Processing

Lucrative lunar? Startup companies raise significant funding to mine the moon for rare earth elements and more

By April Gocha / January 7, 2020

A whole slate of startup companies are raising millions of dollars in funding to support their missions to extract resources from space—but is mining the moon for rare earth elements even feasible?

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Bond, Ceramic Bond—Improving bonding of ceramics in advanced ceramic applications

By Jonathon Foreman / December 17, 2019

To improve ceramic devices, one factor ceramists and ceramic engineers consider is the strength of ceramic bonds. Two recent papers published in an ACerS journal explore ways to improve ceramic bonds in different applications.

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Save “cold,” hard cash—cold sintering offers financial, environmental benefits to ceramic manufacturing

By Lisa McDonald / November 8, 2019

Decarbonizing manufacturing processes is a focus of the ceramic industry. In a recent paper, researchers performed a techno-economic analysis to show how the cold sintering process, a recently developed manufacturing technique, could help reach this goal.

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Reduce carbon emissions from cement production—and make other useful products in the process

By Lisa McDonald / November 5, 2019

To reduce carbon emissions from cement manufacturing, emission-heavy steps of the process can be replaced with alternative techniques. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology experimented with using electrolysis to create cement and found that in addition to reducing carbon emissions, byproducts from the process can be reused.

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Protecting equipment in steel production: Thermal barrier coatings created from steel waste stream

By Jonathon Foreman / October 25, 2019

Thermal barrier coatings protect equipment against high temperatures in steel production. Researchers from Bartin University in Turkey found ferrochromium slag, a waste product from stainless steel production, could be used to create such coatings.

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Nanoparticles and flash sintering—increasing ductility of glass and ceramics

By Lisa McDonald / October 15, 2019

Both glass and ceramics can be quite brittle. Two recent studies look at increasing the ductility of each—one through the consolidation of glassy nanoparticles, and the other through flash sintering.

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PLA processing strikes again: Wafer-scale graphene devices created at room temperature

By Lisa McDonald / September 20, 2019

To advance carbon-based technologies, simpler techniques to process carbon materials are needed. Researchers at North Carolina State University actively investigate pulsed laser annealing for this purpose and recently discovered the technique can create reduced graphene oxide.

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Achieving full density—a look at factors hindering densification of bioglass scaffolds

By Jonathon Foreman / September 17, 2019

Most bioglasses, especially the popular 45S5, form weak scaffolds prone to cracking because they do not sinter to full density. Researchers looked to understand the factors hindering densification.

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Nearing the theoretical limit of strength—nanoparticles toughen oxide glass

By Lisa McDonald / August 13, 2019

Reducing oxide glass brittleness is an active area of research. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, created a tough oxide glass with a stress-modulus relationship near the theoretical limit by dispersing nanoparticles in a glass melt.

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Sound science and engineering at all stages of research

By Jonathon Foreman / August 9, 2019

Sound science and engineering occur at all stages of the research process—a fact evident in ACerS journals. See how ACerS promotes sound science throughout the research process in two recent articles published in two ACerS journals.

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