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The power of polymeric coating

Nice write on polymeric coatings as a material option consider when developing implants replicating a natural electrode charge without creating damage or disruptions. Author proposes such materials could be leveraged beyond their use today and expanded to include BMI implants. Definitely, will take a closer look at.


Jeff Hendricks Biotectix outlines how polymeric coatings can help improve the performance of medical and consumer electronic devices.

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Scientists are Creating a New Diamond Predicted to be Harder Than a Jeweler’s Diamond

For all my Lab friends who utilize Spectrometers, drill bit fans as well as many of us QC fans. A new stronger syn. diamond being developed.


But you won’t find this diamond on any engagement rings — it will help cut through ultra-solid materials on mining sites.

Step aside, girls. Diamonds may now be a miner’s best friend, thanks to scientists from Australian National University (ANU).

Led by ANU professor Jodie Bradby, an international team is creating a hexagonal diamond, called Lonsdaleite, that’s predicted to be harder than a jeweler’s diamond. The researchers made nano-sized Lonsdaleite at 400 degrees Celsius (752 degrees Fahrenheit), effectively halving the temperature in which it can be formed in a lab. They’ve published their work in Scientific Reports.

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Thermoelectric paint generates electricity from almost any heat source

Thermoelectric generators convert heat or cold to electricity (and vice-versa). Normally solid-state devices, they can be used in such things as power plants to convert waste heat into additional electrical power, or in small cooling systems that do not need compressors or liquid coolant. However the rigid construction of these devices generally limits their use to flat, even surfaces. In an effort to apply thermal generation capabilities to almost any shape, scientists at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in Korea claim to have created a thermoelectric coating that can be directly painted onto most surfaces.

Variously known as the Peltier, Seebeck, or Thomson effect, the thermoelectric effect is seen in semiconductor devices that create a voltage when a different temperature is present on each side or, when a voltage is applied to the device, it creates a temperature difference between the two sides. In this instance, the new paint created by the UNIST researchers is used specifically to heat a surface when a voltage is applied.

The specially-formulated inorganic thermoelectric paint was created using Bi2Te3 (bismuth telluride) and Sb2Te3 (antimony telluride) particles to create two types of semiconducting material. To test the resultant mixture, the researchers applied alternate p-type (positive) and n-type (negative) layers of the thermoelectric semiconductor paint on a metal dome with electrodes at the top and the base of the dome.

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Quantum obstacle course changes material from superconductor to insulator

Researchers from Brown University have demonstrated an unusual method of putting the brakes on superconductivity, the ability of a material to conduct an electrical current with zero resistance.

The research shows that weak magnetic fields—far weaker than those that normally interrupt superconductivity—can interact with defects in a material to create a “random gauge field,” a kind of quantum obstacle course that generates resistance for superconducting electrons.

“We’re disrupting superconductivity in a way that people haven’t done before,” said Jim Valles, a professor of physics at Brown who directed the work. “This kind of phase transition involving a random gauge field had been predicted theoretically, but this is the first time it has been demonstrated in an experiment.”

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IF solid metallic hydrogen is a really good room temperature superconductor

On October 5th 2016, Ranga Dias and Isaac F. Silvera of Lyman Laboratory of Physics, Harvard University released the first experimental evidence that solid metallic hydrogen has been synthesized in the laboratory.

It took 495 GPa pressure to create. The sample is being held in the cryostat in liquid nitrogen.

If as predicted by theory the metallic hydrogen remains metastable when the extreme pressure is removed then the world will eventually be greatly changed.

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Hypersonic Flight Is Coming: Will the US Lead the Way?

MOJAVE, California — The world is at the start of a renaissance in supersonic and hypersonic flight that will transform aviation, but the effort will need steady commitment and funding if the United States wants to lead the way, congressional leaders and industry officials said at a forum late last month.

“What’s exciting about aerospace today is that we are in a point here where suddenly, things are happening all across the board in areas that just haven’t been happening for quite a while,” said former U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Curtis M. Bedke.

“There was a period where engine technology had just sort of stagnated — a point where all materials technology was going along at about the same pace,” Bedke added. “There just wasn’t much happening. But suddenly, in all sorts of areas that apply to aerospace, things are happening.” [NASA’s Vision of Future Air Travel (Images)].

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Metallic hydrogen is metastable could be used as superlightweight structural material for floating cities

Metallic hydrogen has been created in a diamond anvil in a Harvard lab.

Diamond anvil cells can use only vanishingly small sample sizes. A typical amount is about 160 cubic micrometers.

If metallic hydrogen is metastable then there are a lot of potential applications.

Metastable would mean that the phases could retain their high-pressure forms for an indefinite period once external forces are removed, much as diamonds formed by high temperatures and pressures deep inside Earth remain diamonds even after they reach the surface, instead of immediately reverting to carbon’s more stable form, graphite. Nellis and others have imagined a host of applications for metastable metallic hydrogen, ranging from.

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