Scientists transform cement into liquid metal It's not the same as turning lead into gold, but scientists at the Illinois-based Argonne National Laboratory and the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute/SPring-8 have developed a method for turning cement into a liquid metal semiconductor. The process sounds like a mad scientist's invention. It involves equipment like an aerodynamic levitator and a carbon dioxide laser beam. The levitator uses gas pressure to keep the material out of contact with any container surfaces. The carbon dioxide laser beam can heat the material to 3,632 degrees Fahrenheit. The material in question is mayenite, a calcium aluminum oxide material that is part of alimuna cement. "This new material has lots of applications, including as thin-film resistors used in liquid-crystal displays, basically the flat panel computer monitor that you are probably reading this from at the moment," Argonne physicist Chris Benmore said Monday in a statement. Score one for modern alchemy.
Liquid metal brings shape-shifting robot a step closer - tech - 10 March 2015 Video: Self-fuelled liquid metal motor Hasta la vista, baby. A real-life T-1000, the shape-shifting liquid-metal robot from Terminator 2, is a step closer, thanks to a self-powered liquid metal motor. The device is surprisingly simple: just a drop of metal alloy made mostly of gallium – which is liquid at just under 30 °C – with some indium and tin mixed in. When placed in a solution of sodium hydroxide, or even brine, and kept in contact with a flake of aluminium for "fuel", it moves around for about an hour. "The soft machine looks rather intelligent and [can] deform itself according to the space it voyages in, just like [the] Terminator does from the science-fiction film," says Jing Liu from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. When they first saw the drop move, Liu and colleagues weren't sure how it was able to do so. Other researchers have shown that a stationary gallium drop can act as a pump when in an electric field. More From New Scientist ISIS is waging war on history.
Researchers spin a yarn into a muscle An unusually simple approach to artificial muscles – based on high-strength polymer fibres – has been developed by an international team of researchers. Rather than needing sophisticated or expensive materials, the muscles can be produced from simple polymers that are used to make fishing-line or sewing threads. When heated, these fibres can shorten or lengthen far more than biological muscle, and could be used for applications as diverse as temperature-sensitive window shutters, "smart" clothing and robotics. Synthetic sinew Materials that expand and contract in response to some form of stimulus are useful for robotics, where they are used to make "actuators" or artificial muscle fibres, and on smaller scales where they can produce sensors for lab-on-a-chip devices. In the new research, Ray Baughman and colleagues at the University of Texas at Dallas, together with collaborators in Canada, South Korea, Turkey, China and New South Wales in Australia, took a simpler tack. Twisted tendons
Scientists discover whole new state of matter Most people are familiar with some of the common states of matter: solids, liquids and gases. Scientists also recognize a fourth state of matter — plasma — that is commonly observable here on Earth, as well as a host of other states that can only be created in the lab, such as Bose–Einstein condensates and neutron-degenerate matter. Jahn-Teller metals can now be added to this list, a state which appears to have the properties of an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all wrapped into one. It's the material's superconductivity which might be the most interesting trait, however. It has the potential to achieve superconductivity at a relatively high critical temperature ("high" as in -135 degrees Celsius as opposed to the sub -243.2 degrees Celsius required by many ordinary metallic superconductors), which is significant for the science of superconductivity. Related on MNN:
Graphene Gives You Infrared Vision in a Contact Lens It sounds like something from a spy thriller movie: putting on a contact lens that gives you infrared vision without the need for a bulky contraption that covers your face. But now, thanks to research at the University of Michigan, such a contact lens is a real possibility. The Michigan researchers turned to the optical capabilities of graphene to create their infrared contact lens. IBM last year demonstrated some of the photoconductivity mechanisms of graphene that make it an attractive infrared detector. Graphene is capable of detecting the entire infrared spectrum, with visible and ultraviolet light thrown in. "The challenge for the current generation of graphene-based detectors is that their sensitivity is typically very poor," said Zhaohui Zhong, assistant professor at the University of Michigan, in a press release. To achieve this amplification, the researchers started by sandwiching an insulator between two sheets of graphene.
