From The Ground Up: Taking 3D Printing Technology To The Next Level
With 3D printing, “Vortic was able to give new life to an antique, and create a niche high-end luxury good.”
Biodegradable Implant Could Help Doctors Monitor Brain Chemistry
A wireless, biodegradable sensor could offer doctors a way to monitor changes in brain chemistry without requiring a second operation to remove the implant, according to an international team of researchers.
In Touch With: Esther Obonyo — On Building Sustainable, Safe, Global Communities
Esther Obonyo, leads the Global Building Network, an initiative of Penn State and the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe aimed at advancing building science, construction, and management to accomplish Sustainable Development Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.
New Tool Can Predict Material Properties From Chemical Structure
Process can accelerate development of wearable technology, researchers say
The Zen Of Zentropy
Novel Zentropy theory seeks an all-encompassing answer to a materials design issue
Density: Helium Pycnometry
Micromeritics Accupyc II 1340 measures the skeletal volume of a material by gas displacement using the volume-pressure relationship of Boyle’s Law. An inert gas, typically helium, is used as the displacement medium. The sample is placed in a sealed cup of a known volume. This cup is then placed into the sample chamber. Gas is introduced to the sample chamber and then expanded into a second empty chamber with a known volume. The pressure observed after filling the sample cell and the pressure discharged into expansion chamber are measured, and then the vol
Contact Angle
When the contact angle of a drop in a surface is over 90° the surface is referred as hydrophobic, which refers to poor wetting. When the angle is below 90° the surface is referred as hydrophilic. Contact angle is often used to measure cleanliness, roughness, absorption, surface heterogeneity, among other properties.
Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES)
Auger electrons emitted from the surface are drawn into a spectrometer that ultimately measures their kinetic energy distribution. The technique is inherently surface sensitive because the Auger electrons typically have low kinetic energies (<3kv). The Auger spectra contain information about the concentration and (sometimes) the chemical environment of surface and near-surface atoms. Greater depths (up to a few microns) can be probed by coupling the technique with ion milling. Lateral distributions of elements can be measured with sub-micron resolution.
AFM: Atomic Force Microscopy
An Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) provides 3-dimensional topographic information about a sample by probing its surface structure with a very sharp tip. The tip is scanned laterally across the surface, and the vertical movements of the tip are recorded and used to construct a quantitative 3-dimensional topographic map. The lateral resolution of the image can be as small as the tip radius (typically 5-15 nm), and the vertical resolution can be on the order of angstroms.
