[Image above] Credit: NIST
Live images from inside materials
X-rays are a tried and tested way to investigate components and materials. Researchers at Fraunhofer are now developing an X-ray detector capable of delivering particularly high-quality 3D images in real time. This will make it possible to precisely reconstruct processes going on inside materials, providing a way to detect tiny faults.
Magnetite is an elaborate kind of rust—a regular lattice of oxygen and iron atoms—that plays an increasingly important role as a catalyst in electronic devices and medical applications. Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology have shown that the atomic structure of the magnetite surface, which everybody had assumed to be well-established, has in fact been wrong all along. The properties of magnetite are governed by missing iron atoms in the sub-surface layer.
Researchers develop a magnetic levitating gear
Researchers from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid are developing a new transmission mechanism with no touching parts, based on magnetic forces that prevent friction and wear and make lubrication unnecessary. It can be applied in space travel and exploration but has also been adapted for use in other areas, such as the railroad and aircraft industries.
Advanced School on Glasses and Glass-Ceramics accepting applications
The Advanced School on Glasses and Glass-Ceramics will take place in São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil, from August 1–9, 2015. The School is organized by CeRTEV, the Center for Research, Technology and Education in Vitreous Materials. The program is aiming to select 100 top-quality Masters and Ph.D. students from all over the world who are currently doing research in the area of glasses and glass-ceramics.
Nanoshaping method points to future manufacturing technology
Purdue University researchers have developed a new method, called laser shock imprinting, that creates large-area patterns of 3D nanoshapes from crystalline forms of metals. The method represents a potential manufacturing system to inexpensively mass-produce innovations such as “plasmonic metamaterials” for advanced technologies.
Stacking 2D materials may lower cost of semiconductor devices
A team of researchers led by North Carolina State University has found that stacking materials that are only one atom thick can create semiconductor junctions that transfer charge efficiently, regardless of whether the crystalline structure of the materials is mismatched—lowering the manufacturing cost for a wide variety of semiconductor devices such as solar cells, lasers, and LEDs.
Clemson optics findings among Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2014
Innovative optical fiber developed by researchers from Clemson University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of New Mexico, and Corning Incorporated was chosen as one of Physics World’s Top Ten Breakthroughs of 2014. The research team successfully demonstrated that Anderson localization in an optical fiber could be used for endoscopic imaging.