Scientists Create New Invisible Material MIT Researchers Develop Living Material Using E. coli : Biology Mar 24, 2014 04:13 AM EDT Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a material with the properties of both living and non living things using E.coli bacteria. Their study paves the way for futuristic self-assembling materials that could be used in solar cells and biosensors. Researchers led by Timothy Lu, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering, have shown that it is possible to incorporate gold nanoparticles and even quantum dots to create "living materials." For example, self-healing material could help absorb and conduct electricity in solar cells. "Our idea is to put the living and the nonliving worlds together to make hybrid materials that have living cells in them and are functional," Lu said in a news release. Controlling Bacteria To develop the material, researchers essentially hijacked "biofilm production" to force bacteria to use gold nanoparticles and quantum dots. © 2014 NatureWorldNews.com All rights reserved.
Chemists fabricate 'impossible' material (PhysOrg.com) -- When atoms combine to form compounds, they must follow certain bonding and valence rules. For this reason, many compounds simply cannot exist. But there are some compounds that, although they follow the bonding and valence rules, still are thought to not exist because they have unstable structures. Scientists call these compounds "impossible compounds." Nevertheless, some of these impossible compounds have actually been fabricated (for example, single sheets of graphene were once considered impossible compounds). The researchers, led by Professor Geoffrey Ozin of the Chemistry Department at the University of Toronto, along with coauthors from institutions in Canada, China, Turkey, and Germany, have published their study in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Like graphene, periodic mesoporous hydridosilica (meso-HSiO1.5) consists of a honeycomb-like lattice structure. More information: Zhuoying Xie, et al.
Dual Carbon batteries: Is this finally the breakthrough we’ve been promised for so long? One of the dirty little secrets of the green automotive industry is that its most defining and important component, the battery, really isn’t very green at all. Modern batteries tend to poop out more quickly than just about any other part of the car, and when they die they must be disposed of carefully to avoid harming the environment. Now, a star-studded Japanese startup called Power Japan Plus (PJP) promises to fix that problem — literally, it promises that this technology will revolutionize the world of battery technology. If its basic claims for the breakthrough are true, that actually seems to be a fair bet; the so-called Ryden Dual Carbon Battery could greatly extend the length of a charge and the overall lifetime of a battery, while greatly reducing cost, charge times, and environmental impact. Maybe the biggest number associated with this battery, though, is zero: a dual-carbon battery experiences zero temperature change during operation.
The 10 strangest facts about graphene | Emerging Tech When first discovered, graphene was odd. Now odd is too small a word for a material seemingly set on winning all the records a material can win. In the first part of our series, we looked at what graphene is and how it was discovered. In part two, we explored the different techniques we can use to make graphene. But what is it that makes this material so remarkable? Here are 10 of the strangest facts about graphene. 1. So says Professor James (Jim) Tour of Rice University in Texas, and who are we to argue with that? Everyone you ask about graphene's amazing properties says the same thing: it is really hard to pick one feature when the material is so astonishing. 2. This makes graphene a wonderful candidate for use in photovoltaic (PV) cells, for instance, because it can absorb photons with energy at every frequency — photons of different frequencies of light are converted to electrons with matching energy levels. It is possible to induce a small band gap in graphene by doping it. 3. 7.
Spider silk spun into violin strings 4 March 2012Last updated at 19:59 ET By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News More than 300 spiders were used to generate the thousands of strands of silk making up each string A Japanese researcher has used thousands of strands of spider silk to spin a set of violin strings. The strings are said to have a "soft and profound timbre" relative to traditional gut or steel strings. That may arise from the way the strings are twisted, resulting in a "packing structure" that leaves practically no space between any of the strands. The strings will be described in a forthcoming edition of the journal Physical Review Letters. Shigeyoshi Osaki of Japan's Nara Medical University has been interested in the mechanical properties of spider silk for a number of years. In particular, he has studied the "dragline" silk that spiders dangle from, quantifying its strength in a 2007 paper in Polymer Journal.