September 6th, 2016
 
  
Erin Gill and Felix Lu 
Dire
ctors' message: 

 
It is always hard to believe, but the Fall semester is upon us. We hope you had a great summer! Part of this letter will be to encourage those of you who have put off registration for the upcoming AMIC annual meeting to go ahead to register!

Just a reminder that this year, it will not be at the same location as previous years, but in the Fluno Center. This year's technical sessions have expanded in scope and includes computational efforts/tools, biofilms, polymer engineering and manufacturing topics.
We also welcome the new director of WARF and look forward to hearing his vision for where WARF is heading. As previously mentioned, this meeting will be co-hosted with the Wisconsin Materials Institute (WMI) which guides some of the computational materials science effort on campus as well as directs the Regional Materials and Manufacturing Network (RM2N). Most of you may already know that the RM2N is a statewide network of UW system campuses and their industrial affiliates. They will be having their Fall
Fall Symposium at UW Stout. Being a sponsor can get you a lot of exposure from the other UW system campuses and their industrial affiliates - considering sponsoring their event and taking an active role in innovation.
We are planning to be there and hope to see you there too!

Best regards,

Felix Lu, and Erin Gill
AMIC, Co-Directors
 

As always, if you have questions, suggestions or comments, please let us know!
Upcoming Events

 
In-Person Training
Technology Innovation Funding Featuring NSF Division Director, Dr. Barry Johnson
September 7, 2016 in Madison, WI
Registration: 8:30-9:00AM
Program: 9:00- 1:00PM
Location:  MG&E Innovation Center,
510 Charmany Drive, Room 50 (Research Park)
Madison, WI
Online Registration  *powered by the Small Business Development Center.
 The Center for Technology Commercialization is pleased to host the National Science Foundation's Division Director, Dr. Barry Johnson.  Dr. Johnson leads the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP).  IIP fosters partnership to advance technology innovation and public-private partnership.  Within the Division are a variety of funding opportunities such as the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.  Attend this free workshop to learn more about a variety of NSF funding programs including SBIR/STTR funding and funding through the GOALI, I-Corps, and Partnerships for Innovation programs. Also interested in NIH funding?  The CTC will overview best practices for NIH SBIR/STTR proposals, too.   
 

The Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium and the Wisconsin Materials Institute will be co-hosting a meeting

2016 AMIC-WMI Annual meeting
Thursday, September 8th, 2016
Fluno Center, UW Madison campus 

Keynote Speaker: Erik Iverson, Managing Director, WARF


with technical sessions on:

Materials and Manufacturing  
Computation and Data Analytics 
Material and Microbial Systems 
Polymer Engineering

Speaker Profiles 
 
 













2016 Fall Symposium
October 17th, 2016
UW Stout - Memorial Student Center

Get a lot of exposure for your company for a small sponsorship fee! 

 
 
UW Engineering in the news


In 2013, researchers Matthew T. Hora, Ross Benbow and Amanda Oleson from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin−Madison launched a $600,000 NSF-funded study to explore the controversial notion that a gap between workforce needs and the skills of available workers is slowing job growth in the state, primarily due to an out-of-touch higher education sector.

At the time, one in 10 jobs in the state could not be filled, according to the Office of the Governor.
"So the story goes that the reason there's a lack of skilled job applicants and sluggish job growth is because colleges and universities aren't teaching the right classes. They're too theoretical or don't lead to high-demand careers, and it's all on education to fix it," explains Hora, assistant professor of adult teaching and learning who says the real problem is more complicated and requires a systemic solution. "Yes, a lot needs to change in higher education. For one, there needs to be more active learning in the classroom and better career counseling. But, employers, the broader community and policymakers are part of the problem and solution, as well."


