News tagged with metal atoms

How ion bombardment reshapes metal surfaces

To modify a metal surface at the scale of atoms and molecules — for instance to refine the wiring in computer chips or the reflective silver in optical components — manufacturers shower it with ions. ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Making microscopic machines using metallic glass

Researchers in Ireland have developed a new technology using materials called bulk metallic glasses to produce high-precision molds for making tiny plastic components. The components, with detailed microscopically patterned ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created May 22, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

In metallic glasses, researchers find a few new atomic structures

Drawing on powerful computational tools and a state-of-the-art scanning transmission electron microscope, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison and Iowa State University materials science and engineering researchers has ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created May 11, 2012 | popularity 3.4 / 5 (7) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Researchers discover promising hydrogen storage material

(PhysOrg.com) -- If hydrogen is to ever to serve as an onboard energy carrier for the transportation industry, a material will be needed that can store large amounts of hydrogen at ambient temperature and ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Nov 01, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (14) | comments 22 | with audio podcast feature

'Copper pump's' potential benefit in cancer treatment

(Phys.org) -- A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has made new discoveries about a copper-transporting protein in the membranes of human cells that drug-discovery scientists can co-opt ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created May 17, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Physicists show standard 'quasiparticle' theory breaks down at 'quantum critical point'

A new study this week finds that "quantum critical points" in exotic electronic materials can act much like polarizing "hot button issues" in an election. Reporting in Nature, researchers from Rice Univer ...

Physics / General Physics

created Apr 25, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 6 | with audio podcast

Scientists evaluate different antimicrobial metals for use in water filters

Porous ceramic water filters are often coated with colloidal silver, which prevents the growth of microbes trapped in the micro- and nano-scale pores of the filter. Other metals such as copper and zinc have also been shown ...

Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine

created May 24, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 1

Damaging graphene to create a band gap

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Graphene offers a lot of interesting potential applications for nanoelectronics," Florian Banhart tells PhysOrg.com, "but there is no band gap. This is a well-known problem. Without the band gap, switch ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Nov 22, 2010 | popularity 3.2 / 5 (9) | comments 2 | with audio podcast feature

'Tunable' metal nanostructures for fuel cells, batteries and solar energy

(PhysOrg.com) -- For catalysts in fuel cells and electrodes in batteries, engineers would like to manufacture metal films that are porous, to make more surface area available for chemical reactions, and highly ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Apr 03, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Strong bonds between rare-earth metals and graphene

(PhysOrg.com) -- Transistors and information storage devices are getting smaller and smaller. But, to go as small as the nanoscale, scientists must understand how just a few atoms of metals behave when deposited ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Sep 28, 2011 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (6) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Research demonstrates method that allows inexpensive carbon materials to store hydrogen at room temperature

Hydrogen has long been considered a promising alternative to fossil fuels for powering cars, trucks and even homes. But one major obstacle has been finding lightweight, robust and inexpensive ways of storing the gas, whose ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Sep 19, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (14) | comments 16 | with audio podcast

Etch-a-sketch with superconductors

Reporting in Nature Materials this week, researchers from the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the Physics Department of Sapienza University of Rome have discovered a technique to 'draw' superconducting shapes ...

Physics / Superconductivity

created Aug 22, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Under pressure, sodium and hydrogen could undergo a metamorphosis, emerging as a superconductor

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the search for superconductors, finding ways to compress hydrogen into a metal has been a point of focus ever since scientists predicted many years ago that electricity would flow, uninhibited, through ...

Physics / Superconductivity

created Jun 13, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (11) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

First ever single crystal metallic glass created under 25 gigapascals of pressure

Glass, by definition, is amorphous; its atoms lack order and are arranged every which way. But when scientists squeezed tiny samples of a metallic glass under high pressure, they got a surprise: The atoms ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Jun 16, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

The World's Smallest Spontaneous Atomic Valentine

(PhysOrg.com) -- Palladium atoms placed on a carbon base spontaneously formed into an 8 nanometer heart at the University of Birmingham’s Nanoscale Physics Research Laboratory this week. Just in time for ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Feb 14, 2010 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (20) | comments 2 | with audio podcast weblog