Military
Scale construction in primitive fish may trigger ceramic armor redesign
We suspect that body armor designers at companies like CoorsTek and Ceradyne are already following up on a recent discovery by MIT engineers. These investigators have been studying Polypterus senegalus, a freshwater fish with a unique armor system that was apparently common in water-dwellers million of years ago. P. senegalus is currently found in Africa.

Using nanotech measurement techniques, the group unraveled the orientation, sequence and bonds that exist in each of the fish’s multi-layered scales, each layer being about 100 microns thick. These structurally-efficient scales provides P. senegalus with a tough layer of protection that can protect it from even the teeth of a predator.

By testing individual samples, researchers learned that the fishes’ scales, when put under stress, have the ability to stay confined by forming circular cracks around the contact point. This contrasts with typical fish scale – and body armor – breakdowns that occur when cracks spread to adjacent areas leading to catastrophic failure.

"Such fundamental knowledge holds great potential for the development of improved biologically inspired structural materials, for example soldier, first-responder and military vehicle armor applications," said lead author Christine Ortiz, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

"Many of the design principles we describe – durable interfaces and energy-dissipating mechanisms, for instance – may be translatable to human armor systems," Ortiz added.

 
Energy & Environment
Supercables to the rescue
Are high-efficiency power lines in our future? Superconductor Technologies Inc. and the Los Alamos National Lab think so. STI announced that it and LANL have entered into a collaboration to apply STI's high-temperature superconductor materials expertise to LANL's research initiative to develop HTS coated conductors for power transmission lines.

Currently, most power transmission lines are made of copper. If STI is right, HTS coated superconducting cables will offer higher capacity less energy loss to resistance.

STI and LANL were scheduled to do a joint presentation at the DOE 2008 Annual Superconductivity for Electric Systems Peer Review on July 29-31. The DOE began its HTS program in 1992 to help U.S. companies become world leaders in HTS commercialization. The world's first commercial use of HTS cable occurred in Carrollton, Georgia. Today, there are about a dozen superconducting cable demonstration projects underway in North America, Asia and Europe, and a number of groups track HTS progress.

 
Materials & Innovations
Video of the week: Magnetic levitation of YBCO above a track (Meissner Effect)
This is a short movie demonstrating the quantum mechanical phenomenon of superconductivity and a brief explanation of one of its most intriguing consequences – magnetic levitation and suspension.

The presentation includes an example of levitation above a ferromagnet, levitation above a magnetic track, and the “invisible guidance” that occurs during levitation/suspension on a magnetic roller coaster track. See the high-res version at the Ithaca Physic Department website.

 
Materials & Innovations
New ceramic resembles 18-Karat Gold
Kyocera has succeeded in creating a fine ceramic material that closely resembles 18-karat gold in both color and hardness.

The firm said the new material “has been created by raising the brightness level approximately five percent (approximately 3.6 points) above previous gold ceramic products.” The firm also has boosted the material’s hardness “five to 10 times higher than that of gold, resulting in superior scratch resistance” and made it more lightweight, “with a specific gravity less than one-third that of 18-karat gold.”

The new ceramic’s price is reportedly about one-twentieth that of gold, and Kyocera said it will be marketed as an alternative to gold in jewelry and a wide range of other luxury consumer and industrial products.

 
Energy & Environment
Soot-capturing diesel filter due in U.S. in Sept.
Corning Inc.’s new DuraTrap AT filter – made from an aluminum titanate ceramic catalyst substrate said to remove 99 percent of excess carbon soot from diesel exhaust systems – is coming to the U.S. in September in 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDIs.

“This new filter enables clean diesel. It has a membrane that traps soot. When soot accumulates and reaches a certain level, it is basically burned off,” said Thomas Appelt, vice president and general manager of Corning’s Automotive Technologies Division.

Appelt explained the DuraTrap AT works something like a self-cleaning oven, collecting and burning carbon particulates inside the filter at exhaust temperatures produced in a normal driving cycle – around 250 to 900°C.

The stabilized aluminum titanate provides low thermal expansion, allowing a durable, monolithic construction and high volumetric heat capacity. The filter’s pressure drop performance is comparable to that of silicon carbide filters, helping to minimize the aftertreatment system’s impact on engine power output, Appelt said.