Read more:
http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/news/detail/rethinking-the-skills-gap


August 2, 2016 at 3:00 PM ET by Thomas Kalil, Lloyd Whitman

Today, the White House hosted an event recognizing the fifth anniversary of the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI). On June 24, 2011, President Obama announced "To help businesses discover, develop, and deploy new materials twice as fast, we're launching what we call the Materials Genome Initiative." Over the past five years, Federal agencies, including the Departments of Energy (DOE) and Defense (DoD), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), have invested more than $500 million in resources and infrastructure in support of this initiative.

In the increasingly competitive world economy, the United States must find ways to get advanced materials into innovative products such as light-weight cars, more efficient solar cells, tougher body armor, and future spacecraft much faster and at a fraction of the cost than it has taken in the past. As outlined in the 2014 MGI Strategic Plan, the Nation needs to change the paradigm of how materials are discovered, developed, and deployed. New ways are needed to tightly integrate experiments, computation, and theory. Materials data must be widely shared in common formats, and made easily accessible-data describing both fundamental properties and how materials perform after processing. And universities must ensure that the next generation of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have the training they need to embrace this new paradigm.


Read more:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/08/01/materials-genome-initiative-first-five-years


In 2016, both the UW-Madison Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge teams found success at their national competitions, winning fifth and eighth place, respectively.

Every year, the two teams compete regionally at the American Society of Civil Engineers Great Lakes Student Conference, hosted by a school in the conference. Perennial national contenders, each team advanced to its national competition this year, once again. The Steel Bridge team has qualified for nationals for 19 straight years-which is the longest streak in the nation.

The Concrete Canoe competition took place at the University of Texas at Tyler, where the team faced the desert heat in a three-day event that tested their design work and their physical stamina.

A panel of judges evaluated the team based on four equally weighted criteria: a technical design paper, its formal presentation, the final product, and the actual racing-which occurs during the event. Competing with more than 20 teams, the UW-Madison chapter placed within the top-five teams in most of the competition's categories, including second in oral presentation, fourth in final product, and fifth overall. The canoe fared well in racing action, too: The team won second place in the men's sprint race and fourth place in the co-ed sprint race.


Read more:
  https://www.engr.wisc.edu/concrete-canoe-steel-bridge-teams-excel-national-competitions/
 

Hongrui Jiang inspects the alignment of a light source to illuminate new-generation lateral solar cells. The solar cells developed by Jiang_s group harvest almost three times more electricity from incoming light as compared to existing technologies. Credit_ Stephanie Precourt

University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have created high-performance, micro-scale solar cells that outshine comparable devices in key performance measures. The miniature solar panels could power myriad personal devices-wearable medical sensors, smartwatches, even autofocusing contact lenses.

Large, rooftop photovoltaic arrays generate electricity from charges moving vertically. The new, small cells, described today (Aug. 3, 2016) in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies, capture current from charges moving side-to-side, or laterally. And they generate significantly more energy than other sideways solar systems.
New-generation lateral solar cells promise to be the next big thing for compact devices because arranging electrodes horizontally allows engineers to sidestep a traditional solar cell fabrication process: the arduous task of perfectly aligning multiple layers of the cell's material atop one another.

Read more:
http://phys.org/news/2016-08-tiny-high-performance-solar-cells-power.html
 

August 5, 2016 By David Tenenbaum -

Imbed Biosciences today received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration to market its patented wound dressing for human use. The dressing it calls Microlyte Ag is a sheet as thin as Saran Wrap and can conform to the bumps and crevices of a wound, says company CEO Ankit Agarwal.
The dressing is now cleared by the FDA as a class II medical device, for prescription and over-the-counter use.
Like many dressings now used to treat burns and other persistent wounds, Microlyte Ag contains silver to kill bacteria - but in much smaller quantities.
"Silver is an excellent antimicrobial agent," says Agarwal, a co-founder of the company in the Madison suburb Fitchburg, "as it is active against a broad range of bacteria and yeast. But the large silver loads found in conventional silver dressings can be toxic to skin cells. Our dressing uses as little as 1 percent as much silver as the competition, and yet the tests we submitted to the FDA showed that Microlyte kills more than 99.99 percent of bacteria that it contacts."
- See more at: http://news.wisc.edu/uw-madison-spinoff-gets-fda-ok-for-bacteria-killing-wound-dressing/#sthash.n8JC5T4e.dpuf

