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From Laser Focus World, November 1, 2011, by Trey Turner and Mark Damery, Research Electro-Optics (Colorado): "Optical coatings for military applications present a particularly demanding set of requirements for the thin-film manufacturer, usually revolving around exceptional optical performance in particularly harsh environments. These can include high laser damage threshold, wide angular acceptance, excellent performance at several widely spaced wavelengths, low wavefront distortion, spectral stability in the presence of large swings in temperature and humidity, and good mechanical durability. The single biggest military application for lasers is in rangefinding and target designation.   

 

Source: Read the full article...

Laser Focus World: http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/print/volume-47/issue-11/features/military-laser-technologies-challenge-optical-coating-manufacturers.html  

Image: Laser Focus World 

From Duke University Pratt School of Engineering, December, 12, 2011, by Richard Merritt: "Microscopic water droplets jumping from one surface to another may hold the key to a wide array of more energy efficient products, ranging from large solar panels to compact laptop computers.

 

Duke University engineers have developed a new way of producing thermal diodes to regulate heat by bleeding it away or keeping it in. The method solves several shortcomings of existing devices.

 

While thermal diodes can be made from solid materials, these solid-state diodes are not nearly as effective as "phase-change" thermal diodes that rely on vaporization and condensation to transport heat. Existing phase-change diodes can transfer over a hundred times more heat in the forward direction than the reverse, but with major limitations: they are dependent on gravity or restricted to a one-way direction. This limits their use in mobile electronics or solar panels.

 

The Duke engineers believe they have figured out a way to overcome these limitations by exploiting tiny self-propelled water droplets, or condensate, that can jump from a water-repellent, or superhydrophobic, surface to a highly absorbent, or superhydrophilic, surface, but not the other way around.

 

The results of the Duke experiments were published online in the journal Applied Physical Letters."

Duke University: http://www.pratt.duke.edu/node/3199 

From Chemical & Engineering News , November 21, 2011, by Mitch Jacoby: Graphene, "this ultrathin form of carbon - a single atomic layer thick in some cases, a handful of layers in others - has been the focus of an enormous research effort for the past couple of years. 'Graphene products are here today. They're not five years away.' Says John S. Lettow, president of Vorbeck Materials in Jessup, Md.

To the growing pool of companies making and selling some form of graphene, "products " may refer to raw graphene, graphene-based materials, and graphene-enhanced products, including ones headed to retail stores.   In addition, an intense wave of research activity is directed at exploiting graphene's outstanding electronic, mechanical and other properties in future products and applications." For instance, graphene films less than 5nm thick are made by various chemical vapor deposition (CVD) methods. "The films can be isolated from thin graphite flakes by successively splitting the flakes apart with adhesive tape." 

This article describes various commercial applications such as energy storage, graphene-based printed circuits, security packaging systems, and graphene-polymer composites. Byung Hee Hong, a chemistry professor at Seoul National University, in South Korea, says that "these developments 'are a nice start, but we're just at the beginning."   

 

Source: Read the full article...

Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN): http://cen-online.org/articles/89/i47/Graphene-Moves-Toward-Applications.html
Image: Wikimedia Commons  

From UConn Today (University of Connecticut), October 17, 2011, by Andrew Sparks: "Researchers in the School of Engineering are working with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop advanced coatings for a new energy-producing turbine that produces dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions than traditional turbines.

 

UConn is one of nine universities chosen to conduct advanced turbine technology research for the clean and efficient operation of turbines using fuels derived from coal and containing high amounts of hydrogen, according to a U.S. Department of Energy announcement. These high-hydrogen-content fuels are crucial to developing advanced coal-based power generation systems that can capture and store carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.

 

The UConn School of Engineering plans to use the DOE grant to continue its groundbreaking research into the development of advanced thermal barrier coatings for turbine engines using a novel process called "solution precursor plasma spray" technology or SPPS. This process allows for the creation of a unique thermal barrier coating microstructure that dramatically reduces damage from the intense heat found in gas turbines. UConn researchers believe that the coatings developed through the SPPS process are superior to traditional powder coatings applied to turbine engine parts and can withstand more intense heat and strain." 

