News tagged with metal materials

New glass tops steel in strength and toughness

(PhysOrg.com) -- Glass stronger and tougher than steel? A new type of damage-tolerant metallic glass, demonstrating a strength and toughness beyond that of any known material, has been developed and tested ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Jan 10, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (32) | comments 26 | with audio podcast

Cheap, abundant cathode material found for producing hydrogen fuel (w/ video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- By replacing catalysts made of expensive noble metals like platinum with cheaper, earth-abundant materials, researchers have taken a step toward enabling the large-scale production of hydrogen ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created May 10, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (22) | comments 60 | with audio podcast feature

Pair claim they have turned hydrogen to metal

(PhysOrg.com) -- Many have tried, but none have succeeded. For at least a hundred years, scientists looking at hydrogen have scratched their chins when musing over the fact that it, as an alkali metal, by ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Nov 15, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (20) | comments 28 | with audio podcast report

Layered footballs: First two-dimensional organic metal made of fullerenes

(PhysOrg.com) -- Since their discovery in the mid 1980s, fullerenes have caused a sensation. The tiny hollow spheres made of 60 carbon atoms, constructed out of pentagons and hexagons like miniature soccer ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Jun 09, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (19) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Metal Becomes Transparent Under High Pressure

An international team of scientists have discovered a transparent form of the element sodium (Na). The team, led by Artem Oganov, Professor of Theoretical Crystallography at Stony Brook University, and Yanming ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Mar 12, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (20) | comments 9

New kind of high-temperature photonic crystal could someday power everything from smartphones to spacecraft

A team of MIT researchers has developed a way of making a high-temperature version of a kind of materials called photonic crystals, using metals such as tungsten or tantalum. The new materials — which ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Feb 03, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (18) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Researchers develop alternative to gold in electrical applications

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of Connecticut, partnering with United Technologies Research Center (East Hartford, CT) engineers, have modeled and developed new classes of alloy materials for ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Oct 13, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (18) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

How to split a water molecule

(PhysOrg.com) -- A research team at RIKEN, Japan’s flagship research organization has succeeded for the first time in selectively controlling for reaction products in the dissociation of a single water molecule ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Apr 18, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (18) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

New PV cell generates electricity from IR and UV light

(PhysOrg.com) -- A prototype of a new type of photovoltaic (PV) cell that generates electricity from visible, infrared and ultraviolet light has been demonstrated by a group of Japanese scientists. It could ...

Technology / Semiconductors

created Mar 24, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (16) | comments 3 | with audio podcast report

Physicists demonstrate quantum plasmons in atomic-scale nanoparticles

Addressing a half-century-old question, engineers at Stanford have conclusively determined how collective electron oscillations, called plasmons, behave in individual metal particles as small as just a few nanometers in diameter. ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Mar 21, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (17) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Researchers create rollerball-pen ink to draw circuits

(PhysOrg.com) -- Two professors from the University of Illinois; one specializing in materials science, the other in electrical engineering, have combined their talents to take the idea of printing circuits ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Jun 28, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (15) | comments 9 | with audio podcast report

A step toward lighter batteries: Metal catalysts play important role in improving efficiency

A team of researchers at MIT has made significant progress on a technology that could lead to batteries with up to three times the energy density of any battery that currently exists.

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Apr 02, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (14) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Nanocables light way to the future: Researchers power line-voltage light bulb with nanotube wire

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cables made of carbon nanotubes are inching toward electrical conductivities seen in metal wires, and that may light up interest among a range of industries, according to Rice University researchers.

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Sep 07, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (14) | comments 9 | 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

Batteries get a (nano)boost

Need to store electricity more efficiently? Put it behind bars. That's essentially the finding of a team of Rice University researchers who have created hybrid carbon nanotube metal oxide arrays as electrode material that ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Feb 09, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (12) | comments 1