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Archive for the ‘materials’ category: Page 15

Aug 15, 2024

Scientists create material that can take the temperature of nanoscale objects

Posted by in categories: materials, nanotechnology

University of California, Irvine scientists recently discovered a one-dimensional nanoscale material whose color changes as temperature changes. The team’s results appeared in Advanced Materials (“Sensitive Thermochromic Behavior of InSeI, a Highly Anisotropic and Tubular 1D van der Waals Crystal”).

“We found that we can make really small and sensitive thermometers,” said Maxx Arguilla, UC Irvine professor of chemistry whose research group led the study. “It’s one of the most applied and translatable works to come out of our lab.”

Arguilla likened the thermometers to “nanoscale mood rings,” referring to the jewelry that changes color depending on the wearer’s body temperature. But instead of simply taking a qualitative temperature reading, the changes in the color of these materials “can be calibrated and used to optically take temperature readings at the nanoscale,” Arguilla said.

Aug 13, 2024

Scientists achieve rapid upcycling of microplastics to graphene

Posted by in categories: innovation, materials

James Cook University researchers have achieved a significant breakthrough that allows them to convert microplastics to a highly valuable material. The study is published in the journal Small Science.

Aug 13, 2024

Unique transistor ‘could change the world of electronics’ thanks to nanosecond-scale switching speeds and refusal to wear out

Posted by in categories: computing, materials

A new material can withstand ‘billions’ of electrical cycles without wearing out — and scientists say it could transform electronics within 10 to 20 years.

Aug 13, 2024

Neutrons reveal the existence of local symmetry breaking in a Weyl semimetal

Posted by in category: materials

The first materials scientists might have been early humans who—through trial-and-error experiments—discovered the first “cutting-edge” technologies. They found that the best arrowheads and other tools could be made from certain types of natural, structural materials, which at the time included stones and animal bones.

Aug 13, 2024

Align or die: Revealing unknown mechanism essential for bacterial cell division

Posted by in category: materials

A previously unknown mechanism of active matter self-organization essential for bacterial cell division follows the motto “dying to align”: Misaligned filaments “die” spontaneously to form a ring structure at the center of the dividing cell. The study, led by the Šarić group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), was published in Nature Physics. The work could find applications in developing synthetic self-healing materials.

Aug 12, 2024

Tiny graphene-based magnetic devices could lead to much smaller — and way more powerful — processors in the future

Posted by in categories: computing, materials

Atomic-scale 2D magnets can be polarized to represent binary states — the 1s and 0s of computing data. These can lead to far more dense and energy-efficient components.

Aug 11, 2024

Teens invent incredible device while searching for way to tackle one of the world’s most challenging sources of pollution: ‘Current solutions aren’t really effective’

Posted by in category: materials

Two teenagers won $50,000 for creating an ultrasonic microplastics filter, offering hope in the fight against plastic pollution.

Aug 10, 2024

New Biomaterial Could Finally Repair Damaged Cartilage in Injured Joints

Posted by in categories: innovation, materials

The body is pretty good at repairing itself, but some parts of our anatomy struggle to bounce back after an injury.

One such material is cartilage – the spongy yet firm connective tissue that keeps our bones from rubbing and jarring against each other. Over time, the translucent or ‘hyaline’ components of cartilage can become heavily degraded, resulting in painful conditions like osteoarthritis and chondromalacia.

Scientists have been working on a way to regenerate hyaline cartilage for years, and now a team led by Northwestern University in the US has achieved a breakthrough. They have developed a biomaterial that, injected into damaged cartilage in living sheep, acted as a scaffold that promoted cartilage regrowth in active joints.

Aug 10, 2024

All Life on Earth Might Have Started From Lightning, Scientists Say

Posted by in categories: climatology, materials

Fascinating study!


A new study suggests that cloud-to-ground lightning likely provided the necessary material for the first organisms on Earth to form.

Aug 9, 2024

Revealing the True Habits of ISS Astronauts Through Space Archaeology

Posted by in categories: materials, space

How do astronauts cope with life onboard the International Space Station (ISS) and how can scientists study it? This is what a recent study published in PLoS ONE hopes to address as an international team of researchers used archaeological investigation strategies to ascertain how ISS crew members managed their lives in space, specifically pertaining to the astronauts’ habits of using and storing the various materials onboard the orbiting outpost. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand how humans cope with living in space for long periods of time, which could be useful for trips to the Moon and Mars, someday.

The study, known as the Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment (SQuARE) experiment, was conducted over a 60-day period between January and March 2022 where six common locations onboard the ISS were designated as “squares”, which is a common archaeology strategy of digging pits to ascertain the most viable areas of further investigation. During the study, the astronauts photographed each square every day to ascertain how they were used, and the researchers would compare that to the location’s original purpose.

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