Latest Solid Stories
Put new wrinkle in old approachHarvard materials scientists have come up with what they believe is a new way to model the formation of glasses, a type of amorphous solid that includes common window glass.Glasses form through the process of vitrification, in which a glass-forming liquid cools and slowly becomes a solid whose molecules, though they've stopped moving, are not permanently locked into a crystal structure. Instead, they're more like a liquid that has merely stopped flowing, though...
A gold nanocage covered with a polymer is a smart drug delivery systemIn campy old movies, Lucretia Borgia swans around emptying powder from her ring into wine glasses carelessly left unattended. The poison ring is usually a confection of gold filigree holding a cabochon or faceted gemstone that can be broken to empty the ring's contents. It is invariably enormous "” so large it is rather odd nobody seems to notice it.Lucretia would have given her eyeteeth for the "smart capsule"...
A team of engineers from the University of Pennsylvania has transformed simple nanowires into reconfigurable materials and circuits, demonstrating a novel, self-assembling method for chemically creating nanoscale structures that are not possible to grow or obtain otherwise.The research team, using only chemical reactants, transformed semiconducting nanowires into a variety of useful, nanoscale materials including nanoscale metal strips with periodic stripes and semiconducting patterns, purely...
Research paves way for new 3-D lithography methodScientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have uncovered the physical mechanism by which arrays of nanoscale (billionths-of-a-meter) pillars can be grown on polymer films with very high precision, in potentially limitless patterns.This nanofluidic process"”developed by Sandra Troian, professor of applied physics, aeronautics, and mechanical engineering at Caltech, and described in a recent article in the journal Physical...
Gains in speed, quality and current over conventional production techniques hold promise for both research and commercial productionProfessor Guillermo Bazan and a team of postgraduate researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Center for Polymers and Organic Solids (CPOS) today announced a major advance in the synthesis of organic polymers for plastic solar cells. Bazan's team:   * reduced reaction time by 99%, from 48 hours to 30 minutes, and   * increased average molecular...
LANCASTER, Pa., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) (www.1-ACT.com) announced today an agreement with The Texas A&M University System (TAMUS) for an exclusive license on the Momentum-driven Vortex Phase Separator (MDVPS) Technology developed by the Interphase Transport Phenomena Group of the Space Engineering Research Center (SERC) under the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES). The addition of MDVPS technology greatly expands ACT's already...
Small bits of metal may play a new role in solar power.Researchers at Ohio State University are experimenting with polymer semiconductors that absorb the sun's energy and generate electricity. The goal: lighter, cheaper, and more-flexible solar cells.They have now discovered that adding tiny bits of silver to the plastic boosts the materials' electrical current generation.Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering and professor of physics at Ohio State, led the team that...
Tiny objects known as nanoparticles are often heralded as holding great potential for future applications in electronics, medicine and other areas. The properties of nanoparticles depend on their size and structure. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have learned how to consistently create hollow, solid and amorphous nanoparticles of nickel phosphide, which has potential uses in the development of solar cells and as catalysts for removing sulfur from fuel. Their work can now...
RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif., Sept. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AMPAC Fine Chemicals (AFC), a subsidiary of American Pacific Corporation (Nasdaq: APFC), announced today the successful installation, qualification and validation in a cGMP manufacturing environment of a continuous extraction process consisting of three Hastelloy(TM) Liquid-Liquid Centrifuges (LLC) in series. These LLCs are used for the manufacturing of an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient and replace a labor-intensive traditional...
Real time space experiments controlled by Earth-bound researcherA research project 10 years in the making is now orbiting the Earth, much to the delight of its creator Rohit Trivedi, a senior metallurgist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. Equipment recently delivered to the International Space Station by the Space Shuttle Discovery will allow the Earth-bound Trivedi to conduct crystal growth experiments he first conceived more than a decade ago. The equipment is actually a...