Read more:
http://news.wisc.edu/uw-madison-spinoff-gets-fda-ok-for-bacteria-killing-wound-dressing/ 
 

Modeling how methanol interacts with platinum catalysts inside fuel cells in realistic environments becomes even more complicated because distances between the atoms can change as molecules dance near the charged surface. Image courtesy of Manos Mavrikakis
Simulating complex catalysts key to making cheap, powerful fuel cells  
  
Using a unique combination of advanced computational methods, University of Wisconsin-Madison chemical engineers have demystified some of the complex catalytic chemistry in fuel cells - an advance that brings cost-effective fuel cells closer to reality.
"Understanding reaction mechanisms is the first step toward eventually replacing expensive platinum in fuel cells with a cheaper material," says Manos Mavrikakis, a UW-Madison professor of chemical and biological engineering.
Mavrikakis and colleagues at Osaka University in Japan published details of the advance Monday, Aug. 8, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
-
Read more:
http://news.wisc.edu/simulating-complex-catalysts-key-to-making-cheap-powerful-fuel-cells/
 

The UW-Madison engineers use a solution process to deposit aligned arrays of carbon nanotubes onto 1 inch by 1 inch substrates. The researchers used their scalable and rapid deposition process to coat the entire surface of this substrate with aligned carbon nanotubes in less than 5 minutes. The team_s breakthrough could pave the way for carbon nanotube transistors to replace silicon transistors, and is particularly promising for wireless communications technologies. Stephanie Precourt
MADISON - For decades, scientists have tried to harness the unique properties of carbon nanotubes to create high-performance electronics that are faster or consume less power - resulting in longer battery life, faster wireless communication and faster processing speeds for devices like smartphones and laptops.

But a number of challenges have impeded the development of high-performance transistors made of carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders made of carbon just one atom thick. Consequently, their performance has lagged far behind semiconductors such as silicon and gallium arsenide used in computer chips and personal electronics.

Now, for the first time, University of Wisconsin-Madison materials engineers have created carbon nanotube transistors that outperform state-of-the-art silicon transistors.

Led by Michael Arnold and Padma Gopalan, UW-Madison professors of materials science and engineering, the team's carbon nanotube transistors achieved current that's 1.9 times higher than silicon transistors. The researchers reported their advance in a paper published Friday (Sept. 2) in the journal Science Advances.

-
Read more:
http://news.wisc.edu/for-first-time-carbon-nanotube-transistors-outperform-silicon/
 
Materials, Advanced Manufacturing and Related topics

China's Ministry of Industry and Technology Information along with the National Development and Reform Commission recently released an action plan to promote the development of Chinese service-oriented manufacturing.
This is yet another part of the country's "Made in China 2025" (MiC2025) program, which aims to improve the overall production efficiency and quality of Chinese manufacturing. The aggressive expansion of automation is one aspect of MiC2025; the emphasis on service-oriented manufacturing is another.
So what is service-oriented manufacturing?
In contrast to product-based manufacturing-currently the dominant paradigm in China-service-based manufacturing integrates products with services to provide customers with comprehensive solutions. Companies which adopt this product service system (PSS) tend to be more narrowly focused and so provide producer services for one another, forming a service-oriented manufacturing network.
"Service-oriented strategy means a development toward the high end in the value chain." said Zuo Shiquan, director of the China Center for Information Industry Development.
In other words, whereas the primary value proposition of a product-based manufacturer is a tangible product, service-based manufacturers treat their production capacity as their primary good. This approach has certain advantages, especially for a country like China.


