Material Science News and Discussions

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Researchers create antimicrobial 'superfoam'
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-antimicro ... rfoam.html
by University of Georgia
A versatile new foam material developed by researchers at the University of Georgia could significantly reduce health care-related infections caused by implanted medical devices—or drastically improve cleanup efforts following environmental disasters like oil spills.

This research, titled "Superhydrophobic and Conductive Foams with Antifouling and Oil-Water Separation Properties" was published in the ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces January issue.

Like a spongy Swiss Army knife, the porous three-dimensional foam is water-repellent—meaning it resists blood, microbes and proteins, while also exhibiting antimicrobial and oil-water separation properties. Its versatility, functionality and relatively inexpensive production costs could make it a valuable resource for future clinicians and environmental remediation professionals alike.

"Making a multifunctional and versatile surface is an extremely challenging task," said Hitesh Handa, an associate professor in UGA's School of Chemical, Materials and Biomedical Engineering. "You can find a surface that is only antimicrobial, or you can find one that can only prevent blood clotting. To be able to fabricate materials that are anticlotting, antimicrobial and antifouling is a significant improvement on current standards."
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Removing the sluggishness associated with using hydrogen to make steel
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-sluggishn ... steel.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A team of metallurgists and materials scientists at the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH has uncovered the reason for the sluggishness that occurs when attempting to use hydrogen instead of coke to make steel. In their study, reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group isolated the problem and offer solutions for producing steel with reduced carbon emissions.

Prior research has shown that making steel accounts for approximately 7% to 9% of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, which has led scientists to look for cleaner ways of making the material. Thus far, the prime approach has been using hydrogen to heat the iron oxide. But this has proven to be too sluggish. In this new effort, the research team has found the reason for the sluggishness and has also found a solution.

To make steel, coke (which has a high carbon content) is burned inside of a blast furnace to heat up a quantity of iron oxide. As this happens, a reaction occurs between the carbon and the oxygen in the iron, resulting in the release of carbon dioxide into the air as the iron is converted to steel. Prior research has shown that as the oxygen leaves the iron during the reaction, pores remain in the iron which must then be cleared of oxygen by heating the metal a second time. In this new effort, the researchers found that these pores led to problems when attempting to use the much cleaner hydrogen to heat the iron oxide.
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Twenty Self-Assembling Crystal Form Discovered
by Stephen Luntz
April 28, 2023

Introduction:
(IFL Science) Like a murmuration of starlings or a school of fish, some shapes can make patterns out of disorder in a way that feels as though it should require a guiding intelligence, or at least life. There are still major gaps in our knowledge of the characteristics that enable this to happen, but two scientists have made enough progress to use targeted discovery to identify components that will self-assemble into crystals that have never been seen before.

The capacity of molecular building blocks to self-assemble can be extremely useful, but still tends to be discovered by chance or on a trial-and-error basis. PhD student Hillary Pan and her supervisor Dr Julia Dshemuchadse of Cornell University set out to change that, identifying the “interaction potential” of shapes in simulations and then modifying features to see if they will come together to form crystals. In a new paper, they announce the work has yielded 20 previously unknown crystal structures.

“To design self-assembled crystals, it is important to know which structures are feasible as well as the interparticle interactions that will form that structure,” Pan and Dshemuchadse write. Some of these features have been identified. They give the example of a steep repulsive interaction between molecules paired with an attractive well which forms highly coordinated structures that pack spherical shapes.

However, our understanding of how longer-range interactions for molecular charges work remains poor. As a result, some structures form unexpectedly. The authors are interested in the formation of hollow frames that can trap atoms or molecules inside. One example, zeolites, has been our key source of knowledge about the early Earth, with radioactive isotopes inside these durable crystals enabling us to determine the age of rocks by the proportion that have decayed.

More recently another category of self-assembling porous structure, metal-oxide frameworks (MOFs) have attracted interest for the ability to trap and store large quantities of gasses and pollutants. Being able to identify molecules that will self-assemble using targeted discovery could lead us to other potential applications.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/20-new-self ... red-68675
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Liquid-metal-coated smart fabric 'heals' itself when cut, repels bacteria
By Paul McClure
May 02, 2023

Science continues to advance smart fabrics that respond to environmental changes, and provide more ‘services’ to their wearers. Now, a team of international researchers has created a wearable textile that repairs itself, is antibacterial, and could even be used to monitor a person’s heart rhythm. Researchers from the US, Australia, and South Korea created the highly conductive textile by dipping it in liquid metal (LM) particles.

LM particles have many advantages: high heat and electrical conductivity, low toxicity, and antimicrobial properties. The gallium-based liquid metals the researchers used as part of this study remain in a liquid state at room temperature, meaning that, unlike solid metals, they can be molded onto surfaces in unconventional ways.

The researchers dip-coated the fabric with LM particles, which ensured the textile’s pores were not clogged, making it ‘breathable.’ They found that applying force to the LM-coated textile ruptured the non-conductive, oxygen-based layer that formed after dip-coating, making the particles conductive.
https://newatlas.com/materials/liquid-m ... -bacteria/
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Scintillating science: Researchers improve materials for radiation detection and imaging technology
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-scintilla ... ology.html
by Bill Wellock, Florida State University
A team of Florida State University researchers has further developed a new generation of organic-inorganic hybrid materials that can improve image quality in X-ray machines, CT scans and other radiation detection and imaging technologies.

Professor Biwu Ma from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and his colleagues have developed a new class of materials that can act as highly efficient scintillators, which emit light after being exposed to other forms of high energy radiations, such as X-rays.

The team's most recent study, published in Advanced Materials, is an improvement upon their previous research to develop better scintillators. The new design concept produces materials that can emit light within nanoseconds, orders of magnitude faster than previously developed materials, allowing for better imaging.

