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In Search of Advanced Intermetallics
... ; in fact, these constitute the largest class of materials known today. An intermetallic , or intermetallic ... it reverts back to the original shape upon heating; these materials are used for noise-reduction features in jet ... °C coupled with high loading stresses. Currently, the materials used comprehensively for this demanding application ...
Electricity at your (hot) fingertips
... more than the heat produced by a fingertip. Thermoelectric materials can harvest heat and convert it into useable ... devices are made from solid-state semiconducting materials, which are expensive to produce, often toxic and ... thermoelectric polymers is gaining interest - these materials are cheap and easy to produce and, with some clever ...
A greener crisp: new fertiliser to cut CO2 by 70%
... dioxide to stabilise nutrients that are contained in waste materials from the Walkers factory in Leicester. Those waste materials predominantly come from potatoes - it's the skins - ... customer to get rid of. However, we're very lucky in waste materials that one of the chemicals that's actually ...
Nanostructures in Batteries
... for side reactions with the electrolyte, and most nano materials and battery materials are not actually stable in the organic electrolyte ... coating of inorganics and organics on the surfaces of the materials that protect the material from further attack by ...
How to make a forcefield
... to the can, the can moves towards you. Why is this? All materials contain electrons; tiny particles that are part of ... when thinking about the transfer of electrons: when two materials are brought together, electrons can move from one ... than it started with. Now it's all very well and good that materials swap a few electrons, but some materials will on ...
Microbial bioink makes 3D printed materials
... general effort to replicate how biological organisms make materials, by engineering cells to do what we want them ... by moving, growing or also self-regenerating, but the materials made by engineers today, like steel or paper, cannot do that. To make engineering living materials, scientists are trying to genetically programme ...
Wooden flooring that powers the house
... (ETH) Zürich and Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) Dübendorf designed ... pat a cat backwards. That's because when the 2 disimilar materials are put in contact and then separated electrons ... and used for practical purposes. Harry - Triboelectric materials are materials that are able to build this static ...
Large surface area lends superpowers to ultra-porous materials
Some materials are special not for what they contain, but for what ... to drug-delivery. MOFs are, in fact, the most porous materials known to humankind. One metal-organic framework, ... the metals and linker molecules, there is a huge number of materials that can be prepared with properties designed for ...
Additive manufacturing
... where across each layer can be different distribution of materials, and layer by layer that distribution can change. ... for that so tell us a bit about how we can use different materials in a 3D printing environment to make very specialist components. David - Some of these materials, particularly in the aerospace industry, titanium ...
Decreasing the pressure on NGVs
... natural gas as a liquid inside the porosity. Chris - These materials - they're call MOFs aren't they (metal organic ... interactions between the walls of the porosity in these materials and then these gas molecules are stored at much, ... - On the gas face, to the solid face. Chris - And what materials are they? How do you make the gas stick to this ...
Designing better body armour
... the years, from liquid body armour to the use of natural materials such as spider silk. Adam Healey researches this ... several advantages that ceramics have over other kind of materials. I mean for example, one of the the main things is ... able to stop higher energy impacts than almost any other materials such as metals. It takes a much thicker metal sheet ...
The Jet Engine Revolution
... of the engine must be reduced, and the performance of the materials under high temperatures must be increased, all ... increase as the demand for air travel rises. As a result, materials engineers are challenged with developing new and improved materials to help achieve these design goals. Where in the ...
Down to Earth: from spacesuits to stadium roofs - beta cloth
... on Earth. I’m Doctor Stuart Higgins. This episode: how materials used in spacesuits developed for NASA for the ... to the moon. Spreading rapidly through the flammable materials inside the spacecraft the fire kills the three ... onboard. The tragedy led NASA to search for new fireproof materials for their spacesuits. Nylon had been used ...
Plastics to Detect Explosives
... So, in St. Andrews, we're developing a set of materials called organic semi-conductors for a range of different applications in optoelectronics. These materials are a special class of plastic that unusually can ... passing electricity through it to emit light. So these materials are now being used for a range of applications as ...
The Challenge of Hydrogen Storage
... a result, scientists are already looking into alternative materials that can store and release hydrogen gas efficiently ... But Alex is looking into the potential of other materials or compounds that store and release hydrogen ... it released? Alex - Thankfully, we have a lot of these materials. Some of them operate at room temperature and an ...
Shock Physics
... useful way of understanding explosions and explosive materials is to understand the shockwaves that they create and how these affect other materials, including living tissue. Dr. Bill Proud divides ... increase in density, the temperature of which those materials are can jump up several thousand degrees ...
Super Non Stick Surfaces
... You're actually here to talk about some exciting new materials you're working on or a fancy new form of Teflon® ... Teflon® is a rather smooth coating and we know that materials don't stick to it. If one changes how the coating ... hydrophobic. Chris - Why is Teflon® slippery? Ullrich - Materials don't stick to it and that is to do with the fact ...
Super Non-Stick Surfaces
... You're actually here to talk about some exciting new materials you're working on - a fancy new form of Teflon® ... Teflon® is a rather smooth coating and we know that materials don't stick to it. If one changes how the coating ... hydrophobic. Chris - Why is Teflon® slippery? Ullrich - Materials don't stick to it and that is to do with the fact ...
Building with Mushrooms
... Hannah - We don't usually associate fungi with building materials, so what properties do mushrooms have that make ... that first, they're class A firewalls. You can hit these materials with blowtorch and they really won't burn, unlike ... it into the foam? Gavin - So today, all of our raw materials are locally sourced agricultural by-products. ...
A wireless pacemaker that dissolves
... actually made from? John - We use primarily polymer based materials, either biomaterials like silk fibroin... that's a ... our electronics. Of course, you also need conducting materials; there we choose metals that are naturally ... in the body, such as iron, magnesium, these types of materials. They're also water-soluble and biocompatible. And ...
The Art of Alloying
... like Howard Stone at Cambridge University's Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. Howard - Well one of the ... for is the fact that metals are actually crystalline materials. In other words, if you look at them on a very ... have a profound influence upon the properties of the materials. And the presence of these phases as we refer to ...
Carbon capture made cheap
... normally go up the chimney. The problem hitherto is that materials and chemicals capable of doing this have been ... Evans and, kicking us off, Craig Brown… Craig - Some materials, it's very energy intensive to release the CO2 once ... it and that's the energy penalty. So we've been working on materials that are naturally selective for CO2 over the other ...
Spray-on solar cells
... and can't be bent. So now scientists are looking into new materials for solar cells which may have better properties. ... he's looking for ways to improve the efficiency of these materials. Michael - I'm looking mostly at the physics of ... of what I study, the goal of improving efficiency of solar materials is to get that number up. But there's a ...
What material is best at absorbing sound?
... noise of a chainsaw. Physicist Jess Wade explained which materials aborb sound the best... Jess - There's a few ... money you want to spend, really. You can obviously get materials that are better at absorbing sound, kind of soft materials, fabrics, cloth that you wrap around things, when ...
The Science of Superconductivity
... Tim - Some people call them the super heroes of materials science. They're very surprising materials because you cool them down through a special ... the guidelines of those theories were looking at other materials and in particular, oxide materials. These are ...