Read more: http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/12812/What-is-Service-Oriented-Manufacturing-and-Why-is-China-Promoting-it.aspx 
Photonic and Electronic Materials & Devices
Impurities dramatically increase nanolaser output 
Adding impurities to nanolasers can increase their light emission by 100X. (Image credit) Australian National University,Stuart Hay
 
Research from the Australian National University (ANU; Acton, Australia ) published in Nature Communications describes a discovery that could be central to the development of low-cost biomedical sensors, quantum computing, and a faster internet; namely, ANU scientists have increased the light output from tiny nanolasers 100 times by adding impurities.

Researcher Tim Burgess added atoms of zinc to lasers one hundredth the diameter of a human hair and made of gallium arsenide--a material used extensively in smartphones and other electronic devices. "Normally you wouldn't even bother looking for light from nanocrystals of gallium arsenide - we were initially adding zinc simply to improve the electrical conductivity," said Burgess, a PhD student in the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. "It was only when I happened to check for light emission that I realised we were onto something."

Read more:   http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2016/07/impurities-dramatically-increase-nanolaser-output.html?cmpid=LFWLasersSources07212016&eid=296499394&bid=1472713
 High-efficiency color holograms created using a metasurface made of nanoblocks 
 
Color holographic image made by shining laser light on a metasurface. Credit: Wang et al. 2016 American Chemical Society
 
By carefully arranging many nanoblocks to form pixels on a metasurface, researchers have demonstrated that they can manipulate incoming visible light in just the right way to create a color "meta-hologram." The new method of creating holograms has an order of magnitude higher reconstruction efficiency than similar color meta-holograms, and has applications for various types of 3D color holographic displays and achromatic planar lenses.
The researchers, Bo Wang et al., from Peking University and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, both in China, have published a paper on the new type of hologram in a recent issue of Nano Letters.

The pixels on the new metasurface consist of three types of silicon nanoblocks whose precise dimensions correspond to the wavelengths of three different colors: red, green, and blue. To enhance the efficiency for the blue light, two identical nanoblocks corresponding to the blue light are arranged in each pixel, along with one nanoblock for red light and one for green light.


Read more: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-high-efficiency-holograms-metasurface-nanoblocks.html
Engineers from the University of Utah and the University of Minnesota have discovered that interfacing two particular oxide-based materials makes them highly conductive, a boon for future electronics that could result in much more power-efficient laptops, electric cars and home appliances that also don't need cumbersome power supplies.
Their findings were published this month in the scientific journal, APL Materials, from the American Institute of Physics.

The team led by University of Utah electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Berardi Sensale-Rodriguez and University of Minnesota chemical engineering and materials science assistant professor Bharat Jalan revealed that when two oxide compounds - strontium titanate (STO) and neodymium titanate (NTO) - interact with each other, the bonds between the atoms are arranged in a way that produces many free electrons, the particles that can carry electrical current. STO and NTO are by themselves known as insulators - materials like glass - that are not conductive at all.

But when they interface, the amount of electrons produced is a hundred times larger than what is possible in semiconductors. "It is also about five times more conductive than silicon [the material most used in electronics]," Sensale-Rodriguez says.


Read more: http://electroiq.com/blog/2016/07/utah-and-minnesota-engineers-discover-highly-conductive-materials-for-more-efficient-electronics/
Scientists uncover origin of high-temperature superconductivity in copper-oxide compound
(Clockwise from left) Brookhaven Lab physicists Ivan Bozovic, Anthony Bollinger, and Jie Wu, and postdoctoral researcher Xi He are with the atomic layer-by-layer molecular beam epitaxy system used to synthesize more than 2,500 thin films of a copper-oxide compound called LSCO. The team studied LSCO to understand why it can become superconducting at a much higher temperature than the ultra-chilled temperatures required by conventional superconductors. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory
     
Since the 1986 discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in copper-oxide compounds called cuprates, scientists have been trying to understand how these materials can conduct electricity without resistance at temperatures hundreds of degrees above the ultra-chilled temperatures required by conventional superconductors. Finding the mechanism behind this exotic behavior may pave the way for engineering materials that become superconducting at room temperature. Such a capability could enable lossless power grids, more affordable magnetically levitated transit systems, and powerful supercomputers, and change the way energy is produced, transmitted, and used globally.

