Condensed Matter news

Researchers take the lead out of piezoelectrics

Physics / Condensed Matter

Nov 13, 2009 | 3 / 5 (2) | 0

There is good news for the global effort to reduce the amount of lead in the environment and for the growing array of technologies that rely upon the piezoelectric effect. A lead-free alternative to the current ...

Ionic Liquid's Makeup Measurably Non-Uniform at the Nanoscale

Physics / Condensed Matter

Nov 10, 2009 | 5 / 5 (1) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Texas Tech University, Queen's University in Belfast, Ireland, the University of Rome and the National Research Council in Italy recently made a discovery about the non-uniform chemical compositions ...

Materials scientists find better model for glass creation

Physics / Condensed Matter

Nov 04, 2009 | 3.6 / 5 (7) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Harvard materials scientists have come up with what they believe is a new way to model the formation of glasses, a type of amorphous solid that includes common window glass.

Unexpected Hydrides Become Stable Metals at Pressure Near One Quarter Required to Metalize Pure Hydrogen Alone

Physics / Condensed Matter

Oct 12, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (11) | 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- From detailed assessments of electronic structure, researchers at the University at Buffalo, Cornell University, Stony Brook University and Moscow State University discovered that unexpected ...

Puzzled Physicists Solve Decade-Long Discrepancies

Physics / Condensed Matter

Oct 09, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (31) | 7

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team led by physicists at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have resolved a decade-long puzzle that is set to have huge implications ...

Bacterium helps formation of gold

Physics / Condensed Matter

Oct 07, 2009 | 4 / 5 (8) | 0

Australian scientists have found that the bacterium Cupriavidus metallidurans catalyses the biomineralisation of gold by transforming toxic gold compounds to their metallic form using active cellular mechan ...

Breaking Down the Barrier for Smaller, Faster Electronic Devices

Physics / Condensed Matter

Oct 05, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (5) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of international researchers is the first to uncover the chemical composition and structure of a microelectronics element that is vital to producing ever smaller - and, thus, cheaper ...

New Sulfur- and Coking-Tolerant Material Could Expand Applications for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

Physics / Condensed Matter

Oct 01, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (11) | 4

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new ceramic material described in this week's issue of the journal Science could help expand the applications for solid oxide fuel cells - devices that generate electricity directly from a ...

Why they grow? Getting to the roots of lethal metal whiskers

Physics / Condensed Matter

Sep 29, 2009 | 4.6 / 5 (10) | 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- A short circuit can be quite hairy: satellites have failed, a NASA computer centre was repeatedly paralysed and the US public heath authority recalled thousands of pacemakers - all because ...

Computation helps predict heat transfer in diamond

Physics / Condensed Matter

Sep 22, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (8) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cornell researcher Derek Stewart and collaborators have calculated the exact mechanism by which diamond conducts heat, a breakthrough that could lend insight into many fields, including electronics.

New beryllium reference material for occupational safety monitoring

Physics / Condensed Matter

Sep 22, 2009 | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in collaboration with private industry and other government agencies, have produced a new reference material for beryllium. ...

Scientists use low-gravity space station lab to study crystal growth

Physics / Condensed Matter

Sep 21, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (9) | 1

A research project 10 years in the making is now orbiting the Earth, much to the delight of its creator Rohit Trivedi, a senior metallurgist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. Equipment recently ...

Physicists Find a World of Motion In the Mystery of Aging Glass

Physics / Condensed Matter

Sep 19, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (11) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists super-cooled a liquid into glass in order to observe the slowing of particles. It's a material that still perplexes researchers despite thousands of years of household and industrial use.

Graphene and gallium arsenide: Two perfect partners find each other

Physics / Condensed Matter

Sep 16, 2009 | 2 / 5 (2) | 1

It is the marriage of two top candidates for the electronics of the future, both excentric and extremely interesting: Graphene, one of the partners, is an extremely thin fellow and besides, very young.

Under Observation -- Restless Atoms Cause Materials to Age

Physics / Condensed Matter

Sep 14, 2009 | 4.7 / 5 (10) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Atoms have the habit of jumping through solids - a practice that physicists have recently been able to follow for the first time using a brand new method. This scientific advance was made ...

Better Way to Measure Particle Shape Proves Popular

Physics / Condensed Matter

Sep 08, 2009 | 5 / 5 (2) | 0

Tiny particles are pivotal to climate change, public health, and nanotechnology. A significant fraction of these particles are aspherical, yet scientists must routinely assume the particles are spherical to ...

In-situ insights into alloys

Physics / Condensed Matter

Aug 26, 2009 | 2.3 / 5 (3) | 1

New research has produced the first micro-scale, in-situ, real-time observations of structural changes within alloys when under extremely high temperatures and stress.

Shuttle to carry 'Constrained Vapor Bubble' experiment to International Space Station

Physics / Condensed Matter

Aug 25, 2009 | 4 / 5 (5) | 0

An experimental heat transfer system designed by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is scheduled to depart Earth aboard Space Shuttle Discovery. Astronauts will install the system into a laboratory ...