Material Science News and Discussions

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Ngl "superwood" sounds interesting in many ways

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Novel coating shields iron from rust with 99.6% efficiency
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-coating-s ... iency.html
by Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Researchers have developed a highly effective dual-layer coating that provides 99.6% protection against iron corrosion. The breakthrough combines a thin molecular primer with a durable polymer layer, creating a strong, long-lasting barrier against rust. This innovation could significantly reduce maintenance costs and extend the lifespan of iron-based materials used in construction, transportation, and manufacturing.

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a highly effective new coating that can protect iron from rust with 99.6% efficiency. Led by Prof. Elad Gross from the NanoCenter and Institute of Chemistry at Hebrew University, the study introduces an innovative two-layer coating system that significantly improves upon existing methods for preventing corrosion. The work is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Iron is widely used in industries such as construction, transportation, and manufacturing, but it is highly prone to rust when exposed to air and moisture. Rust weakens the metal, leading to structural damage and costly repairs. While protective coatings exist, many tend to degrade over time, offering limited long-term protection.

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Polymer coating extends half life of MXene-based air quality sensor by 200% and enables regeneration
https://phys.org/news/2025-07-polymer-c ... based.html
by Kaitlyn Landram, Carnegie Mellon University Mechanical Engineering

Cleaning products, candles, cribs, and cosmetics are just a few of the common household items that emit formaldehyde, a colorless, odorless chemical that, when present in the air at levels higher than 0.1 parts per million, has been found to be a risk to human health.

To make indoor air quality monitoring more accessible, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a low cost, long-lasting, indoor formaldehyde sensor. A unique polymer coating on the MXene-based sensor not only extends its half life by 200%, but also enables it to regenerate when performance begins to degrade.

MXene is a class of compounds that has shown promise in energy storage and gas sensing because of its superior electrical properties and versatile surface chemistries. Despite these advantages, MXenes are known to be highly susceptible to oxidation, particularly when exposed to air and/or humidity, posing a major challenge for MXene-based air quality monitors.

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Can ‘Bioregioning’ Help Us Shake Our Bad Architectural Habits?
By Jia Yi Gu
July 14, 2025

Introduction:

(Zócalo) Against the backdrop of ongoing ecological emergency, Los Angeles is rebuilding after January’s fires. But the city is doing so the same way it has for the past century: building with toxic manufactured materials and moving those materials long distances via carbon-spewing supply chains, advancing individual property ownership over alternative models, and hardening or controlling natural landscapes instead of working with them.

As an architectural designer and an Angeleno, I’ve been struck by my field’s complicity in this crisis. How can we repair the spaces we inherit, if we continue the very architectural habits that led us to disaster? The answer may lie in bioregional systems for materials, a more localized approach to the way we build our homes and habitats.

Additional extract:

Architecture 2030, a non-profit, non-partisan organization established to respond to climate emergency, has calculated that 42% of global carbon emissions originate from the built environment, a large portion derived from the production and transportation of building materials such as cement and timber. (This represents an increase from 37% in previous years.) As Los Angeles rebuilds, its builders are poised to turn again to the conventional inventory found in any Home Depot or Lowes: epoxied wood, plastic paints, and resin- or fiberglass-infused drywall. These materials are strangely anonymous and monocultural, infused with petrochemicals and flowing from global sites of extraction into our homes. Smooth-coated and painted, finished and domesticated, their toxicity sits in slumber until the next fire.
…
In architecture, bioregioning has emerged to counter conventional supply chains and construction sourcing. It seeks building materials regionally, with renewal in mind. This may mean embracing indigenous and other long-standing, place-based construction systems, such as adobe building, or developing new materials sourced from local byproducts, such as algae-based bricks. Beyond advancing the local or the natural, the bioregional ethos advocates for systemic shifts in building economies through de-scaling or circularity—creating regenerative systems, what scientists call “organizational closure,” to manage its residue and avoid exporting its waste.

Read more here: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/can ... habits/

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Ultra-thin sound-blocking material effectively dampens traffic noise
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
July 25, 2025

If you live in a noisy urban area, you're gonna love the sound of this. Researchers in Switzerland have developed a material that can dampen street noise while being four times thinner than similar-performing absorbers used in construction.

This new material from the Acoustics/Noise Reduction lab at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) institute in Dübendorf doesn't yet appear to have a name.

But beyond its ultra-thin profile, it has a neat trick up its sleeve: it can be can be tuned to specific frequency ranges, depending on what's causing a din outside, and what kind of space it's being installed in.

https://newatlas.com/materials/sound-bl ... thin-empa/

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Researchers create safer nonstick surface, cutting use of 'forever chemicals'
https://phys.org/news/2025-07-safer-non ... icals.html
by ByTyler Irving, University of Toronto

A new material developed by researchers from University of Toronto Engineering could offer a safer alternative to the nonstick chemicals commonly used in cookware and other applications.

The new substance repels both water and grease about as well as standard nonstick coatings—but it contains much lower amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a family of chemicals that have raised environmental and health concerns.

"The research community has been trying to develop safer alternatives to PFAS for a long time," says Professor Kevin Golovin, who heads the Durable Repellent Engineered Advanced Materials (DREAM) Laboratory at U of T Engineering.

