Category Archives: material science

The Metal That Never Forgets: Nitinol and Shape-Memory

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You’ve likely heard of Nitanol wire before, but we suspect the common base knowledge doesn’t go much beyond repeating that it’s a shape-memory alloy. [Bill Hammack], the Engineer Guy, takes us on a quick journey of all the cool stuff there is to know about Nitinol and shape-memory alloys.

The name itself is like saying Kleenex when you mean tissue, or using the V-word when you mean hook and loop fasteners. The first few letters of Nickel Titanium Naval Ordnance Laboratories combine to form the name of what is essentially a nickel-titanium alloy developed in …read more

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What’s the Deal with Transparent Aluminum?

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It looks like a tube made of glass but it’s actually aluminum. Well, aluminum with an asterisk beside it — this is not elemental aluminum but rather a material made using it.

We got onto the buzz about “transparent aluminum” as a result of a Tweet from whence the image above came. This Tweet was posted by [Jo Pitesky], a Science Systems Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. [Jo] reported that at a recent JPL technology open house she had the chance to handle a tube of material that looks for all the world like a section of …read more

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Know Thy LED

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The invention of the LED is one of the most important discoveries of our times. They are everywhere, from our flashlights to household lighting and television sets. We don’t need to tell you that a project with more blinkies is better than a project with fewer blinkies. But an LED is not simply an LED; the sheer variety of LEDs is amazing, and so in this write-up, we’ll take a closer look at how to choose the right LED for your next masterpiece.

The LED Family Tree

The first official LED was created in 1927 by Russian inventor Oleg Losev, …read more

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One of the World’s Strongest Materials Looks Like a Chunk of Coral

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It’s made of 3D printed graphene, the ultra-strong and lightweight carbon nanomaterial. And it could be great for building stuff in space. Continue reading One of the World’s Strongest Materials Looks Like a Chunk of Coral→

Carbon Nanotube Transistors Are On The Passing Lane

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There are many obstacles in the way to turning carbon nanotubes into something useful. Materials engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have now brought carbon nanotubes (CNTs) one step closer to becoming practically applicable for semiconductor electronics. In particular, the team managed to assemble arrays of carbon nanotube transistors that outperform their silicon-based predecessors.

One obstacle the researchers had to overcome were metallic impurities, which are present in arc-discharge-generated carbon nanotubes and practically short-circuit the materials semiconducting properties. To get rid of these impurities, the researchers developed a sorting mechanism based on a solution of polymers which wrap around the …read more

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