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Missouri University of Science & Technology’s Keramos chapter won the Most Outstanding Chapter Award. The chapter’s representatives, front row, from left are William Meier, Megan Gilbert, Catie Mohrmann, Andrea Els and Stephen Edgar. Back row, Keramos executive committee members Robert Schwartz, Greg Hilmas, William Hammetter, Brian Gilmore and Kevin Fox.

Keramos, the national professional ceramic engineering fraternity, meets concurrently with the annual meeting of The American Ceramic Society. The group held its Student Convocation this morning at which all fraternity business is reviewed, chapter reports were given, student representation was elected and recognition of chapters and individuals receiving awards were made.

A career development presentation was given by Corning’s Matt Djenka as part of the Convocation.

Keramos’ Executive Board also gave out awards for Outstanding Chapter (above), Most Improved Chapter, Diamond Award (for exemplary performance and leadership) and Sapphire Award (notable performance). Here are some other photos from the Convocation.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Keramos chapter won the Most Improved Chapter Award. The chapter's representatives, front row, from left are Xiaolin Zhang and Divija Alluri. Back row, Keramos executive committee members Hammetter, Hilmas, Gilmore, Fox and Schwartz.

Two chapters, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Missouri University of Science & Technology, tied for the Diamond Award for exceptional achievement Keramos chapter and shared this year's award.

Chih-Hsuan Wu accepts the nameplate for the Sapphire Award for high achievement on behalf of Penn State's Keramos chapter.

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Art Friedberg. The Friedberg Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Clive Randall on Tuesday at MS&T. Credit: ACerS

Much of the joy in my adult life can be traced back directly to Art Friedberg.

The clock was ticking in the second semester of my sophomore year at Illinois, and the deadline for declaring a major was looming. A friend suggested ceramic engineering, and, armed with a 20-year old’s chutzpah, I called the department and asked for a meeting with the head—Art Friedberg.

As I recall, Art spent a fair amount of time talking to me about what ceramic engineering is, what a ceramic engineer does and how a latecomer like myself would step into the program. He must have done a good job describing the profession—my parents raised no objections, although they are still trying to figure out what I do!

The next fall I was the only new kid in the ceramic engineering courses and quickly realized I’d found a home, figuratively and literally. A few years later I graduated with a BS, MS and a husband. An interesting career, a happy marriage and four children later, I am grateful to Art for opening the world of ceramic engineering for me.

Many others thought highly of Art, too, and created an annual special lecture that honors his memory.

For 2011, Penn State professor, Clive Randall, will deliver the ACerS/NICE Arthur L. Friedberg Memorial Lecture at MS&T next week. He’ll be talking about sintering of dielectric oxides for cofired multilayer capacitors, and in a perfect set-up for the lecture, a new paper by his group was just published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society and is available via the Early View feature.

You can read it and formulate some hard questions for him, or just read my summary.

I hope to see you at the lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 8:00 a.m., Greater Columbus Convention Center, Room C113/114.

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Scanning electron microscope photo of hollow carbon nanofiber-encapsulated sulfur tubes, at the heart of a new battery design. Credit: Wesley Guangyuan Zheng; Stanford

Stanford University associate professor of materials science and engineering, Yi Cui, knows his way inside and out of a carbon nanotube, and he’s using his knowledge of that terrain to design new electrodes for lithium-ion batteries and ultracapacitors. Two papers published in recent weeks in Nano Letters describe the details.

The first paper (published Sept. 14, subscription required) describes an approach to cathode design for Li-Ion batteries. Sulfur is an attractive cathode material because of its high storage capacity at relatively low voltage. It is also inexpensive, abundant and nontoxic. According to a Stanford press release, batteries with sulfur cathodes can store four to five times as much energy as existing Li-ion batteries.

Previous cathode designs coated sulfur onto porous carbon structures. However, they fail quickly during the charge-recharge cycle because intermediate lithium polysulfide compounds are in contact with the electrolyte solution and dissolve into it. Cui’s graduate student, Wesley Guangyuan Zheng, describes the problem: “[W]e don’t want a large surface area contacting the sulfur and the electrolyte, and on the other hand we want a large surface area for electrical and ionic conductivities.”

The Cui team separated the sulfur from the electrolyte by simply moving it inside the cathode.

Adapting a commercially available water filtration process, they coated the interior of CNTs with sulfur. The new design prevents polysulfides from leaking into the electrolyte solution, while still allowing easy transport of Li ion through the CNT wall. Tests showed a high specific capacity after 150 charge-discharge cycles. In the same paper, they reported improved coulumbic efficiency gained by adding LiNO₃ to the electrolyte.

Cui’s second paper (published Sept. 26) also investigates electrode efficiency, in this case MnO₂, which is a promising material for supercapacitors (also called ultracapacitors) because of its high theoretical specific capacity, low cost and nontoxicity. Although it is blessed with a high charge storage capacity, it has low electrical and ionic conductivity, so getting the charge in or out quickly is a barrier.

To improve the conductivity of the electrode at its surface, two conductive coatings were investigated: carbon nanotubes and a conductive polymer. Coatings were applied by dipping a graphene-MnO₂ nanostructured composite electrode into a solution of the coatings.

Both coatings increased electrode conductivity, and therefore capacitance. The specific capacitance of the CNT-coated electrode increased by 25 percent and that of the polymer-coated electrode increased by 45 percent. The paper also reports that the coated electrodes, which the authors describe as ternary composites, delivered superior cycling performance, retaining over 95 percent of their capacitance after more than 3000 cycles.

