Materials Research Society
As anyone who has made a photovoltaic device will tell you, it’s all in the technique – some of which has little to do with the actual materials involved. In an effort to improve material properties, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a computationally driven design scheme to determine viable candidates for organic photovoltaics (OPVs) through a series of computations, published in a recent issue of
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Three-dimensional printing is revolutionizing art, manufacturing, and now your artificial liver. Researchers have automated the printing of smart, programmable networks of lipid-bound droplets that may be the future in creating synthetic tissue-like biomedical materials. These soft tissue-like biomaterials can conduct electrical signals like neurons and contract like muscle.
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Extracting iron from its ore is a carbon-intensive process. Every ton of iron produced today generates about two tons of CO
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Copper is a promising heterogeneous catalyst for propylene oxide synthesis, however, under relevant conditions, the copper surface oxidizes and becomes deactivated. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered a new way to alter the oxidation state of a nanoparticle copper catalyst during propylene oxide synthesis, resulting in improved selectivity to propylene oxide.
Read More » MRS Government Affairs Committee and ARPA-EOn March 22, 2013, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the agency within the Department of Energy that funds high-potential energy technologies too early for private investment, announced two new programs that aim to reduce the dependence of our cars and trucks on oil supplies through cutting-edge research and development. One of the programs focuses on developing energy-efficient technologies to process and recycle light metals, while the other aims to develop biological approaches to convert natural gas into liquid-state transportation fuels. Each of these two programs has $20 million in available funding.
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Propagating electromagnetic waves bound to metal surfaces called surface plasmons (SPs) may be key to realizing efficient on-chip optical devices with a wide spectrum of applications. Light can be reversibly converted into such SPs by using carefully designed nanostructures which are very often based on gratings fabricated in the metal surface. Researchers have now reported the development of an SP coupler offering new functionality by using herring bone-like arrays of sub-wavelength plasmonic antennas.
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To help with narrowed or obstructed arteries, surgeons typically perform balloon angioplasty, a procedure that first widens the blood vessels with a balloon and then keeps them propped open with a wire mesh called a stent. Though the arteries may heal within six months after implantation, the metal stents permanently stay in the body, potentially causing issues such as chronic inflammation and local clotting. Now, scientists have discovered that stents made from bioabsorbable zinc could be exactly what clinicians and patients need—they could give arteries enough time to heal but not linger in the body long enough to cause additional problems.
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Using only materials that are either found in normal metabolic processes or in commonly eaten foods, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have produced a battery capable of delivering 0.6 V of power and 5-20 μA of current for a few hours inside the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This battery could be coupled with sensors to replace the cameras currently used in endoscopy and colonoscopy procedures, to give just one example of potential uses.
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Each year, around 3.6 million people die because of issues related to contaminated water, poor hygiene, and unsanitary conditions. If those households most at risk could gain access to safe drinking water, more than 2 million lives could be saved. Now, one research team has proposed a cheap, safe means of achieving this with an all-inclusive drinking water purifier assembled from several nanocomposites.
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It’s not news that steel is strong, but new evidence suggests that a common component of steel, cementite, actually gets stronger in response to strain. This phenomenon, known as strain-stiffening in biological materials like blood vessels, is described in crystalline solids for the first time in a paper published recently in
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Scientists estimate that more than 60 million tons of elemental sulfur is produced each year, mostly as a byproduct of the petroleum refining process. Given the limited uses of the material, much of it just piles up in heaping mounds. Now, an international team of scientists has devised a new use for the sulfuric waste. Using a simple chemical process they've termed "inverse vulcanization," the researchers have created a sulfur copolymer, which they've demonstrated could serve as the active material in lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries.
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Researchers at Ohio State University have synthesized millimeter-scale crystals of germanane (GeH) and exfoliated the crystals into single layers, essentially creating an analogue to the carbon-based, hydrogen-terminated single layers of graphane (CH). Theory predicts that germanane is a direct bandgap semiconductor with high electron mobility, which could make it an excellent candidate for photovoltaic or LED materials.
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When we blink, the dynamic liquid film covering our eyes flushes out contaminants, integrates new tears and keeps our eyes moist, all the while maintaining an uninterrupted field of vision. Researchers have taken a hint from nature and designed a bio-inspired, eye-like material composed of tiny pores infused and coated in a continuous liquid film. Unlike eyes, however, this material is elastic. Because the outer surface is fluid, researchers can smoothly tune the material’s shape, transparency and behavior.
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Solar cells made from quantum dots could be low-cost, flexible, and easy to make. But the efficiency with which they convert light into electricity remains too low for practical use. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now show that incorporating nanowires into quantum dot solar cells increases the cells’ efficiency by 35%.
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Technology used in downhole applications–such as geothermal or oil-well monitoring–must endure punishing conditions, from very high temperatures to tremendous pressures. In developing such technology, researchers have run into various materials snags, not the least of which is finding a solder material that can perform under these harsh environments. But researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have repurposed a solder alloy once intended for defense applications to meet these challenges.
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Scientists can convince stem cells from human bone marrow to develop into a variety of important cell types, like cartilage or vascular tissue – opening an exciting door to regenerative medicine. To build artificial tissues out of these cells, however, many scientists are also developing synthetic matrices that hold the cells in place. That matrix material isn’t just inert scaffolding either. The stem cell’s ability to interact with the material around it affects how it differentiates, according to research done by a team of bioengineers at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Acrylates and their polymers are used in myriad products, from diapers to detergents, items that are important to everyday life. A drawback, however, is that these essential polymers have always been produced by a process which uses crude oil. Now, researchers from Yale University and Brown University have uncovered a way to make acrylates out of carbon dioxide and ethylene, unlocking a new, cleaner mode of production.
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Scientists and engineers have long dreamed of creating efficient silicon light emitters that are compatible with our current silicon-based electronic technologies. Though there have been some successes on the nanometer scale, emitting light from "bulk" silicon has proven difficult. Now, researchers have devised a new method to achieve visible light emission from bulk-sized silicon integrated with a plasmon nanocavity.
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Tissue engineers around the world are working on ways to grow organs in the lab, but imagine the possibilities if we could also grow cellular fibers that could be spun and woven to suit different functionalities. Scientists have now proven that this advancement in medical engineering is possible. Researchers at the University of Tokyo succeeded in creating 10 different cellular microfibers, including one that they successfully transplanted into a mouse.
Read More » Materials Research Society/Cambridge University PressThe Materials Research Society (MRS) and Cambridge University Press have announced that they will be launching a new authoritative review journal focusing on energy and sustainability.
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