Now, physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have an explanation for why the temperature at which cuprates become superconducting is so high. After growing and analyzing thousands of samples of a cuprate known as LSCO for the four elements it contains (lanthanum, strontium, copper, and oxygen), they determined that this "critical" temperature is controlled by the density of electron pairs-the number of electron pairs per unit area. This finding, described in a Nature paper published August 17, challenges the standard theory of superconductivity, which proposes that the critical temperature depends instead on the strength of the electron pairing interaction.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-scientists-uncover-high-temperature-superconductivity-copper-oxide.html#jCp


Read more: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-scientists-uncover-high-temperature-superconductivity-copper-oxide.html 
'Ideal' Energy Storage Material for Electric Vehicles Developed
Boron nitride nanosheets _blue and white atoms_ act as insulators to protect a barium nitrate central layer _green and purple atoms_ for high temperature energy storage. (Credit) Wang Lab, Penn State.
     
The energy-storage goal of a polymer dielectric material with high energy density, high power density and excellent charge-discharge efficiency for electric and hybrid vehicle use has been achieved by a team of Penn State materials scientists. The key is a unique three-dimensional sandwich-like structure that protects the dense electric field in the polymer/ceramic composite from dielectric breakdown. Their results are published today (Aug. 22) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
"Polymers are ideal for  energy storage for transportation due to their light weight, scalability and high dielectric strength," said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering and the team leader. "However, the existing commercial polymer used in hybrid and electric vehicles, called BOPP, cannot stand up to the high operating temperatures without considerable additional cooling equipment. This adds to the weight and expense of the vehicles."

The researchers had to overcome two problems to achieve their goal. In normal two-dimensional polymer films such as BOPP, increasing the  dielectric constant, the strength of the electric field, is in conflict with stability and charge-discharge efficiency. The stronger the field, the more likely a material is to leak energy in the form of heat. The Penn State researchers originally attacked this problem by mixing different materials while trying to balance competing properties in a two-dimensional form. While this increased the energy capacity, they found that the film broke down at high temperatures when electrons escaped the electrodes and were injected into the polymer, which caused an electric current to form.

Read more: http://www.rdmag.com/news/2016/08/ideal-energy-storage-material-electric-vehicles-developed?et_cid=5484473&et_rid=614174443&location=top&et_cid=5484473&et_rid=614174443&linkid=content
Characterization of Advanced Materials
Imagine an electronic newspaper that you could roll up and spill your coffee on, even as it updated itself before your eyes.

It's an example of the technological revolution that has been waiting to happen, except for one major problem that, until now, scientists have not been able to resolve.
Researchers at McMaster University have cleared that obstacle by developing a new way to purify carbon nanotubes - the smaller, nimbler semiconductors that are expected to replace silicon within computer chips and a wide array of electronics.

"Once we have a reliable source of pure nanotubes that are not very expensive, a lot can happen very quickly," says Alex Adronov, a professor of Chemistry at McMaster whose research team has developed a new and potentially cost-efficient way to purify carbon nanotubes.

Carbon nanotubes - hair-like structures that are one billionth of a metre in diameter but thousands of times longer - are tiny, flexible conductive nano-scale materials, expected to revolutionize computers and electronics by replacing much larger silicon-based chips.
A major problem standing in the way of the new technology, however, has been untangling metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes, since both are created simultaneously in the process of producing the microscopic structures, which typically involves heating carbon-based gases to a point where mixed clusters of nanotubes form spontaneously as black soot.
 
