Glass

Dry water – a.k.a. hydrophobic fumed silica/water – touted as CO2 absorbent, emulsion transporter

By / August 25, 2010

“Dry water.” Credit: ACS. The American Chemical Society today distributed a story that came out of one of its meetings regarding the use of “dry water” powder as a medium…

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Rare earths: Growing demand and tight supplies

By / August 24, 2010

It’s far from a disinterested source, but Avalon Rare Metals tells me today that prices for individual rare earth elements have soared 22-705% since January: “[T]he most significant rises have…

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UV coating that makes transparent architectural glass less lethal to birds gets Red Dot award

By / August 23, 2010

[flash https://ceramics.org/ceramictechtoday/wp-content/video/ornilux.flv mode=1 f={image=/ceramictechtoday/wp-content/video/ornilux.jpg}] We’ve all heard that “out of nowhere” whack on home or office windows and later found the carcass of some poor bird lying below it. It’s…

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Corning’s Gorilla Glass wins one of ACerS’ corporate achievement awards, wide media attention

By / August 2, 2010

Screenshot from video of Gorilla Glass 2M ‘ball drop’ test: 1.18 lb ball, dropped from 1.8 meters at 13.6 mph. Credit: Corning Inc. We’ve written before about the inroads Corning…

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Solar sail uses smart glass to steer through cosmos

By / July 27, 2010

Artist’s conception of solar sail. (Credit: JAXA.) Japan has successfully deployed a solar sail on a spacecraft, demonstrating for the first time that such technology can be used to convert…

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Rare earth’s brick wall

By / July 25, 2010

This falls into the “must read” category. A few weeks back, I posted on major cuts in China rare earth exports. Science magazine’s  Robert F. Service provides more context: “.…

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50 R&D 100 Awards given to national labs

By / July 22, 2010

Ultrasensitive Nanomechanical Transducers Based on Nonlinear Resonance, one of ORNL’s 2010 R&D 100 award winners. (Credit: ORNL.) R&D Magazine awarded DOE and other federal labs with 50 of its R&D…

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Because lithium has worked so very well for Bolivia’s economy

By / July 20, 2010

I hope a PIO is to blame for this too-clever headline: “Lithium could be gold mine for Afghanistan.” But, the premise of this story is false and is emerging as…

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ARPA-E announces $92M in advanced energy science, materials awards

By / July 12, 2010

DOE’s ARPA-E program today announced it would be funding 43 new high-risk, high-reward energy projects to the tune of $92 million. The funding is grouped into three areas: Grid-scale modular…

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Bad news for advanced ceramic & glass world: China enforcing new rare earths export restrictions

By / July 12, 2010

According to new reports in BusinessWeek and Metal-Pages, China is cutting export quotas for the rare earths and metals – required in many advanced ceramic and glass applications – by…

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