"The challenge is that while it's easy to create a substance that will repel water, it's hard to make one that will also repel oil and grease to the same degree. Scientists had hit an upper limit to the performance of these alternative materials."

Since its invention in the late 1930s, Teflon—also known as polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE—has become famous for its ability to repel water, oil and grease alike. Teflon is part of a larger family of substances known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

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Carbon-fiber smart plastic: Self-healing, shape-shifting and stronger than steel
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-08-car ... fting.html
by Zaid Elayyan, Texas A&M University

Aerospace engineering and materials science researchers at Texas A&M University have uncovered new properties of an ultra-durable, recyclable, smart plastic—paving the way for transformative applications in the defense, aerospace and automotive industries.

The research, published in Macromolecules and the Journal of Composite Materials, was led by Dr. Mohammad Naraghi, director of the Nanostructured Materials Lab and professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M, in close collaboration with Dr. Andreas Polycarpou at The University of Tulsa.

Their work explored the mechanical integrity, shape-recovery and self-healing properties of an advanced carbon-fiber plastic composite called Aromatic Thermosetting Copolyester (ATSP).
Healing damage on demand

ATSP opens new frontiers in industries where performance and reliability are critical, and failure isn't an option.

"In aerospace applications, materials face extreme stress and high temperatures," Naraghi said. "If any of these elements damage any part of an airplane and disrupt one of their main applications, then you could perform on-demand self-healing."

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Hyundai is working with a startup on plant-based leather that smells like the real thing
Tim De Chant
6:10 AM PDT · August 27, 2025

https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/27/hyund ... eal-thing/
Confession time: My household owns two cars, one with leather and one with “leather.” The former feels amazing, the latter … well, let’s just say it’s not fooling anyone.

Based on the samples currently sitting on my desk, leather alternatives don’t have to feel so artificial or be so harsh on the environment.

Most fake leathers are made using plastics derived from fossil fuels. The samples from Uncaged Innovations, though, are made mostly using grains including wheat, soy, and corn. The results feels remarkably like a variety of real animal leathers. One even smelled like it.

“Leather is not just leather,” co-founder and CEO Stephanie Downs told TechCrunch. “There’s literally a thousand types of leather: different animals, different thicknesses, different ways that they tan it. We had to develop something that could be really easily customizable.”

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Ocean CO2 becomes sustainable plastic, thanks to modified microbes
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
October 06, 2025
https://newatlas.com/environment/ocean- ... astic-doc/

Not-so-fun fact: our oceans hold 150 times more carbon dioxide than the Earth's atmosphere. Adding to that causes ocean acidification, which can disrupt marine food chains and reduce biodiversity.

Addressing this could not only help restore balance to underwater ecosystems, but also take advantage of an opportunity to sustainably use this stored CO2 for a variety of purposes – including producing the industrial chemicals needed to make plastic.

The first towards this is called Direct Ocean Capture – which refers to removing dissolved carbon directly from seawater – happens through electrochemical processes. While there are a bunch of companies working on this, it hasn't extensively been applied at scale yet, and the cost benefit doesn't look great at the moment (it's estimated that removing 1 ton of CO2 from the ocean could cost at least US$373, according to Climate Interventions).

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New Superwood Material Is Stronger Than Steel
This could someday be used to strengthen furniture and even replace some conventional building materials.
By Jon Martindale October 17, 2025

After years of development, an ultra-strong, wood-based material is commercially available for the first time. The creators of the chemically treated and compacted wood product claim it can be up to 20 times stronger than traditional wood and stronger than many conventional metal and alloy materials, including steel.

Liangbing Hu, a material scientist and the founder of Maryland-based InventWood, developed the substance, called "Superwood." He's previously developed unique wood materials, such as a transparent wood product. But it's strength that the company has been working on in recent years, and now, it has a viable product to bring to market.

Superwood is made through a soaking and compression system that makes the wood significantly denser. The process takes around a week to complete, but the resulting product is stronger and lighter than many conventional materials.

"From a chemical and a practical standpoint, it's wood," explained InventWood CEO Alex Lau (via CNN). "It looks just like wood, and when you test it, it behaves like wood," Lau added, "except it's much stronger and better than wood in pretty much every aspect that we've tested."

https://www.extremetech.com/science/new ... than-steel

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Scientists create new bullet-proof fiber that is stronger and thinner than Kevlar
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-scientist ... onger.html
by Paul Arnold, Phys.org

Kevlar has met its match. For decades, it has been the gold standard for impact protection, from bulletproof vests to armored vehicles, and is still widely used. But scientists have now developed a new composite material that is stronger, tougher and better at stopping bullets than Kevlar even though it is much thinner. Their study is published in the journal Matter.

To stop high-speed impacts, like a bullet, a material needs to resist breaking under force (high strength) and be able to absorb a lot of energy without shattering or failing (high toughness). However, there is a problem with current solutions, such as Kevlar, which is made from aramid fibers. When scientists try to make these fibers stronger, they often become more brittle, making it difficult to achieve both simultaneously. This is a common trade-off in materials science when you try to improve a material's overall performance.

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