Engineering Materials

Self-powered Sensors

by David L. Chandler

Harvesting electricity from small temperature differences could enable a new generation of electronic devices that don’t need batteries

It can be inconvenient to replace batteries in devices that need to work over long periods of time. Doctors might have to get beneath a patient’s skin to replace batteries for implanted biomedical monitoring or treatment systems. Batteries used in devices that monitor machinery, infrastructure or industrial installations may be crammed into hard-to-reach nooks or distributed over wide areas that are often difficult to access.

Engineering Metamaterials Enable Remarkably Small Antennas

Engineering - Materials

In an advance that might interest Q-Branch, the gadget makers for James Bond, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and partners from industry and academia have designed and tested experimental antennas that are highly efficient and yet a fraction of the size of standard antenna systems with comparable properties. The novel antennas may be useful in ever-shrinking and proliferating wireless systems such as emergency communications devices, micro-sensors and portable ground-penetrating radars to search for tunnels, caverns and other geophysical features.

Plastics 'goes bananas' at Queen's University Belfast

Engineering - Materials

Researchers at Queen's University Belfast are pioneering a new technique for the use of banana plants in the production of plastic products.

The Polymer Processing Research Centre at Queen's is taking part in a €1 million study known as the Badana project. The project will develop new procedures to incorporate by-products from banana plantations in the Canary Islands into the production of rotationally moulded plastics. In addition to the environmental benefits, the project will increase the profitability of the plantation owners and help job security for those working in the area.

New Material Made From Paper Sludge Could Replace Plastic Packaging

Engineering - Materials

Margarita Calafell, a researcher at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the UPC’s School of Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering of Terrassa (ETSEIAT), has developed a new material by applying a biotechnological treatment to paper sludge. In many cases, the new material could replace plastic packaging and auxiliary building materials. The new patented material has unique properties. It is low density, mouldable, fire resistant, impermeable, porous and highly resistant, and it may replace less environmentally friendly materials in many industry and production sectors.

Biomimetic-engineering Design Can Replace Spaghetti Tangle Of Nanotubes In Novel Material

Engineering - Materials

The figure illustrates a hierarchical network of carbon nanotubes mimicking the protein network in a living cell to connect a small heat source (red area) to a larger area that serves as a heat sink. Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) devices have the potential to revolutionize the world of sensors: motion, chemical, temperature, etc. But taking electromechanical devices from the micro scale down to the nano requires finding a means to dissipate the heat output of this tiny gadgetry.

In a paper appearing in the March 26 issue of Nano Letters, Professor Markus Buehler and postdoctoral associate Zhiping Xu of MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering say the solution is to build these devices using a thermal material that naturally dissipates heat from the device’s center through a hierarchical branched network of carbon nanotubes. The template for this thermal material’s design is a living cell, specifically, the hierarchical protein networks that allow a cell’s nucleus to communicate with the cell’s outermost regions.

Spinning at the Nanoscale

Engineering - Materials

Greg Rutledge by Anne Trafton

In his office, MIT Professor of Chemical Engineering Gregory Rutledge keeps a small piece of fabric that at first glance resembles a Kleenex. This tissue-like material, softer than silk, is composed of fibers that are a thousand times thinner than a human hair and holds promise for a wide range of applications including protective clothing, drug delivery and tissue engineering.

Such materials are produced by electrospinning, a technique that has taken off in the past 10 years, though the original technology was patented more than a century ago. In Rutledge's lab, researchers are exploring new ways to create electrospun fibers, often incorporating materials that add novel features such as the ability to kill bacteria.