"Reducing the radioluminescence decay lifetime of scintillators to nanoseconds is an important breakthrough," Ma said. "Using a hybrid material made up of both organic and inorganic components means each component can be used for the part of the process where it is most effective."
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New surface coating technology increases materials' electron emission seven-fold
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-surface-c ... ctron.html
by Tohoku University
An international research group has developed a new surface coating technology that is capable of significantly increasing electron emission in materials. Their breakthrough is expected to improve the production of high-efficiency electron sources and lead to increased performances in electron microscopes, electron beam lithography systems and synchrotron radiation facilities. The research was published in the journal Applied Physics Letters on April 3, 2023.

Free electrons are those not bound to a specific atom or molecule, wondering freely within a material. They play a vital role in a wide range of applications, from photoreactors and microscopes to accelerators.

One property that measurers the performance of free electrons is work function: the minimum energy required for electrons to escape from a materials surface into a vacuum. Materials with a low work function require less energy to remove electrons and make them free to move around; whereas materials with a high work function need more energy to remove electrons.

A lower work function is critical for enhancing the performance of electron sources and contributes to the development of advanced materials and technologies that can have practical applications in various fields, such as electron microscopy, accelerator science, and semiconductor manufacturing.
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Self-healable and crack-resistant hydrogel microfibers inspired by spider silk
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-05-sel ... pider.html
by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore
In recent years, material scientists have been creating new materials with a variety of advantageous properties that could enhance the performance of different technologies and devices. This includes hydrogel-based fibers and artificial skins, which could help to create soft humanoid robots, prosthetics, and even comfortable smart clothes or wearable devices.

Researchers at Donghua University in China recently created new hydrogel-based microfibers that are robust, self-healable and crack-resistant. These microfibers, introduced in Nature Communications, were fabricated using a process inspired by how spiders spin their webs.

"We noticed that although plenty of synthetic hydrogel fibers have been synthesized to mimic the basic functions of biological fibers like silk, muscle, and nerve fibers, most of them have very poor damage resistance, which greatly limits their durability," Shengtong Sun, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. "This may be solved by learning the structure of spider silk, which represents almost the limit of toughness of known natural biological materials."

Spiders spin very strong silk webs from an aqueous dope, a liquid crystalline solution in which protein molecules can move freely while retaining some degree of order. The webs they create follow a hierarchical nanoconfined structure with advantageous mechanical properties.

"We envisaged that the ionic complex of a hygroscopic, positively charged polyelectrolyte (PDMAEA-Q) and polymethacrylic acid (PMAA) could be an ideal system to produce damage-tolerant hydrogel fibers." Sun explained. "In the formed fiber, PMAA would form strong hydrogen bonded clusters embedded in the soft matrix of ionic complexes. This could theoretically mimic the nanoconfined structure of spider silk for an improved mechanical performance."

The researchers' hydrogel microfibers were produced under ambient conditions, just as those in which spiders produce their web. They used a technique known as pultrusion spinning to form the fibers from an aqueous solution containing PMAA and PDMAEA-Q.
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New 'designer' titanium alloys made using 3D printing
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-05-tit ... ys-3d.html
by RMIT University
A team of researchers has created a new class of titanium alloys that are strong and not brittle under tension, by integrating alloy and 3D-printing process designs.

The breakthrough, published in the journal Nature, could help extend the applications of titanium alloys, improve sustainability and drive innovative alloy design.

Their discovery holds promise for a new class of more sustainable high-performance titanium alloys for applications in aerospace, biomedical, chemical engineering, space and energy technologies.

RMIT University and the University of Sydney led the innovation, in collaboration with Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the company Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence in Melbourne.

Lead researcher, Ma Qian a professor from RMIT, said the team embedded circular economy thinking in their design, creating great promise for producing their new titanium alloys from industrial waste and low-grade materials.

"Reusing waste and low-quality materials has the potential to add economic value and reduce the high carbon footprint of the titanium industry," said Qian from RMIT's Center for Additive Manufacturing in the School of Engineering.
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Buckle up: A new class of materials is here
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-buckle-cl ... rials.html
by University of Amsterdam
Usually, the two characterizations of a material are mutually exclusive: something is either stiff, or it can absorb vibrations well—but rarely both. However, if we could make materials that are both stiff and good at absorbing vibrations, there would be a whole host of potential applications, from design at the nanoscale to aerospace engineering.

A team of researchers from the University of Amsterdam has now found a way to create materials that are stiff, but still good at absorbing vibrations—and equally importantly, that can be kept very light-weight.

David Dykstra, lead author of the study published in the journal Advanced Materials, explains, "We discovered that the trick was to use materials that buckle, like thin metal sheets. When put together in a clever way, constructions made out of such buckled sheets become great absorbers of vibrations—but at the same time, they preserve a lot of the stiffness of the material they are made out of. Moreover, the sheets do not need to be very thick, and so the material can be kept relatively light."
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Liquid metal sticks to surfaces without a binding agent
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-liquid-me ... agent.html
Image
by Cell Press
Everyday materials such as paper and plastic could be transformed into electronic "smart devices" by using a simple new method to apply liquid metal to surfaces, according to scientists in Beijing, China. The study, published June 9 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, demonstrates a technique for applying a liquid metal coating to surfaces that do not easily bond with liquid metal. The approach is designed to work at a large scale and may have applications in wearable testing platforms, flexible devices, and soft robotics.

"Before, we thought that it was impossible for liquid metal to adhere to non-wetting surfaces so easily, but here it can adhere to various surfaces only by adjusting the pressure, which is very interesting," said Bo Yuan, a scientist at Tsinghua University and the first author of the study.
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