Material Science News and Discussions

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New bioremediation material can clean 'forever chemicals'
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-bioremedi ... icals.html
by Helen White, Texas A&M University

A novel bioremediation technology for cleaning up per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, chemical pollutants that threaten human health and ecosystem sustainability, has been developed by Texas A&M AgriLife researchers. The material has potential for commercial application for disposing of PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals."

Published July 28 in Nature Communications, the research was a collaboration of Susie Dai, Ph.D., associate professor in the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, and Joshua Yuan, Ph.D., chair and professor in Washington University in St. Louis Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, formerly with the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology.

Removing PFAS contamination is a challenge

PFAS are used in many applications such as food wrappers and packaging, dental floss, fire-fighting foam, nonstick cookware, textiles and electronics. These days, PFAS are widely distributed in the environment from manufacturing or from products containing the chemicals, said Dai.
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New adaptive artificial muscles made of a single-helical woolen yarn
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-08-art ... -yarn.html
by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

In recent years, material scientists have designed a wide range of innovative materials that could be used to create new technologies, including soft robots, controllers and smart textiles. These materials include artificial muscles, structures that resemble biological muscles in shape and that could improve the movements of robots or enable the creation of clothing that adapts to different environmental conditions.

As part of an ongoing project focused on textile-based soft actuators, a team of researchers at Jiangnan University in China recently developed new artificial muscles based on free-standing, single-helical woolen yarn. Their artificial muscles, introduced in a paper published in Smart Materials and Structures, could be used to easily and affordably produce twisted actuators that can detect and respond to humidity in their environment.

"We are trying to design flexible and versatile actuators by leveraging the hierarchical structure design of textiles, ranging from microscales (e.g., molecular chains and aggregation structures) to macroscales (e.g., fiber morphology and textile architectures)," Fengxin Sun, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. "Realizing a yarn-based artificial muscle with free-standing and single-helical architecture via eco-friendly and easy-fabrication manufacturing process is still challenging."

The primary objective of the recent work by Sun and his colleagues was to overcome some of the common challenges faced when designing artificial muscles based on yarn (i.e., spun thread). Most notably, past studies have showed that reliably twisting yarn to create free-standing artificial muscle structures without using harmful chemicals or processes is far from an easy task.
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Protective coating material self-heals in 30 minutes when exposed to sunlight
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-coating-m ... posed.html
by National Research Council of Science & Technology
Researchers have developed a transparent protective coating material that can self-heal in 30 minutes when exposed to sunlight.

Excellent durability of automotive coatings is the most important issue in protecting a vehicle surface. In addition, protective coating materials should be colorless and transparent so that the original color of the product can be seen. However, it is difficult to provide a self-healing function while satisfying all of these conditions. Materials with free molecular movement have high self-healing efficiency, but have low durability, whereas materials with high hardness and excellent durability have remarkably poor self-healing performance.

The research team of Dr. Jin Chul Kim, Dr. Young il Park, and Dr. Ji-Eun Jeong of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) has developed a transparent coating material that satisfies all of the above conditions and has similar performance to that of commercial protective coating materials and can be self-healed with only sunlight (particularly near infrared light in sunlight, in the wavelength range of 1,000 to 1,100 nm).
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Scientists discover a new mechanism to increase the strength and ductility of high-entropy alloys
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-scientist ... tropy.html
by City University of Hong Kong
A research team co-led by materials scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has recently discovered a new mechanism to increase the strength and ductility of a high-entropy alloy, two properties which normally vary inversely with each other. The findings provide important insights for the future design of strong yet ductile high-entropy alloys and high-entropy ceramics.

The strength-ductility trade-off is a longstanding issue for conventional alloys that are usually based on one or two principal elements, meaning that increasing the strength usually sacrifices ductility. In the past decade, a new alloy design strategy was proposed: mixing multiple elements to form alloys, termed "multi-principal element alloys" (MPEAs) or "high-entropy alloys" (HEAs). MPEAs exhibit excellent mechanical properties, such as both great ductility and superb strength.
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A simple way of sculpting matter into complex shapes
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-simple-sc ... mplex.html
by University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
A new method for shaping matter into complex shapes, with the use of 'twisted' light, has been demonstrated in research at the University of Strathclyde.

When atoms are cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero (-273 degrees C), they stop behaving like particles and start to behave like waves.

Atoms in this condition, which are known as Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs), are useful for purposes such as realization of atom lasers, slow light, quantum simulations for understanding the complex behavior of materials like superconductors and superfluids, and the precision measurement technique of atom interferometry.

The Strathclyde study has shown that when twisted light is shone on to a moving BEC, it breaks into clusters of BEC droplets that move following the light's features, with the number of droplets equal to twice the number of light twists. Altering the properties of the light beam can change both the number of BEC droplets and the way that they move.

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.

