"DETROIT, MI - Although an auto industry tie-in is obvious for the region, a high-tech lightweight materials manufacturing institute planned for metro Detroit will specialize in components that have applications to a variety of sectors.

From the aircraft to the defense industries, the American Lightweight Materials Manufacturing Innovation Institute would seek to make the U.S. more competitive in several areas of the light materials supply chain, said Lisa Austin, a spokeswoman for EWI, which is the non-profit responsible for launching the public-private ALMMII alongside the University of Michigan and Ohio State University."

"Transparent conductive sheets (on glass or other substrates) are used in a variety of applications including touch screens, displays, lighting, photovoltaics, etc. The non-display sector alone (includes touch) is set to generate $1.4 billion in 2014 at the sheet level. This is a fast growing sector with a 6% CAGR between 2014 and 2024." 

"The problem of delamination, which is the peeling of inorganic flakes from the inner glass surface of a pharmaceutical vial as a result of interaction with its contents, remains a top priority issue for the pharmaceutical industry. This phenomenon has already caused numerous recalls that can each cost several million dollars. The US drug authority is thus explicitly requiring that pharmaceutical companies manage their risks more closely. SCHOTT® Vials DC (DC = delamination controlled) offer pharmaceutical companies a new way to lower the risk of delamination by providing an improved packaging product." 

"As projected capacitive touch panels continue to expand product offerings in consumer and industrial markets, designers need to become familiar with the trade-offs involved when designing-in a projected capacitive touch panel. There are details to be considered, such as alternative materials that can be used for constructing a projected capacitive touch panel, the characteristics of those materials, and the functional trade-offs involved.

Cover lenses - When specifying a cover lens, potential characteristics that drive the material choice include hardness, impact strength and safety. Another consideration when choosing a cover lens material is the dielectric. Cover lenses can also be enhanced with films and/or coatings, including anti-glare (AG), anti-reflective (AR), anti-smudge, etc.

Adhesive - Depending on the touch panel design and whether or not the touch panel is being bonded to a TFT, the entire stack-up may include three separate adhesive layers. One of the biggest concerns when choosing an adhesive is birefringence. Another factor is the temperature range of the adhesives being used. Some adhesives can stretch, which allows air bubbles to form if the temperature gets too high." 

"The team from Harvard's Wyss Institute and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has demonstrated the uncanny ability of SLIPS (Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces) - inspired by the pitcher plant - to repel nearly any material it contacts: water, ice, oil, saltwater, wax, blood, and more. They have demonstrated its versatility under extreme conditions of pH and temperature, and have successfully used SLIPS to coat everything from refrigeration coils to lenses, windows, and ceramics.

And now, the team has modified everyday cotton and polyester fabrics to exhibit traditional antifouling SLIPS behavior. The SLIPS coating anchors a slippery lubricated film infused to a nano-porous solid surface, creating a material that performs exceedingly well under pressure or physical damage, and can resist all kinds of liquids, including oil. The advance could meet the need for a robust, stain-resistant textile for a host of consumer and industrial applications."

"Graphene is undoubtedly emerging as one of the most promising nanomaterials because of its unique combination of superb properties, which opens a way for its exploitation in a wide spectrum of applications ranging from electronics to optics, sensors, and biodevices. 

Currently, the most common techniques available for the production of graphene include micromechanical cleavage, CVD, epitaxial growth on SiC substrates, chemical reduction of exfoliated graphene oxide, liquid phase exfoliation of graphite and unzipping of carbon nanotubes. However, each of these methods can has its own advantages as well as limitations depending on its target application. In order to surmount these barriers in commercializing graphene, concerted efforts are being made by researchers throughout the world."

"Perfect sheets of diamond a few atoms thick appear to be possible even without the big squeeze that makes natural gems. Scientists have speculated about it and a few labs have even seen signs of what they call diamane, an extremely thin film of diamond that has all of diamond's superior semiconducting and thermal properties. 

"Now researchers at Rice University and in Russia have calculated a "phase diagram" for the creation of diamane. The diagram is a road map. It lays out the conditions - temperature, pressure and other factors - that would be necessary to turn stacked sheets of graphene into a diamond lattice." 

"Many scientists view titanium dioxide as an attractive, low-cost photocatalyst for a variety of applications, including water purification, water splitting, and solar power. But there is a complication: The material catalyzes reactions mainly in response to ultraviolet light. Now, researchers at the Institute of Materials Research & Engineering in Singapore have found a way to dope the surface of TiO2 with nitrogen so that the material responds to visible light, drastically increasing its photocatalytic activity." 

" Quantum dots are nano-sized semiconductor particles whose emission color can be tuned by simply changing their dimensions.

Making the light at the end of the tunnel more efficient

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Oct. 25, 2013-Dramatic advances in the field of quantum dot light emitting diodes (QD-LEDs) could come from recent work by the Nanotechnology and Advanced Spectroscopy team at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Quantum dots are nano-sized semiconductor particles whose emission color can be tuned by simply changing their dimensions. They feature near-unity emission quantum yields and narrow emission bands, which result in excellent color purity. The new research aims to improve QD-LEDs by using a new generation of engineered quantum dots tailored specifically to have reduced wasteful charge-carrier interactions that compete with the production of light.

"Automobiles, power plants, laptops, and many other machines produce heat when they operate. Waste heat is an unavoidable energy loss, a trade-off in order to produce the kind of energy for which the machine is intended. However, this heat could be partly recycled into electrical energy through thermoelectric technology, which converts a temperature difference into an electric voltage. 

"In today's burgeoning world of nanotechnology, the interfaces between layers of metal oxides are becoming increasingly prominent, with applications in such high-tech favorites as spintronics, high-temperature superconductors, ferroelectrics and multiferroics. Realizing the vast potential of these metal oxide interfaces, especially those buried in subsurface layers, will require detailed knowledge of their electronic structure." 

""Researchers at SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering have demonstrated extraordinary photoconductive behavior in two-dimensional (2D) crystalline indium selenide (In₂Se₃) nanosheets. Ultrathin (few quintuple layers), highly crystalline In₂Se₃ nanosheets were prepared by micromechanical exfoliation. Photocurrent measurements reveal that semiconducting In₂Se₃ nanosheets have an extremely high response to visible light. The key figures-of-merit exceed that of graphene and other 2D material-based photodetectors reported to date. In addition, the photodetector has a fast response time of
1.8 × 10_-2s." 

"Researchers at University of Illinois have developed a new theoretical model that explains macroscale fluid convection induced by plasmonic (metal) nanostructures. Their model demonstrates the experimentally observed convection velocities of the order of micrometers per second for an array of gold bowtie nanoantennas (BNAs) coupled to an optically absorptive ITO substrate.

The development of the model led the researchers to several important conclusions. It allowed them to understand the high-velocity particle motion observed in experiments with plasmonic tweezers, and they realized that inclusion of an ITO layer is critical in distributing the thermal energy created by the BNAs-a fact that has previously been overlooked. Additionally, they found that the ITO alone could be used as a simple, alternative route to achieving fluid convection in lab-on-a-chip environments. The researchers also observed that the plasmonic array alters absorption in the ITO, causing a deviation from Beer-Lambert absorption."