In a Technology Review story, it was pointed out that the energy density of the electrode has yet to be reported.

We first reported on Cui’s simple approaches to using CNTs to make supercapacitors about two years ago.

Coincidentally, Penn State just announced that is has received $5 million from DOE to develop a battery that can provide 600 watt-hours per hour. Included will be research on developing a “nanocomposite sulfur cathode and lithium-rich composite anode material.”

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Getting a sneak preview of the displays at the soon-to-be dedicated Inamori Kyocera Museum of Fine Ceramics are Kate Wilkins and Susan Kowalczyk. Credit: Alfred Univ.

Recently I’ve covered a few stories related to exhibitions on technical ceramics (e.g., here and here), but these have been about exhibits that are part of much larger ceramic and glass art museums. But, today’s story is about a museum fully dedicated to the science and engineering aspects of ceramics.

Alfred University representatives have announced that they will be holding an official dedication ceremony May 10 for the Inamori Kyocera Museum of Fine Ceramics, in Alfred, N.Y., that will serve as the main showcase for ceramic research and technologies.

Inamori

(First, some semantics housekeeping: Some international ceramists, especially the Japanese, use the term “Fine Ceramics” as interchangeable with “High Tech Ceramics.” Obviously, this gets confusing because many North American and Europeans also use the term “Fine China” to refer to a high quality of ceramic dinnerware. But, the “Fine Ceramics” reference in the museum’s title is made in deference to the namesake, Kazuo Inamori, founder and chairman emeritus of Kyocera Corp. — one of the world’s largest manufacturers of high-tech ceramics — and a long-time supporter of Alfred’s programs.)

The dedication ceremony will be at 12:30 p.m. on May 10, in Binns-Merrill Hall on the AU campus.  The event is open to the public, and Inamori, himself, will be on hand for the dedication.

In an AU news release, the university’s president, Charles M. Edmondson, says the school is very honored to have Inamori at the event. “Dr. Inamori has been a valued friend to the University and in particular to our School of Engineering, so we are delighted he will be here as we dedicate this museum in his honor,” notes Edmondson.

Edmonson goes on to say that the museum “will play an important role in educating young people about the vital role of ceramics in the future economy — in areas ranging from information technology to medical devices, diagnostic systems, industrial equipment, renewable energy and environmental preservation.”

On the morning of the dedication, AU is holding a special symposium, ”Ceramics: Past, Present and Future,” organized in Inamori’s honor. The symposium will start at 9 a.m. on May 10 in the Nevins Theater located in the Powell Campus Center, and is open to the public, free of charge. (If you are planning to attend, AU asks that you email Marlene Wightman, director of continuing education, at Wightman@alfred.edu or to call her at 607-871-2425.

Inamori is expected to speak as part of the symposium. He will be joined by ACerS President Marina Pascucci, a 1977 AU alumna and president of CeraNova in Marlborough, Mass.; Terry Michalske (’75), director of the Savannah River National Lab; and Gary Messing (’73), head of the materials science and engineering department at Pennsylvania State University. Also among the speakers is Linda Jones, associate vice president and head of the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, who is an ACerS Fellow and a member of its board of directors.

The museum will offer information on ceramic materials and applications, including historical developments, technical breakthroughs and examples of how ceramics have become ubiquitous as enabling technology in everything from electronics to more specialized applications like fuel cells, solar panels and biomedical implants.

AU is also opening the Discovery Lab next to the Inamori Museum. School officials say the lab will be AU’s center for outreach activities involving students (and their teachers) from kindergarten through 12th grade. University faculty members are developing educational programming, including demonstrations and hand-on activities.

Doreen Edwards, dean of the school of engineering, says she anticipates visitors will include specialists and scientists. “People who are involved in the manufacture of ceramics and related technologies will find this of interest, but there is also plenty to draw the general public,” she says.

The artistic side of ceramics is not totally left out of the picture. The university notes that its Schein-Joseph Museum of Ceramics has an extensive collection of ceramic art and is located adjacent to the new museum in Binns-Merrill Hall. “This is an absolute reflection of the College of Ceramics that joins both the School of Art & Design and the Inamori School of Engineering,” says AU’s Linda Jones. “From the inception of the College, it was recognized that creativity and technical understanding are essential to address the challenges of our time.”

AU recalls that Inamori’s relationship with Alfred University dates back to the 1980s. The school awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1988, recognizing his leadership in the field of advanced ceramic materials.  He created Alfred University’s Inamori Scholarships, which assist deserving students studying art or engineering.

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Credit: Penn State

Isn’t there a law or something that prohibits using metamaterials for something other than invisibility cloaks?*

According to Douglas H. Werner, professor of electrical engineering at Penn State, creating a new type of antenna is one of the first practical implementations of electromagnetic metamaterials that makes a real world device better.

“These results also help lay to rest the widely held viewpoint that metamaterials are primarily an academic curiosity and, due to their narrow bandwidth and relatively high loss, will never find their way into real-world devices,” the researchers report in the current issue of Nature Materials.

They specifically designed their electromagnetic metamaterials to avoid previous limitations of narrow bandwidth and high intrinsic material loss, which results in signal loss. Their aim was not to design theoretical metamaterial-enhanced antennas, but to build a working prototype.

“We have developed design optimization tools that can be employed to meet real device requirements,” said Werner. “We can optimize the metamaterial to get the best device performance by tailoring its properties across a desired bandwidth to meet the specific needs of the horn antenna.”

* Good thing, too, because there is a new cloaker on the block (more to come).

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