“Volkswagen is only the start,” said Appelt, who indicated that the new filter would also soon be available in Hyundai diesel sedans and SUVs, plus vehicles built by four other manufacturers whose names were not disclosed.

 
Energy & Environment
Solid oxide fuel cell market to reach $443M
Global Industry Analysts’ “Solid Oxide Fuel Cells: A Global Strategic Business Report,” projects that the market for SOFCs will reach $443 million by 2010.

Growth drivers are expected to be the unrelenting rise in petroleum and fossil fuel prices, rising concerns over environmental pollution and the need for clean energy generation technologies.

The report predicts that market opportunities for SOFCs will expand as a result of regulatory changes to the retail electricity industry, reorganization of the utility industry’s infrastructure and changing public environmental policies.

The cost of upgrading traditional transmission and distribution methods and the shift to distributed power also are expected to increase demand for SOFC technology.

 
Biomaterials
Glass that dissolves, deposits calcium may repair bone
A new type of sol-gel glass that has the ability to dissolve and release calcium into the body may one day make bone transplants a thing of the past, at least that is the hope of its U.K.-based Imperial College developers.

Capable of acting as an active template for new bone growth, the porous glass disintegrates into the body without leaving a trace of itself or any toxic chemicals. New bone growth is stimulated as the glass dissolves, depositing calcium and other elements, such as silicon, into adjacent body fluids.

The glass works by activating bone-cell genes. These genes, in turn, encode the proteins that control the bone-cell cycle and the differentiation of cells that forms bone matrix and the mineralization of bone nodules.

The genes are activated by the release of soluble silica and calcium ions in specific concentrations. This occurs only when the timing sequence of the cell cycle is matched by that of the glass surface reactions and the controlled release of the ions. Through a series of experiments conducted at the ISIS neutron source, researchers at the Universities of Kent and Warwick obtained an understanding of how calcium is released into the body. Variants of these bioactive materials are already in clinical use, and previous studies have suggested that calcium in these materials is critical to glass stability and bioactivity, but researchers had never done a direct and quantitative study of the calcium atoms within a glass network, according to Kent Professor Bob Newport.

Newport said he and his team compared samples made with natural calcium and a calcium isotope, making it possible for them to isolate the mineral’s complex and subtle contribution and differentiate it from the contributions made by the other atoms present, Newport said. Research using glass/polymer hybrids also is planned. Such studies may be instrumental in developing mechanically stronger, load-bearing versions of the glass that would be applicable for joint replacements. If plans proceed as expected, Newport predicts clinical trials will take place within five years.

 
Materials & Innovations
Race to explore superconductor’s mysteries gets hotter
Researchers around the globe are competing to understand and unlock the mysteries of a new family of iron-based, high temperature superconductors, called doped rare earth iron oxyarsenides, and hope that solving this new material’s puzzles eventually will lead to the development of superconductors that can operate at room temperature.

This accomplishment would, in turn – not only lead to the creation of more energy-efficient motors, generators, smart switches and power grids – but also, according to many scientists, ease the world’s energy crisis and transform the economics and environmental impact of electrical power generation itself.

The dream is a compelling one, particularly in light of predictions that the world’s demand for electricity will increase more than 100 percent by 2030.

Déjà Vu
This new class of iron-based superconductors discovered by Japanese scientists has started a ripple of research activity reminiscent of the explosion of interest following the 1986 announcement that IBM scientists had uncovered superconductivity at 35K in ceramic copper-oxide.

Soon, other researchers observed superconductivity in similarly structured ceramic cuprates at temperatures as “high” as 120K. Until that breakthrough, most superconductors could function only at extremely low temperatures, cooled by the most costly of cryogens. The discovery that ceramic cuprates would superconduct at temperatures as higher temperatures meant that liquid nitrogen, an inexpensive cryogen, could be used. Over time, scientists coaxed the operating temperature of ceramic cuprates up to their current 138K plateau. Since then, cuprates have dominated the superconducting field.

