http://www.physorg.com/physics-news/materials/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on Physics, Materials, Science and Technology 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 crop of piezoelectric materials has been identified by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. http://www.physorg.com/news177340310.html Physics - Condensed Matter Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:18:46 EST news177340310 (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 of ionic liquids that could lead to greater understanding and manipulation of these multi-purpose, designer solvents. http://www.physorg.com/news177087904.html Physics - Condensed Matter Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:20:05 EST news177087904 (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. http://www.physorg.com/news176567658.html Physics - Condensed Matter Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:35:06 EST news176567658 (PhysOrg.com) -- A PhD student from the London Centre for Nanotechnology has won a prize for solving a decade-long mystery central to understanding modern magnetic systems. http://www.physorg.com/news175857283.html Physics - Condensed Matter Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:15:30 EST news175857283 An ancient Confucian philosopher once said, "I love the lotus because while growing from mud, it is unstained." http://www.physorg.com/news175430726.html Physics - Condensed Matter Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:46:37 EST news175430726 (PhysOrg.com) -- The trail to a new multiferroic started with the theories of a U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory scientist and ended with a multidisciplinary collaboration that created a material with potential impact on next generation electronics. http://www.physorg.com/news175279911.html Physics - Condensed Matter Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:08:32 EST news175279911 (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 hydrides violating standard valence rules, such as LiH6 and LiH8, become stable metals at a pressure approximately one quarter of that required to metalize pure hydrogen itself; findings that were published in an October 5, 2009 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news174564247.html Physics - Condensed Matter Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:04:31 EST news174564247 (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 for use of one of the most versatile classes of materials available to us for future technology applications: copper oxide ceramics. The results are published online this week in the journal Nature Physics. http://www.physorg.com/news174307778.html Physics - Condensed Matter Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:50:34 EST news174307778 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 mechanism. http://www.physorg.com/news174140990.html Physics - Condensed Matter Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:20:01 EST news174140990 (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 and faster - devices. http://www.physorg.com/news173985674.html Physics - Condensed Matter Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:00:02 EST news173985674 (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 wide range of liquid or gaseous fuels without the need to separate hydrogen. http://www.physorg.com/news173626385.html Physics - Condensed Matter Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:34:16 EST news173626385 (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 tin whiskers caused a short circuit in the electronic components of these devices. http://www.physorg.com/news173450615.html Physics - Condensed Matter Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:44:24 EST news173450615 (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. http://www.physorg.com/news172850785.html Physics - Condensed Matter Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:10:43 EST news172850785 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 delivered to the International Space Station by the Space Shuttle Discovery will allow the Earth-bound Trivedi to conduct crystal growth experiments he first conceived more than a decade ago. http://www.physorg.com/news172756816.html Physics - Condensed Matter Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:03:42 EST news172756816 (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. http://www.physorg.com/news172568390.html Physics - Condensed Matter Sat, 19 Sep 2009 08:40:27 EST news172568390 (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 possible thanks to the utilisation of cutting-edge X-ray sources, known as electron synchrotrons. The detailed findings of the project, backed by the Austrian Science Fund, were recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Materials. The work unlocks new potential for the study of material ageing processes at the atomic level. http://www.physorg.com/news172141084.html Physics - Condensed Matter Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:01:18 EST news172141084 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 of the International Space Station, where it will remain for up to three years. http://www.physorg.com/news170422286.html Physics - Condensed Matter Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:50:02 EST news170422286 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science, a joint institute of SLAC and Stanford University, have produced a hydrogen-rich alloy that could provide insight into the properties of metallic hydrogen, according to a study published in the August 17 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work is a step toward materials with revolutionary implications for energy science, enabling lossless power transmission, next-generation particle accelerators and even magnetic levitation. http://www.physorg.com/news170007996.html Physics - Condensed Matter Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:28:01 EST news170007996 (PhysOrg.com) -- Water is familiar to everyone - it shapes our bodies and our planet. But despite this abundance, the molecular structure of water has remained a mystery, with the substance exhibiting many strange properties that are still poorly understood. Recent work at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and several universities in Sweden