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Archive for the ‘materials’ category: Page 180

Jan 23, 2019

The World’s 10 Most Deadly Minerals

Posted by in category: materials

This stuff is “natural”…


Precious minerals make the modern world go ‘round—they’re used in everything from circuit boards to tableware. They’re also some of the most toxic materials known to science, and excavating them has proved so dangerous over the years, some have been phased out of industrial production altogether. Listed below are the 10 most deadly minerals on earth. These rocks do not need to be thrown to hurt you!!

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Jan 22, 2019

Why your new heart could be made in space one day

Posted by in categories: materials, space

Microgravity is ideal for making a range of materials, but will space manufacture ever be cost effective?

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Jan 22, 2019

The Hidden Ecosystem Floating on the Ocean’s Surface

Posted by in category: materials

A plastic cleanup project could destroy this beautiful, little-known world.

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Jan 17, 2019

Physicists show quantum materials can be tuned for superconductivity

Posted by in categories: materials, quantum physics

Some iron-based superconductors could benefit from a tuneup, according to two studies by Rice University physicists and collaborators.

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Jan 17, 2019

Researchers make ice repelling materials breakthrough

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

Ice is one of the most significant hazards to drivers and pilots and is blamed for multibillion-dollar losses each year in the US. Ice causes all manner of delays in air travel and damages infrastructure, power generation equipment, and power transmission facilities each year. Scientists from the University of Houston have made a breakthrough in repelling ice that could have uses in multiple industries.

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Jan 7, 2019

Carbon Nanotubes and Related Nanomaterials: Critical Advances and Challenges for Synthesis toward Mainstream Commercial Applications

Posted by in categories: materials, nanotechnology

Great Open Access article on Nanotechnology to ring in the new year. #Enjoy


Advances in the synthesis and scalable manufacturing of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) remain critical to realizing many important commercial applications. Here we review recent breakthroughs in the synthesis of SWCNTs and highlight key ongoing research areas and challenges. A few key applications that capitalize on the properties of SWCNTs are also reviewed with respect to the recent synthesis breakthroughs and ways in which synthesis science can enable advances in these applications. While the primary focus of this review is on the science framework of SWCNT growth, we draw connections to mechanisms underlying the synthesis of other 1D and 2D materials such as boron nitride nanotubes and graphene.

2D materials ; boron nitride nanotubes ; carbon nanotubes ; chirality control ; CVD ; graphene ; helicity ; synthesis ;

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Jan 7, 2019

Innovative ‘Mega Library’ Gives Materials Engineers New Hope

Posted by in categories: innovation, materials

An innovative tool for discovering new materials has shown promise for materials engineers. Throughout history, civilizations have been known by the tools they created and left behind. To create those tools, engineers in every era have had to access materials to accomplish their goals. In the modern era, this often led innovators to craft their own unique materials.


The research has been called a “game changer” in discovering new technologies and the materials to build those technologies.

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Jan 5, 2019

A 14-Year-Old California Engineer Transformed Paper and Cotton Into Plastic

Posted by in category: materials

“I remember that, right when the first judge asked me their first question, everything just sort of clicked,” Prawira tells Inverse. “Everything rolled off my tongue to the point where I was talking and not really conscious of what I was saying. Everything was coming out of me, like I was born to say it.”

That science fair was one of many competitions that eventually took Prawira to the nation-wide 2018 BROADCOM Masters tournament in Washington, D.C., where she showed off her work in creating biofiber plastics, created from paper, cotton, and corn husks. About 4,000 student scientists competed in science fairs around the United States to reach that level, and this year Prawira won one of the top awards the competition has to offer.

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Jan 3, 2019

Physicists Just Created a Strange New Type of ‘Quasicrystal’ in The Lab

Posted by in categories: materials, quantum physics

Dan Shechtman has the rare honour of possessing a Nobel Prize for ‘nonsense’.

It’s been nearly four decades since he set out to convince the chemist community of a discovery most considered impossible – a material called a quasicrystal. Now we have just observed a brand new variety of these once ‘impossible’ materials for the first time, one based on a single unit.

Chemists from Brown University have described the successful creation of a self-constructing lattice structure based on a strangely shaped quantum dot.

Continue reading “Physicists Just Created a Strange New Type of ‘Quasicrystal’ in The Lab” »

Jan 3, 2019

Physicists uncover new competing state of matter in superconducting material

Posted by in categories: materials, physics

A team of experimentalists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and theoreticians at University of Alabama Birmingham discovered a remarkably long-lived new state of matter in an iron pnictide superconductor, which reveals a laser-induced formation of collective behaviors that compete with superconductivity.

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