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A new discovery could help scientists to understand “strange metals,” a class of materials that are related to high-temperature superconductors and share fundamental quantum attributes with black holes. Scientists understand quite well how temperature affects electrical conductance in most everyday metals like copper or silver. But in recent years, researchers have turned their attention to a class of materials that do not seem to follow the traditional electrical rules. Understanding these so-called “strange metals” could provide fundamental insights into the quantum world, and potentially help scientists understand strange phenomena like high-temperature superconductivity. Now, a research team co-led by a Brown...

Enlarge Credit: Simon Ydhag, Uppsala University Credit: Simon Ydhag, Uppsala UniversityResearchers in Uppsala, Sweden accidentally left a reaction running over the weekend and ended up resolving a century-old chemistry problem. Their work has led to the development of a new material, dubbed Upsalite, with remarkable water-binding properties. Upsalite promises to find applications in everything from humidity control at home to chemical manufacturing in industry.Maria Strømme and colleagues at Uppsala University, whose work appears in the journal PLOS ONE, have modified a procedure dating back to 1908 to make a powdered and dry form of magnesium carbonate (MgCO3). The reaction...

Nickel oxide nanoparticles glued together with ultrasound lost none of their catalytic activity © Wiley-VCHResearchers are using ultrasound to bond nanoparticles – essentially sticking together particles too small to be seen with sounds too high-pitched to be heard. The technique apparently preserves the special properties of nanomaterials, while producing micro-scale particles that are easier to handle.Jake Barralet at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and colleagues show they can take nanoparticles, coat them in phosphate and then weld them together in an ultrasonic bath to form microparticles around 200µm in size.A chance discovery, the team initially assumed the phenomenon was...

Physical limits mean that electron microscopy may be nearing highest possible resolution. Plans for the next generation of electron microscopes have been dealt a blow by the discovery of an unexpected source of noise that could frustrate efforts to improve resolution to well below the size of an atom. Researchers working for a leading manufacturer of advanced optics describe the noise source in a paper1 now in press. They think that they can find a way to mitigate it, but electron microscopists admit that the finding is the latest sign that their costly quest to capture ever more detailed images...

Explosive debut A droplet of xylene containing a tin compound is ignited, and then explodes to produce uniform nanoparticles (courtesy: Ch. Rosebrock & L. Mädler, Univ. Bremen). It was a pretty explosive premiere for a movie about a chemical reaction. A microscopic droplet drifted across the screen — almost in homage to the panning gun barrel of the James Bond movies — and then: bang! Scientists watching the scene last week at a meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS) in Boston, Massachusetts, were gripped, because the death of the droplet was also an act of creation. Lutz Mädler, a...

Engineering PbTe on the panoscale making it exceptionally efficient at turning waste heat into electricity © Mercouri KanatzidisResearchers in the US claim to have passed a new milestone in thermoelectrics with a material that converts heat to electricity more efficiently than ever before. The new thermoelectric material, which employs ‘panoscale’ structuring to scatter phonons, has a figure of merit (FoM) some 20% better than previously achieved.Thermoelectrics convert heat to electricity and can, therefore, ‘harvest’ waste heat from the environment. When one end of a thermoelectric material is heated, electrons flow to the cooler side, creating a voltage across the material...

Enlarge Image The new graphene. Graphyne may be less famous than graphene, but it could have better electronic properties. Credit: D. Malko et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2012) Graphene, a layer of graphite just one atom thick, isn't called a wonder material for nothing. The subject of the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics, it is famed for its superlative mechanical and electronic properties. Yet new computer simulations suggest that the electronic properties of a little-known sister material of graphene—graphyne—may in some ways be better. The simulations show that graphyne's conduction electrons should travel extremely fast—as they do in graphene—but...

Criminal investigations may benefit from new forensic methods based on nanoparticles. A technique using gold nanoparticles in combination with antibodies has shown promising results for enhancing fingerprints that are over a week old. Fingerprinting, first reported in the 19th century, is still the primary source of evidence used in crime scene investigation and new methods for improving fingerprint visualisation remain in demand. Unseen (latent) fingerprints can be revealed using chemical treatments that target molecules likely to be deposited in fingerprints, such as those in hair follicle secretions. Xanthe Spindler at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia and colleagues now report a...

(Link Only but check out the video on the attached site).

The moment a crack forms in a piece of glass, it is prone to spread. That’s because although glass is very strong and resistant to deformation, it lacks the toughness that metals like aluminum and steel have. Now, researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, report that they have devised a new type of metallic glass that is as strong as glass, but as tough as steel — the toughest of all metals. “Typically with materials it’s very hard to get both toughness and strength; either you get one or the other,” said Marios...