Read more:
http://phys.org/news/2016-08-problem-technological-revolution.html
Lab simulations carried out by an MIT and Oxford University team provide detailed information about how a liquid moves through spaces in a porous material_ revealing the key role of a characteristic called wettability. _Credit_ Massachusetts Institute of Technology_
One of the most promising approaches to curbing the flow of human-made greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is to capture these gases at major sources, such as fossil-fuel-burning power plants, and then inject them into deep, water-saturated rocks where they can remain stably trapped for centuries or millennia.
This is just one example of fluid-fluid displacement in a porous material, which also applies to a wide variety of natural and industrial processes-for example, when rainwater penetrates into soil by displacing air, or when  oil recovery is enhanced by displacing the oil with injected water.

Now, a new set of detailed lab experiments has provided fresh insight into the physics of this phenomenon, under an unprecedented range of conditions. These results should help researchers understand what happens when carbon dioxide flows through deep saltwater reservoirs, and could shed light on similar interactions such as those inside fuel cells being used to produce electricity without burning hydrocarbons.

The new findings are being published this week in the journal PNAS, in a paper by Ruben Juanes, MIT's ARCO Associate Professor in Energy Studies; Benzhong Zhao, an MIT graduate student; and Chris MacMinn, an associate professor at Oxford University.

A crucial aspect of fluid-fluid displacement is the displacement efficiency, which measures how much of the pre-existing fluid can be pushed out of the pore space. High displacement efficiency means that most of the pre-existing fluid is pushed out, which is usually a good thing-with oil recovery, for example, it means that more oil would be captured and less would be left behind. Unfortunately, displacement efficiency has been very difficult to predict.

Read more:
  http://www.rdmag.com/news/2016/08/study-reveals-new-physics-how-fluids-flow-porous-media?et_cid=5484473&et_rid=614174443&location=top&et_cid=5484473&et_rid=614174443&linkid=content
Applying a direct current field across glass_ says McLaren _left_ with Jain__ also reduces its melting temperature and makes it possible to shape glass with greater precision than can be done using heat alone. Source_ Lehigh University
Charles McLaren, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering at  Lehigh University, arrived last fall for his semester of research at the University of Marburg in Germany with his language skills significantly lagging behind his scientific prowess. "It was my first trip to Germany, and I barely spoke a word of German," he confessed.

The main purpose of McLaren's exchange study in Marburg was to learn more about a complex process involving transformations in glass that occur under intense electrical and thermal conditions. New understanding of these mechanisms could lead the way to more energy-efficient glass manufacturing, and even glass supercapacitors that leapfrog the performance of batteries now used for electric cars and solar energy.

"This technology is relevant to companies seeking the next wave of portable, reliable energy," said  Himanshu Jain, McLaren's advisor and the T. L. Diamond Distinguished Chair in Materials Science and Engineering at Lehigh and director of its International Materials Institute for New Functionality in Glass. "A breakthrough in the use of glass for power storage could unleash a torrent of innovation in the transportation and energy sectors, and even support efforts to curb global warming."

As part of his doctoral research, McLaren discovered that  applying a direct current field across glass reduced its melting temperature. In their experiments, they placed a block of glass between a cathode and anode, and then exerted steady pressure on the glass while gradually heating it. McLaren and Jain, together with colleagues at the University of Colorado, published their discovery in Applied Physics Letters.

Read more:
http://www.rdmag.com/news/2016/08/engineers-discover-high-speed-nano-avalanche?et_cid=5489570&et_rid=614174443&type=headline&et_cid=5489570&et_rid=614174443&linkid=content
Chemical Engineering
'Liquid Fingerprinting' Technique Instantly Identifies Unknown Liquids
Harvard Prof. Joanna Aizenberg is one of the inventors of the sensing technology. (Credit: Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences)

A new company will commercialize sensing technology invented at Harvard University that can perform instant, in-field characterization of the chemical make-up and material properties of unknown liquids.
Validere, cofounded by Harvard scientists and engineers, has raised an initial round of seed capital and has entered into a worldwide exclusive licensing agreement with the university to pursue applications in quality assurance and liquid identification.
Validere aims to develop the licensed technology, called Watermark Ink (W-INK), into a pocket-sized device that could be used by first responders to quickly identify chemical spills, or by officials to verify the fuel grade of gasoline right at the pump. Unlike other techniques for identifying and authenticating liquids, Harvard's solution is inexpensive, instantaneous, and portable. 
Developed in the laboratory of Joanna Aizenberg, the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and a Core Faculty member of Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, the W-INK concept exploits the chemical and optical properties of precisely nanostructured materials to distinguish liquids by their surface tension. Marko Lončar, Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering at SEAS, also contributed to its development.


