Lifeboat Foundation

The new material is highly scalable especially compared to other alternatives such as graphene and diamonds.

Researchers at Delft University of Technology have created a novel material that has a yield strength ten times higher than Kevlar, rivaling the strength of other super strong alternatives such as graphene and diamonds.

High-strength synthetic fibers like Kevlar are renowned for their remarkable resilience to abrasion and wear. They are most notably used in applications that are reinforcing and strengthening, particularly in body armor, helmets, and other protective gear.

For researchers wanting to understand the inner workings of magnetic materials, transmission electron microscopy is an indispensable tool. Because the wavelength of an electron is much shorter than the wavelength of visible light, a beam of electrons transmitted through a thin slice of a material can create an image in which the inner structure of the material is magnified up to 50 million times, many orders of magnitude more than with an optical microscope.

Since transmission electron microscopy, or TEM, was first developed in the 1930s, scientists and engineers have come up with many variations on the technique. Each of these variations suit different applications and come with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Now, researchers at NTNU have come up with a remarkably simple method to solve a long-standing problem in an almost 30-year-old TEM-based technique known as scanning precession electron diffraction, or SPED.

A research collaboration co-led by EPFL has uncovered a surprising magnetic property of an exotic material that might lead to computers that need less than one-millionth of the energy required to switch a single bit.

The world of materials science is constantly discovering or fabricating materials with exotic properties. Among them are the multiferroics, a unique class of materials that can be both magnetized and polarized at the same time, which means that they are sensitive to both magnetic and electric fields.

Having both these properties in a single material has made multiferroics very interesting for research and commercial purposes with potential applications from advanced electronics to next-generation memory storage. By understanding and harnessing the properties of multiferroics, researchers aim to develop more efficient, compact, and even energy-saving technologies.

The diamond in an engagement ring, the wonder-material graphene and the lead in a humble pencil are all formed from carbon, but display profoundly different characteristics. Carbon materials such as these are among the most famous examples of how diverse properties can emerge in materials, based only on the rearrangement of the structure of atoms.

The goal of the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) in Saitama, Japan, is to develop materials for new, energy-efficient technologies. The usual approach to synthesizing new materials involves looking for improved properties such as strength and durability, or enhanced conduction of electricity and heat.

But CEMS is pioneering an alternative approach that turns that standard approach on its head. First, we think of the properties needed for a new device, use data from RIKEN’s new repository and simulation platform to calculate the atomic structure that provides these features and then build the bespoke material.

High-temperature cuprate superconductors are a broad class of materials that exhibit some unique characteristics. Due to their distinctive properties, these materials exhibit the highest superconducting temperatures reported to date under ambient pressure.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutes in China recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding the processes underpinning the high superconducting critical temperatures (T_c) observed in trilayer cuprates, a class of materials with three layers based on compounds containing copper. Their paper, published in Nature Physics, unveiled the electronic origin of the high T_c exhibited by these three-layered materials.

“Our group has been trying to understand the high temperature superconductivity mechanism in cuprate superconductors for many years,” Xingjiang Zhou, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org.

The search is on worldwide to find ways to extract carbon dioxide from the air or from power plant exhaust and then make it into something useful. One of the more promising ideas is to make it into a stable fuel that can replace fossil fuels in some applications. But most such conversion processes have had problems with low carbon efficiency, or they produce fuels that can be hard to handle, toxic, or flammable.

Now, researchers at MIT and Harvard University have developed an efficient process that can convert carbon dioxide into formate, a liquid or solid material that can be used like hydrogen or methanol to power a fuel cell and generate electricity. Potassium or sodium formate, already produced at industrial scales and commonly used as a de-icer for roads and sidewalks, is nontoxic, nonflammable, easy to store and transport, and can remain stable in ordinary steel tanks to be used months, or even years, after its production.

The newly developed material resisted temperatures up to 7,343 degrees Fahrenheit without melting or losing shape during tests when applied to encase the surface of a waverider aircraft.

China’s scientists have claimed a major breakthrough: a successful test of a new surface material for hypersonic jets, which was considered impossible to make earlier.

The development means that the Asian powerhouse has surpassed far ahead of the United States in the hypersonic race, according to a report by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Monday.

A team of engineers from The University of Manchester has created and flown the world’s largest drone, made from a lightweight and eco-friendly material.

The Giant Foamboard Quadcopter (GFQ) is unlike any other drone worldwide thanks to its innovative design. It is made from foamboard, a cardboard type with a foam core and a paper skin.

A team of engineers from The University of Manchester.

Continue reading “World’s largest quadcopter drone made from foamboard takes flight” »

Scientists manipulated light to behave as if influenced by gravity using distorted photonic crystals, opening avenues for optics advancements and 6G communication.

Manipulating Light’s Behavior With Pseudogravity

A collaborative group of researchers has manipulated the behavior of light as if it were under the influence of gravity. The findings, which were published in the journal Physical Review A on September 28, 2023, have far-reaching implications for the world of optics and materials science, and bear significance for the development of 6G communications.