More flexible than cuprates
Now scientists are hoping the operating temperatures of iron-based oxyarsenides will follow a similar trajectory. The new material’s chemical structure makes it look promising. Because it contains oxides of rare earth metals sandwiched between layers of iron arsenide, the structure facilitates tweaking the material’s properties, according to Jeffrey Lynn, a physicist at NIST.

“Researchers can replace the iron, arsenic or rare earth metals with other elements,” said Lynn, making iron arsenide superconductors “more flexible than cuprates.”

In fact, when researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology initially discovered the superconductor comprised of iron, oxygen, lanthanum and phosphorous, it had a “transition” temperature of only 4K. In February 2008, scientists boosted the temperature to 26K by substituting arsenic for phosphorous, and have since pushed the material’s transition temperature to 55K.

Operating temperature is only one of three key properties that make a superconductor “super,” however. The two other essential ingredients are a high tolerance for magnetic fields and the ability to endure high electrical currents.

David Larbalestier, director of the National High Magnetic Field Lab’s Applied Superconductivity Center in Florida, discovered the material’s surprising magnetic properties when he exposed it to the lab’s 45-tesla hybrid magnet. He thought the world-record magnet would be sufficient to test the new superconductor’s limits. He was wrong: The new material continued to superconduct up to 45 tesla, considerably beyond other superconductors.

Superconductor ‘soul’ model stumbles
Recent experiments conducted at Johns Hopkins University are also providing insight into the new superconductor. According to Chia-Ling Chien, a JHU physics professor leading the research, existing theoretical models hold that a metal becomes a superconductor only when two electrons with opposite “spins” are paired. He said the energy “gap” – or the amount of energy required to break the bond between paired electrons – determines a superconductor’s strength. Highest at low temperatures, the strength is supposed to diminish as temperatures rise.

“This gap – its structure and temperature dependence – reveal the ‘soul’ of the superconductor, and this is what was measured in our experiment,” Chien explained.

But, when Chien’s team measured this gap and its temperature variation in the new material, they found that the “pairing mechanism in iron-based superconductors is different from the one in more traditional, copper-based, high-temperature superconductors.” To the team’s surprise, these results are incompatible with many of the newly proposed theories circulating in the burgeoning superconducting field today.

“In the face of this discovery, it is clear that we need to reexamine the old and invent some new theoretical models,” said Zlatko Tesanovic , a member of Chien’s team. Tesanovic predicted “these new, iron-based superconductors will keep us physicists busy for a long, long while.”

 
Communications & Electronics
Corning predicts LCD TV sales will remain strong
Corning is predicting that the 2008 global LCD glass market will grow at the upper end of its original 25 percent to 30 percent year-over-year estimate.

"So far this year, we are not seeing evidence of the economic downturn impacting our forecasted growth," said James B. Flaws, Corning vice chairman and CFO. As evidence, Flaw said U.S. LCD TV sales this May had increased nearly 50 percent over a year ago. Flaw said the firm’s view is supported by third-party sources such as The NPD Group, an independent consumer market research firm. “We cannot guarantee that retail sales will remain resistant to economic pressures,” Flaw stated. “However, the strength of TV sales to date is consistent with consumers' behavior during the last three recessions."

Flaw said the strength of reported LCD TV sales through the first five months of 2008 led the firm to believe that the worldwide market would reach 105 million units.

 
Materials & Innovations
Lifetime Brands acquires Mikasa
Lifetime Brands Inc. has acquired the business and certain additional assets of Mikasa, Inc. from Arc International SA. Mikasa’s dinnerware, crystal stemware, barware, flatware and decorative accessories are distributed through department stores, specialty stores and big-box chains, as well as on the Internet .

“We are very pleased to add the Mikasa family of brands to our portfolio of distinctive tabletop brands,” said Jeffrey Siegel, Lifetime’s chairman, president and CEO. “We expect that the annual revenue of our wholesale tabletop business should exceed $150 million in 2009.”

The terms of the transaction were not announced. Lifetime reportedly intends to update its financial guidance for 2008 to include the effect of the acquisition, which is expected to be accretive to earnings beginning in 2008.

 


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Thursday, August 28, 2008