Grant Henderson, a Ph.D. student in Strathclyde's Department of Physics, is lead author on the paper. He said: "By shining a laser beam on to a BEC, we can influence how it behaves. When the laser beam is "twisted," it has a helical phase profile and carries orbital angular momentum (OAM). Laser beams with OAM can trap and rotate microscopic particles, behaving like an optical spanner.
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Manufacturing metal-organic framework-based composites for efficiency
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-metal-org ... iency.html
by Michelle Revels, Texas A&M University

Dr. Qingsheng Wang, associate professor and George Armistead '23 Faculty Fellow in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, and his team of researchers have spent over three years finding more efficient ways to manufacture metal-organic framework (MOF)-based composites for industrial applications such as flame retardants.

MOFs are a class of crystalline materials with permanent porosity and wide applications, including gas purification, gas separation, water remediation, catalysis and drug delivery. However, process improvement is required to produce MOFs at a higher capacity in industry as the use and applications of MOF-based composites expand.

"To produce MOFs requires a deep understanding of process engineering and stringent conditions, and even with that, only a small amount can be produced at a time," said Wang. "Many alterations are needed to improve the process if we want to mass-produce MOFs."

Wang's group has published four studies in ACS Publications regarding their discoveries on MOF stability, MOF development processes, manufacturing MOF-based composites and their applications in flame retardancy.

Currently, most MOF-polymer composites are prepared by a discretely bottom-up principle that requires complex chemical reactions blended within different polymers in solutions. This multi-step process entails significant time, energy and money to produce minimal quantities.
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Cage with caps: Selective confinement of rare-earth-metal hydrates in host molecules

by Wiley
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-cage-caps ... rates.html
Rare-earth metals are indispensable for many technical products, from smartphones, laptops, batteries, electromotors, and wind turbines, to catalysts. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a Japanese team has now introduced a molecular "cage" with "caps" that can be used to selectively "confine" certain rare-earth-metal ions for isolation or recycling.

The rare-earth elements include 17 metals: scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, and the lanthanides, the 14 elements that follow after lanthanum in the periodic table, including neodymium and europium. The name is misleading because the rare-earth metals are not actually rare. They are everywhere in the environment but are highly dispersed and bound in minerals ("earths"); large deposits are rare. Reclaiming these elements from electronic waste is becoming more important. Some microorganisms have been discovered that contain enzymes with rare-earth metals. These could be useful in extraction and reclamation and provide inspiration for the use of rare-earth metals as catalysts.
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Researchers engineer novel material capable of 'thinking'
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-08-mat ... pable.html
by Pennsylvania State University

Someone taps your shoulder. The organized touch receptors in your skin send a message to your brain, which processes the information and directs you to look left, in the direction of the tap. Now, Penn State and U.S. Air Force researchers have harnessed this processing of mechanical information and integrated it into engineered materials that "think".

The work, published today in Nature, hinges on a novel, reconfigurable alternative to integrated circuits. Integrated circuits are typically composed of multiple electronic components housed on a single semiconductor material, usually silicon, and they run all types of modern electronics, including phones, cars and robots. Integrated circuits are scientists' realization of information processing similar to the brain's role in the human body. According to principal investigator Ryan Harne, James F. Will Career Development Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State, integrated circuits are the core constituent needed for scalable computing of signals and information but have never before been realized by scientists in any composition other than silicon semiconductors.
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Serendipitous backyard experiment shines light on producing polymers
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-serendipi ... ymers.html
by Queensland University of Technology
QUT researchers who conducted their experiment in a Brisbane backyard have found an unprecedented methodology for the production of microspheres.

Their research, reported in the journal Nature Communications, is a result of a series of factors, including the COVID lockdown which impacted laboratory access, a decision to investigate a waste product and more than a decade of cutting-edge research into the power of light to make molecules.

Polymer microspheres—spheres that are 1000 times smaller than 1 mm—are used in a wide range of applications including drug delivery, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and paints. An example of their everyday use is that microspheres enable the now iconic display of the one or two stripes on pregnancy tests or rapid antigen tests for SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Microspheres are typically produced in a process in which chemicals are heated, requiring substantial amounts of energy and can cause problems of overeating and uncontrolled reactions.
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Newly developed ice-shedding coating is 100 times stronger than others

by Laurie Fickman, University of Houston
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-newly-ice ... onger.html
A University of Houston mechanical engineer has developed a sprayable ice-shedding material that is 100 times stronger than any others. The new durable coating material has been tested by Boeing under erosive rain conditions at 385 miles per hour and has outperformed current state-of-the-art aerospace coating technologies.

The principle of the new "fracture-controlled material" lies in the fact that for detachment of any external solid object from a surface (like ice from an airplane wing), force must be applied, and that force will inevitably lead to formation of some cracks at the interface. These cracks (or fractures) grow until full detachment of the object from the surface.

Through a new concept developed by Hadi Ghasemi, Cullen Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, detachment can be accurately controlled and accelerated.
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