Materials Processing News

  1. Slow 'Hot Electrons' Could Improve Solar Cell Efficiency 1/16/2018

    Photons with energy higher than the 'band gap' of the semiconductor absorbing them give rise to what are known as hot electrons.

  2. Novel 3D Printing Technique Yields High-Performance Composites 1/15/2018

    Nature has produced exquisite composite materials—wood, bone, teeth, and shells, for example—that combine light weight and density with desirable mechanical properties such as stiffness, strength and damage tolerance.

  3. Tweaking Quantum Dots Improves Double-Pane Solar Window Electricity Generation, Shading, And Insulation 1/2/2018

    Using two types of “designer” quantum dots, researchers are creating double-pane solar windows that generate electricity with greater efficiency and create shading and insulation for good measure.

  4. TU Delft Researchers Explore Quantum Properties In The 2D Limit 12/21/2017

    As electronic components become smaller and smaller, understanding how materials behave at the nanoscale is crucial for the development of next-generation electronics.

  5. NCSU Develops Metal Printing Technique For Flexible, Stretchable Electronics 12/20/2017

    Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for directly printing metal circuits, creating flexible, stretchable electronics. The technique can use multiple metals and substrates and is compatible with existing manufacturing systems that employ direct printing technologies.

  6. Researchers Finally Prove Existence Of Excitonium, A New Form Of Matter 12/11/2017

    Scientists using a newly developed spectroscopic technique have finally proven the existence of excitonium, a new form of matter first theorized almost half a century ago.

  7. Improving The Femtosecond Ultrashort Pulse Laser 11/20/2017

    MXenes, conductive materials widely used in many industries, now have one more promising application: helping lasers fire extremely short femtosecond pulses, which last just millionths of a billionth of a second.

  8. Israeli Researchers Successfully Hide Optical Chip Under 'Cloak Of Invisibility' 11/16/2017

    Scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) are proposing a new method to obscure an optical chip by bending light around the object. This could be achieved by manipulating waves in the near field region (such as surface plasmons) of a metamaterial surface (a metasurface) on an integrated photonic structure.

  9. MIT Researchers Use Chalcogenides To Stretch And Integrate Photonic Devices 11/9/2017

    Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are using chalcogenide glasses to produce flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) that can stretch or conform to the shape of an object or structure without damage, and to better integrate two-dimensional (2D) materials with conventional semiconductor circuits.

  10. Metal-Silicone Microstructures Could Enable New Types Of Flexible Optical And Electrical Devices 11/1/2017

    For the first time, researchers have used a single-step, laser-based method to produce small, precise hybrid microstructures of silver and flexible silicone.