 
Read more:
http://www.rdmag.com/news/2016/08/liquid-fingerprinting-technique-instantly-identifies-unknown-liquids?et_cid=5433192&et_rid=614174443&type=headline&et_cid=5433192&et_rid=614174443&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.rdmag.com%2fnews%2f2016%2f08%2fliquid-fingerprinting-technique-instantly-identifies-unknown-liquids%3fet_cid%3d5433192%26et_rid%3d%%subscriberid%%%26type%3dheadline
  Engineers Develop a Plastic Clothing Material that Cools the Skin
Scanning electron microscope_NanoPE-5. _Credit_ Yi Cui Group - Stanford University_

Stanford engineers have developed a low-cost, plastic-based textile that, if woven into clothing, could cool your body far more efficiently than is possible with the natural or synthetic fabrics in clothes we wear today.

Describing their work in Science, the researchers suggest that this new family of fabrics could become the basis for garments that keep people cool in hot climates without air conditioning.

"If you can cool the person rather than the building where they work or live, that will save energy," said Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering and of photon science at Stanford.

This new material works by allowing the body to discharge heat in two ways that would make the wearer feel nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than if they wore cotton clothing.

The material cools by letting perspiration evaporate through the material, something ordinary fabrics already do. But the Stanford material provides a second, revolutionary cooling mechanism: allowing heat that the body emits as  infrared radiation to pass through the plastic textile.


 
Read more:
http://www.rdmag.com/news/2016/09/engineers-develop-plastic-clothing-material-cools-skin?et_cid=5516099&et_rid=614174443&location=top&et_cid=5516099&et_rid=614174443&linkid=content


Source: Science - AAAS Methane can be converted directly into aromatics such as benzene in this new reactor. The barium-zirconate membrane created by the researchers protects the zeolite catalyst from poisoning

Catalytic technology could turn untapped hydrocarbons into valuable chemical feedstocks


A new reactor can directly convert natural gas into valuable liquid feedstock petrochemicals, such as benzene, in a single step. The work could pave the way for cheap, clean and simple conversion of methane into aromatic precursors for a wide range of products including plastics and fuels that are normally derived from oil.

Natural gas is mostly methane and is usually converted into precursor chemicals by converting it into syngas - a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. However, the end products tend to be transport fuels not aromatics and it's expensive which restricts production to large gas fields, meaning many smaller fields remain untapped.

Non-oxidative methane dehydromatisation (MDA) using a zeolite catalyst is touted as a promising route for direct and cheaper methane conversion. However, the process has struggled because of thermodynamic limitations and a build-up of coke deposits which poison the catalyst.
 
Acknowledgements

If you used any instruments in the Materials Science Center, Soft Materials Laboratory, or the Wisconsin Center for Applied Microelectronics, please remember to acknowledge MRSEC funded instruments and facilities in any publications (DMR-1121288). This will serve as a metric for how often MRSEC funded instruments are used and will help continue MRSEC support in future years. Thanks! If you have any questions, please contact Felix Lu .

In This Issue
Quick Links
Core facilities

The Soft Materials Lab

The Soft Materials Lab, housed in the basement of Engineering Hall, has a wide spectrum of instruments for characterizing soft materials.  The lab  is managed by Anna Kiyanova who is available to answer all of your characterization questions.  

C
ontact:
Anna Kiyanova
anna.kiyanova@wisc.edu
(608) 263-1735



  The Materials Science Center (MSC)

The Materials Science Center has a wide spectrum of electron, optical and physical characterization instruments and is fully staffed to help you with training and sample characterization.