 

Source: Read the full article...

UConn Today: http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2011/10/developing-green-energy-technology/
Image: Peter Morenus, UConn

From Glass Magazine, October 31, 2011: "Driven in large part by the green building movement, the dynamic glass market will grow substantially over the next several years, with electrochromic glass revenues hitting the billion-dollar mark in 2017, according to a new report from Nanomarkets. Thermochromic glass revenues also will increase dramatically, climbing from $30 million in 2011 to nearly $197 million by 2017, the report states."

   

 

Source: Read the full article...

Glass Magazine: http://glassmagazine.com/article/commercial/dynamic-glass-offers-growing-revenue-stream-118960
Image: Glass Magazine 

From ElectroIQ: "A team of engineers from Northwestern University has created an electrode for lithium-ion batteries that allows the batteries to hold a charge up to 10 times greater than current technology. Batteries with the new electrode also can charge 10 times faster than current batteries.

The researchers combined two chemical engineering approaches to address two major battery limitations -- energy capacity and charge rate -- in one fell swoop. In addition to better batteries for cellphones and iPods, the technology could pave the way for more efficient, smaller batteries for electric cars. The technology could be seen in the marketplace in the next three to five years, the researchers said. A paper describing the research is published by the journal Advanced Energy Materials. "We have found a way to extend a new lithium-ion battery's charge life by 10 times," said Harold H. Kung, lead author of the paper. "Even after 150 charges, which would be one year or more of operation, the battery is still five times more effective than lithium-ion batteries on the market today."

 

Source: Read the full article...

ElectroIQ: http://www.electroiq.com/articles/stm/2011/11/northwestern-researchers-advance-li-ion-battery-with-graphene-silicon-sandwich.html 

From SPIE Newsroom, December 5, 2011, by Sabastian Wille, et al.: "Zinc oxide (ZnO) is emerging as a useful multifunctional material due to its toughness, but it has the drawback that it is also very brittle. This brittleness can be overcome by incorporating ZnO nanostructures into polymer matrices to produce materials such as heavy-duty lacquers. However, ZnO also has special sensing, photocatalytic, and antiviral behavior, all of which can be enhanced by forming nano- and microstructures to increase the ratio of surface area to volume.

One main problem for these applications is how to control the synthesis parameters-temperature and pressure-which affect not only the quantity of particles or assemblies produced but also their shape. The shape in turn influences the physical and chemical properties of the material. Depending on the parameters, different crystal-growth directions are favored during ZnO particle synthesis, facilitating formation of one of these structural variations. Now, through the use of vacuum systems, plasma sources, and optimization of carrier and reactive gases, synthesis has moved toward higher throughput.

However, for many commercial applications these methods are still too complex or too slow. For our investigation, we made ZnO tetrapod structures by two methods: sputter deposition, and an alternative, high-throughput method we have developed based on oxidation of zinc powder by heating in a furnace in air. The high-throughput method gives us the possibility to synthesize a large quantity (up to the kilogram scale) of nanostructured particles at low cost." 

 

Source: Read the full article...

SPIE.org: https://spie.org/x83274.xml?highlight=x2400&ArticleID=x83274

Image: SPIE/S. Wille, et al. 

From Vanderbilt University, December 14, 2011, by David Salisbury:  "The surprising discovery of a new way to tune and enhance thermal conductivity - a basic property generally considered to be fixed for a given material - gives engineers a new tool for managing thermal effects in smart phones and computers, lasers and a number of other powered devices.

The finding was made by a group of engineers headed by Deyu Li, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University, and published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on Dec. 11.

 

Li and his collaborators discovered that the thermal conductivity of a pair of thin strips of material called boron nanoribbons can be enhanced by up to 45 percent depending on the process that they used to stick the two ribbons together. Although the research was conducted with boron nanoribbons, the results are generally applicable to other thin film materials."

 

Source: Read the full article...

Vanderbilt University: http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2011/12/thermal-conductivit/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+vanderbilt-news+%28Vanderbilt+News%29