifetimes and less radioactive waste. There is a hitch, though—many of the materials necessary to build them still need to be identified. |
CNT-based material responds to tactile and chemical stimuli |
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Electronic skin (e-skin) is a flexible, film-like material designed to mimic the properties of human skin by responding to environmental stimuli like temperature and pressure. With its flexible and compact circuitry, e-skin has a variety of potential medical and robotic applications. For example, the technology could allow individuals with prosthetic limbs to regain a sense of touch. However, some researchers are taking the concept even further, imbuing electronic skin with new properties not found in actual human skin, such as olfaction. |
Printable silver ink remains highly conductive when stretched more than 200% |
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Creating new stretchable conductive materials for flexible electronics often involves a tradeoff between stretchability and conductivity. Highly conductive materials tend to have limited elasticity. Now, researchers in Japan have developed printable silver ink that has the highest conductivity of materials strained more than 150%. |
Silica nanoparticles unexpectedly crown polymer pillars |
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Kathleen McEnnis and Thomas P. Russell from the Polymer Science and Engineering Department and Anthony D. Dinsmore from the Physics Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studied the preferred locations of silica nanoparticles on polystyrene columns. In doing so, they discovered that previous calculations and assumptions from other researchers who studied the behavior of these particles did not account for all of the conditions driving their positions. This also led them to a better understanding of how to control the particles. |
Cloaking materials without distortion |
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In recent years, inspired by English theoretical physicist John Pendry’s proposal, optics researchers have made progress in scaling so-called “invisibility cloaks” from microwave to infrared wavelengths using metamaterials—engineered materials whose underlying structure can alter the overall response to electrical and magnetic fields. Because an ideal free space cloak requires metamaterials to steer light around cloaked objects at speeds higher than the speed of light in a vacuum, metamaterials used for cloak design are highly dispersive. As a result, an ideal invisibility cloak could be achieved in a narrow frequency band. Now researchers have developed a metamaterial cloak that further solves the remaining light scattering issue. |
Industry Focus
In this huge urban farming lab, LED “recipes” grow juicier tomatoes and sweeter basil
Behind a vault-like door, the long, windowless room has the same purple glow as the cabin on a Virgin America flight. Instead of passengers, the space is filled with row after row of plants, each growing under a carefully calibrated series of red and blue lights. The new Netherlands-based lab belongs to the lighting company Philips, which realized several years ago that its LED lights could help shape a new path for farming.
Policy Focus
A funding boost for materials research in Germany
Materials scientists and engineers in Germany can look forward to a healthy injection of funding following the launch of a government program to help stimulate product development using new materials. The new program by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), named “From Material to Innovation,” will run for a decade, providing researchers with about €100 million a year.
Nominee for DOE science chief looks to better integrate national labs
Cherry Murray, a physicist at Harvard University, stresses that she can't say definitely what she would do as director of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) $5.1 billion Office of Science, the mammoth agency’s basic research wing. That’s because her nomination to the post, announced by the White House on 5 August, still must be confirmed by the Senate.
For more science policy news, follow @MaterialsSciPol
OF INTEREST TO THE MATERIALS COMMUNITY
Profiles in Materials Science: Rick Vinci
In appearances on two PBS NOVA episodes, Richard (Rick) Vinci encountered the unique challenge of connecting with an audience without engaging in direct two-way conversation. “What are they seeing? How are they going to interpret it? What questions are they going to have?” In his mind, Vinci cues himself with succinct, strategic questions as he explains materials science concepts aloud to the television audience. More.
PBS docudrama brings discovery of elements to life
This month, many PBS stations across the country will air “The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements.” The three-hour broadcast uses dramatic reenactments, expert interviews, animation, and narration to tell the story of seven scientists and their work. More.
MEETINGS UPDATE
Critical Meeting Deadlines
2015 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit
November 29 - December 4, 2015
Boston, Massachusetts
exhibit opportunities available |
PREREGISTRATION OPENS MID-SEPTEMBER
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2016 MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit
March 28-April 1, 2016
Phoenix, Arizona
exhibit opportunities available |
CALL FOR PAPERS
Abstract Submission Opens
September 15
Abstract Submission Deadline
October 15
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American Conference on Neutron Scattering
(ACNS 2016)
July 10-14, 2016
Long Beach, California
exhibit opportunities available |
SAVE THE DATE
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18th International Conference on Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy
(ICMOVPE-XVIII)
July 10-15, 2016
San Diego, California
exhibit opportunities available |
SAVE THE DATE
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5th International Conference on Metal-Organic Frameworks & Open Framework Compounds
(MOF 2016)
September 11-15, 2016
Long Beach, California
exhibit opportunities available |
SAVE THE DATE
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International Workshop on Nitride Semiconductors
(IWN 2016)
October 2-7, 2016
Orlando, Florida
exhibit opportunities available |
SAVE THE DATE
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PUBLICATIONS UPDATE
Critical Publications Deadlines
Advertise in JMR.