Contact:  
Dr. Jerry Hunter
jerry.hunter@wisc.edu
(608) 263-1073



The WCAM is a full spectrum micro/nano fabrication facility for processing and integrating devices in Silicon, III-V, group four, glass, plastic, materials. On site, fully-qualified and highly experienced staff are available to help you with your process development and answer questions.

Contact:
Dan Christensen
dan.christensen@wisc.edu
(608) 262-6877



Wisconsin GEO-Science materials characterization facility

The materials characterization facility in the Geology dept has some complementary instrumentation along with materials experts to help you with your characterization and sample prep challenges!  

Contact:
Dr. John Fournelle
Dept of Geology & Geophysics
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1215 W. Dayton St
Madison, WI 53706
(608) 262-7964 (office) 265-4798 (lab) 262-0693 (fax)  
johnf*at*geology.wisc.edu



Biochemistry Optical Core

The Biochemistry Optical Core (BOC) provides state-of-the-art instrumentation for super-resolution light microscopic imaging. Expertise and advice is available for the design of experiments involving these techniques; and for the development of grants and manuscripts involving super-resolution and standard light microscopic technologies. 


Contact:
Dr. Elle Grevstad
Dept of Biochemistry
University of Wisconsin-Madison
440 Henry Mall
Madison, WI 53706

Opticalcore@biochem.wisc.edu
608-263-2436
Paul Bender Chemical Instrumentation Center

The Paul Bender Instrument Center houses the Chemistry Department's major shared analytical instrumentation (magnetic resonance, and mass spectrometry, and X-ray diffraction). These instruments are maintained and updated by an expert staff that provides user training and data interpretation in support of Departmental research. The Center is located on the second floor of the Chemistry building.


Contact:
Dr. Charles Fry
Dept of Chemistry
University of Wisconsin-Madison
(608)262-3182, Room: 2201A 
New Inventions


Student tour groups of your facility
Industrial facilities tours?
Are you interested in showing off your facility to interested student groups? Do you want to increase exposure of what your company does to encourage higher application rates and get student interns? Hosting a tour might be a good start! Please contact Felix Lu or Erin Gill to initiate this!

Using our campus facilities

Some readers may recall a science class in which an excitable teacher walked to the front of the class to show off a small, cracked steel container, seemingly damaged by an incredibly powerful, but tiny force; only for said teacher to reveal that the damage had been done by nothing more than water. However, what would happen if you put the water in a container it couldn't break out of and then froze it?

The short answer is that the water still turns into ice; however, if it genuinely cannot break the bonds of the container it is trapped inside, it turns into a very different kind of ice than we're used to seeing.

We currently know of 15 different "solid phases" of water, aka ice, with each type  being distinct due to differing density and internal structure. The form you're likely most familiar with is Hexagonal Ice which is what happens when water freezes normally under regular conditions. If you keep lowering the temperature of Hexagonal ice, it eventually becomes Cubic Ice; tweak the temperature and pressure further and you can create Ice II, Ice III all the way up to Ice XV.

Due to the inherent difficulty of producing such high/low pressures and temperatures, it has taken science up until as recently as 2009 to fully document every known form of ice.  The majority of ice's final forms were discovered in part by a group of researchers in the Chemistry department of Oxford University who were able to create Ice XII, XIV and XV for the first time.


Read more!
   http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/12410/The-Basics-of-Non-Destructive-Material-Testing-Part-1.aspx





 



 

 
 for the 2016 AMIC-WMI annual meeting

Location:
Fluno Center,
601 University Ave, Madison, WI 53715

Erik Iverson, Managing Director, WARF
Keynote Speaker :
Erik Iverson, Managing Director, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF)







If you are interested in sponsoring the event or parts of the event (e.g. poster prizes, lunch, etc), please let us know!




University of Wisconsin - Madison | | fplu@wisc.edu |