and Japan, however, is shedding new light on water's molecular idiosyncrasies and offering insight into its strange bulk properties. http://www.physorg.com/news169314724.html Physics - Condensed Matter Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:53:35 EST news169314724 "Imagine you're a water molecule in a glass of ice water, and you're floating right on the boundary of the ice and the water," proposes Emory University physicist Eric Weeks. "So how do you know if you're a solid or a liquid?" http://www.physorg.com/news169201786.html Physics - Condensed Matter Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:30:23 EST news169201786 (PhysOrg.com) -- Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world`s most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminium' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion. http://www.physorg.com/news167925273.html Physics - Condensed Matter Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:55:07 EST news167925273 (PhysOrg.com) -- Monochromatic light-emitting diodes cover a large part of the visible spectrum with high effi-ciency. For blue light, nitride diodes achieve external quantum efficiencies in excess of 65%, i. e., one photon is emitted for approx. 2/3 of the electron-hole pairs injected into the diode. For red light, phosphor diodes achieve efficiencies of approx. 50%. However, so far no highly efficient monochromatic LEDs have been available for the `yellow gap` at around 560 nm. Now researchers with Philips Lumileds have developed a monochromatic nitride diode that closes this gap. http://www.physorg.com/news167555795.html Physics - Condensed Matter Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:17:44 EST news167555795 (PhysOrg.com) -- Last month, researchers from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory made headlines when they revealed experimental evidence of a topological insulator: a material that could revolutionize computer processors by allowing electricity to flow without resistance. This week in Science, SLAC theorists along with an experimental group in Germany report additional details about the way these topological insulators conduct electricity. Using the topological insulator mercury telluride, the paper shows that an electric current sent through these materials goes against conventional physics knowledge and travels far away from its input points, to the outer edges of the material. http://www.physorg.com/news167497475.html Physics - Condensed Matter Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:05:19 EST news167497475 (PhysOrg.com) -- Most of us, when we take our first science classes, learn that when things cool down, they shrink. (When they heat up, we learn, they usually expand.) However, water seems to be the exception to the rule. Instead of shrinking as it cools, this common liquid actually expands. In order to explain this phenomenon, some scientists have adopted the `mixture` model, which purports that low-density, ice-like components dominate due to cooling. Masakazu Matsumoto, at the Nagoya University Research Center for Materials Science in Japan, has a different idea. He describes his findings in Physical Review Letters: "Why Does Water Expand When It Cools?" http://www.physorg.com/news167040410.html Physics - Condensed Matter Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:07:34 EST news167040410 (PhysOrg.com) -- Bacteria know that they are too small to make an impact individually. So they wait, they multiply, and then they engage in behaviors that are only successful when all cells participate in unison. There are hundreds of behaviors that bacteria carry out in such communities. Now researchers at Rockefeller University have discovered one that has never been observed or described before in a living system. http://www.physorg.com/news166803657.html Physics - Condensed Matter Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:21:32 EST news166803657 (PhysOrg.com) -- A tiny grid pattern has led materials scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Institute of Solid State Physics in Russia to an unexpected finding -the surprisingly strong and long-range effects of certain electromagnetic nanostructures used in data storage. Their recently reported findings may add new scientific challenges to the design and manufacture of future ultra-high density data storage devices. http://www.physorg.com/news165682221.html Physics - Condensed Matter Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:50:57 EST news165682221 (PhysOrg.com) -- Composite materials such as fiberglass, which take on a mix of properties of their constituent compounds, have been around for decades. Now, an MIT materials scientist is taking composites to the nanoscale, where entirely new properties, not found in any of the original compounds, can emerge. http://www.physorg.com/news165075237.html Physics - Condensed Matter Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:20:02 EST news165075237 A group of University of Oklahoma researchers led by Dr. James P. Shaffer, Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, have discovered giant Rydberg molecules with a bond as large as a red blood cell. Determining how Rydberg molecules interact is important because Rydberg atoms are a key ingredient in atom based quantum computation schemes. http://www.physorg.com/news165059097.html Physics - Condensed Matter Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:45:28 EST news165059097 Better predictions of how many valuable materials behave under stress could be on the way from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where scientists have recently found evidence of an important similarity between the behavior of polycrystalline materials -such as metals and ceramics -and glasses. http://www.physorg.com/news164455263.html Physics - Condensed Matter Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:40:01 EST news164455263 By squeezing a typical metal alloy at pressures hundreds of thousands of times greater than normal atmospheric pressure, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a material that does not expand when heated, as does nearly every normal metal, and acts like a metal with an entirely different chemical composition. http://www.physorg.com/news164301757.html Physics - Condensed Matter Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:57:02 EST news164301757