JUST PUBLISHED
Get your free Android App or iOS App for MRS Bulletin for full mobile access to this journal.
See MRS OnDemand Webinar presented by MRS Bulletin on perovskite photovoltaics.
Advertise in MRS Bulletin.
Journal of Materials Research
August 2015, Volume 30, Issue 16
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From Volume 1693, 2014 MRS Spring Meeting, Symposium DD – Silicon Carbide‒Materials, Processing and Devices:
Developments of SiC DioMOS (Diode Integrated SiC MOSFET)
Makoto Kitabatake
CMOS Circuits on Silicon Carbide for High Temperature Operation
David T. Clark, Robin F. Thompson, Aled E. Murphy, David A. Smith, Ewan P. Ramsay, Robert A. R. Young, Craig T. Ryan, Sean Wright and Alton B. Horsfall
3C-SiC on Si: A Versatile Material for Electronic, Biomedical and Clean Energy Applications
C.L Frewin, M. Reyes, J. Register, S. W. Thomas and S. E. Saddow |
SCIENCE AS ART
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The Airshow of a Micro-Rocket
by Jinxing Li, University of California, San Diego
PEDOT/Pt microtubular rocket (diameter:1um, length: 8um) is powered by the oxygen bubbles generated from catalytic reaction.
A finalist in the Science as Art competition at the 2015 MRS Spring Meeting
Copyright for all Science as Art images belongs to the Materials Research Society. To request permission to re-use the images, please contact Anita Miller. |
EDITOR'S CHOICE VIDEO
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Engineering Atoms
To detect head trauma as soon as it happens, a team of researchers has developed a polymer-based material that changes colors depending on how hard it is hit. The goal is to someday incorporate this material into protective headgear, providing an obvious indication of injury. |
CAREER CENTRAL
Partial listing of classified ads from the upcoming September 2015 issue of MRS Bulletin
Auburn University
Faculty Position, Materials Engineering
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Postdoctoral Fellowship
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies
Nanoscale Electronics & Mechanics Scientist
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
Jefferson Science Fellowship
Sandia National Laboratories
Harry S. Truman Fellowship
Xi’an Jiaotong University
Frontier Institute of Science & Technology
Chair Professor | Junior Faculty
NEW PRODUCTS FOCUS
| New Heterogeneous Catalyst Kit |
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Alfa Aesar recently announced that the new Heterogeneous Catalyst Kit—developed by Johnson Matthey Catalysis and Chiral Technologies—is now available. The new Kit provides instant availability to 40 different types of catalysts. These products are based on precious metals and have an optimized combination of metal and support for excellent performance. The effective metal-support combination of the Heterogeneous Catalyst 40 Sample Kit covers a complete range of catalytic reactions involving hydrogen. A Mini Advanced Homogeneous Coupling Kit designed for challenging C-C coupling reactions, amination, alpha ketone arylation, etc., using sterically hindered substrates is also available.
[Contact: [email protected] or 44-7773-765456] |
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| Easy-to-use Illumination System for Advanced Fluorescence Microscopy |
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Prior Scientific's new Lumen 1600-LED fluorescence illumination system is designed for the most advanced fluorescent techniques, with intuitive controls that make it easy to use. The LEDs in the Lumen 1600 last at least 25,000 hours, and deliver evenly distributed, high intensity light for optimal excitation of fluorophores. Incorporating 16 LEDs, covering the spectrum from 365 nm to 770 nm, the Lumen 1600 is an ideal illumination tool for work involving multiple fluorophores. These LED groupings allow the use of almost all stains used in multi-band combinations allowing great flexibility in experimental work.
[Contact: [email protected] or 44-1223-881711] |
To suggest items for inclusion in Industry News and New Products Focus, please contact Mary Kaufold at 724-779-2755.
ABOUT MATERIALS360®
Materials360 is edited by Judy Meiksin, News Editor, and produced by Kirby Morris, Electronic Communications Assistant, Materials Research Society.
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