Materials Science News

Energy lost from hot engines could save billions of dollars if it could be captured and converted into electricity via thermoelectric devices,

By mimicking a brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells, University of Michigan researchers created a composite plastic that's as strong as steel but lighter and transparent.

Building aircraft wings with a special aluminium fibre combination makes them nearly immune to metal fatigue. The application of this technology, partly developed at Delft University of Technology, will lead to substantial savings.

Skis equipped with an ingenious new self-waxing device that enables them to travel quicker could make a dramatic entry onto the skiing scene in the 2008/09 World Cup season.

Researchers are designing, developing and manufacturing a housing material that will better withstand damage from higher winds, debris and storm waters than traditional building materials.

A collaboration between the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University and industry partner SuperPower Inc. has led to a new world record for a magnetic field created by a superconducting magnet.

Pulp and paper plants in the future may operate at lower energy levels as the result of a new joint technology developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Swagelok Company of Solon, Ohio.

Engineers at Purdue University have shown how to finely control the spectral properties of ultrafast light pulses, a step toward creating advanced sensors, more powerful communications technologies and more precise laboratory instruments.

Sandpaper, a seemingly simple tool for smoothing out rough surfaces, is much more complex than meets the eye and has increasingly become a high-tech marvel

An international team, including scientists from the London Center for Nanotechnology, has detected a hidden magnetic "quantum order" that extends over chains of 100 atoms in a ceramic without classical magnetism.