Lifeboat Foundation

Heat and pressure can deteriorate the properties of piezoelectric materials that make state-of-the-art ultrasound and sonar technologies possible – and fixing that damage has historically required disassembling devices and exposing the materials to even higher temperatures. Now researchers have developed a technique to restore those properties at room temperature, making it easier to repair these devices – and paving the way for new ultrasound technologies.

Piezoelectric materials have many applications, including sonar technologies and devices that generate and sense ultrasound waves. But for these devices to efficiently generate sonar or ultrasound waves, the material needs to be “poled.”

That’s because the piezoelectric materials used for sonar and ultrasound applications are mostly ferroelectric. And like all ferroelectric materials, they exhibit a phenomenon called spontaneous polarization. That means they contain pairs of positively and negatively charged ions called dipoles. When a ferroelectric material is poled, that means all of its dipoles have been pulled into alignment with an external electric field. In other words, the dipoles are all oriented in the same direction, which makes their piezoelectric properties more pronounced.

Our future energy may depend on high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wires. This technology’s ability to carry electricity without resistance at temperatures higher than those required by traditional superconductors could revolutionize the electric grid and even enable commercial nuclear fusion.

A discovery that uncovered the surprising way atoms arrange themselves and find their preferred neighbors in multi-principal element alloys (MPEA) could enable engineers to “tune” these unique and useful materials for enhanced performance in specific applications ranging from advanced power plants to aerospace technologies, according to the researchers who made the finding.

Laser pulses have been shown to adjust the magnetic properties of rare earths by affecting 4f electrons, opening avenues for quicker and more energy-efficient data storage devices.

The special properties of rare earth magnetic materials are due to the electrons in the 4f shell. Until now, the magnetic properties of 4f electrons were considered almost impossible to control. Now, scientists have shown for the first time that laser pulses can influence 4f electrons — and thus change their magnetic properties. The discovery, which was made through experiments at EuXFEL and FLASH, opens up a new way to data storage with rare earth elements.

Breakthrough in Magnetic Properties Control.

Northwestern University scientists have developed a new bioactive material that successfully regenerated high-quality cartilage in the knee joints of a large-animal model.

Although it looks like a rubbery goo, the material is actually a complex network of molecular components, which work together to mimic cartilage’s natural environment in the body.

In the new study, the researchers applied the material to damaged cartilage in the animals’ knee joints. Within just six months, the researchers observed evidence of enhanced repair, including the growth of new cartilage containing the natural biopolymers (collagen II and proteoglycans), which enable pain-free mechanical resilience in joints.

Researchers engineer atomically thin molybdenum ditelluride layers to create self-powered photodetectors, advancing low-energy infrared imaging technology.

New data on the rotation around both long and short axes of plastic strands may help researchers track and remove microplastics that pollute the ocean.

Pollution from tiny plastic particles (microplastics) increasingly threatens ocean and river ecosystems, and potentially human health, but researchers don’t have a good understanding of how and where these pollutants are transported by flowing waters. Now a research team has observed 1.2-mm-long, 10-µm-wide strands—similar to the most common type of microplastic particles—as they moved in turbulent flows mimicking those in natural environments [1]. The experiments reveal new aspects of their motion, including the rates at which fibers spin around their long axes. The researchers hope that their results will help engineers design structures that can concentrate plastics for easier removal.

Scientists currently have a limited understanding of where microplastics tend to accumulate in the environment, says fluid dynamics expert Alfredo Soldati of the Vienna University of Technology. Where plastics gather depends on natural fluid flows and on the nature of the plastic objects themselves.

Researchers have been delving into the concept of warp drives, theoretically allowing spaceships to surpass the speed of light, using principles from Einstein’s General Relativity.

Physicists have been exploring the theoretical possibility of spaceships driven by compressing the four-dimensional spacetime for decades. Although this so-called “warp drive” originates from the realm of science fiction, it is based on concrete descriptions in general relativity. A new study takes things a step further – simulating the gravitational waves such a drive might emit if it broke down.

Warp Drive Research

Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory have developed a new material that could replace expensive nickel alloys in nuclear reactors.