Scientists have generated high resolution images of lithium ions being deposited on a single nanowire anode, revealing how the material grows and flexes in response to charge. The US and Chinese researchers say the technique will help in the development of more advanced battery systems in the future. Lithium ion batteries are widely used, but as they are charged and discharged the anode material inside the batteries undergoes large volume changes, which leads to strain in the material causing it to break up. Nanowire anode materials are able to charge and discharge without this breaking thus prolonging the battery's life, but...

Enlarge Image Strong as steel. Atom probe tomography suggests that packing zinc and magnesium atoms together in groups of various sizes (small spots) can greatly improve the strength of aluminum alloy. Credit: University of Sydney Snuffing out a cigarette butt with a 10-ton boot would be excessive, but using the equivalent on certain metals can yield amazing results. By smashing an aluminum alloy between two anvils, researchers have created a metal that's as strong as steel but much lighter. If the process can be commercialized, it could yield better components for aircraft and automobiles, as well as metal armor...

Enlarge Image Limit breaker? The crystal structure of Fe16N2, which one group of researchers says beats the predicted limit for magnetism in a material. Credit: Jian-Ping Wang PORTLAND, OREGON—There are limits to just how magnetic a material can be. Or so researchers thought. A compound of iron and nitrogen is about 18% more magnetic than the most magnetic material currently known, a team of materials scientists claims. If such magnets could be produced commercially, they could, for example, allow electronics manufactures to equip computer hard drives with smaller "write heads" capable of cramming them with more information. Other researchers...

USresearchers have made nano-sized boxes from nickel and tin - marking the first time that patterned 3D structures have been built on the nanoscale. The boxes and fabrication process could have great potential for making interesting nanostructures, for applications ranging from electronics to drug delivery.'I'm interested in miniaturising the world,' says David Gracias, who led the research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US. 'We have a lot of nanotechnology techniques that allow us to build very well in 2D - but building in 3D is more difficult.'The cubes resemble tiny dice around 100nm in size - patterned on each side with the university initials,...

The nanotube aerogel can expand and contract up to 1,000 times a second.Science Technology Education Media As light as air, yet stronger than steel and bendier than rubber. A new material made from bundles of carbon nanotubes combines all of these characteristics in a substance that twitches like a bionic man's biceps when a voltage is applied.The 'artificial muscle' is an aerogel — a lightweight, sponge-like material consisting mostly of air — drawn into a long ribbon.Applying a voltage across the width of the ribbon electrically charges the nanotubes that thread through the material. This makes them repel one another,...

A quartz glass structure that formed after (a) 95 seconds and (b) 300 seconds of laser annealing, where the sample in (b) is a cross-section. Scientists discovered that, under intense light irradiation, molten silicon powder particles can form macroscopic structures up to 7 mm high. Image credit: J. Günster, et al. (c)2009 AIP. (PhysOrg.com) -- Since 1970, scientists have been working with “optical tweezers” - lasers that move microscopic amounts of matter using forces originating from the light matter interaction. Now, for the first time, researchers have demonstrated that light-induced forces can move macroscopic amounts of matter, as well.The...

Alberto Morpurgo and his team of researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands recently attached a micrometer-thick crystal of an organic polymer to a similarly thin organic crystal of a second polymer creating a thin but strongly conducting channel along the junction that acts like a metal. The discovery could lead to a whole new way of making electronics from non-metallic materials, and even new superconductors.   Dr Alberto Morpurgo (Credit: TU Delft’s Kavli Institute of Nanoscience) The thin, flexible crystals which conform to each others’ shape and stick together due to van der Waals forces are both...

BriefingAs big as a bed sheet, and the carbon won't rub off.NANOCOMP TECHNOLOGIES A company in the United States has made a sheet from tiny carbon nanotubes. Nature News finds out whether bigger is better when it comes to the very small. I thought the whole point about carbon nanotubes was that they are 'nano' — really, really small. True. As the name implies, nanotubes are on the order of 10-9 metres in size: they are famed for being thinner than human hair, and are typically less than a millimetre long. But they pack a lot of punch into such...

See for example this thread first. From the Aberdeen Proving Ground The best armor that can be found It's sort of a gel which when hit by a shell stiffens up, and defeats the round!

Contact: David Terraso david.terraso@icpa.gatech.edu 404-385-2966 Georgia Institute of Technology Small is different Computer sims vital tools in exploring nanoworld -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Years ago, when Uzi Landman and his colleagues set out to uncover some of the rules that govern why a non-reactive metal like gold acts as a catalyst when it is in nanoclusters only a few atoms in size, they didn't sit down in a lab with the precious metal. Instead, they ran computer simulations and discovered that gold is a very effective catalyst when it is in clusters of eight to two dozen atoms. They also found that electrical...