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The ultra-high-strength composite metal foam created by Afsaneh Rabiei is a highlight of a well-traveled career during which the researcher has tried to learn everything she can about advanced materials. The result: a brand new material that can save energy and lives. “Basically, it is a new material for all sorts of safety devices,” said Rabiei, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University. Rabiei’s invention isn’t the first metal foam, but she says it’s the strongest. The main weakness of existing metal foams is the varying sizes of their cells — tiny pockets of space inside the material. Instead, Rabiei used cells of standard sizes and combined them with a metallic matrix to support the cell walls. That helps

And since the bulk steel is three times heavier than the steel foam, it’s easy to see how the foam could attract car manufacturers looking for a bumper that will improve safety and gas mileage. Rabiei sees plenty of uses for her invention, including in airplanes, boats, and structures that need impact protection with maintaining low weight. It’s this high strength-to-density ratio — defining a material that’s both strong and light — that makes Rabiei’s foam unique. “This material showed a much higher strength-to-density ratio than any metal foam that has ever been reported,” she said.

Dubbed a "spaser", this minuscule lasing object is the latest by-product of a buzzing field known as nanoplasmonics. Just as microelectronics exploits the behaviour of electrons in metals and semiconductors on micrometre scales, so nanoplasmonics is concerned with the nanoscale comings and goings of entities known as plasmons that lurk on and below the surfaces of metals. To envisage what as plasmon is, imagine a metal as a great sea of freely moving electrons. When light of the right frequency strikes the surface of the metal, it can set up a wavelike oscillation in this electron sea, just as the wind whips up waves on the ocean. These collective electron waves - plasmons - act to all intents and purposes as light waves trapped in the metal's surface. Their wavelengths depend on the metal, but are generally measured in nanometres. Their frequencies span the terahertz range - equivalent to the frequency range of light from the ultraviolet right through the visible to the infrared.

Nano-scale medical research is promising some amazing breakthroughs in diagnosis and drug delivery techniques.  In spectroscopy, for example, tiny crystals called qdots (quantum dots, also called nanocrystals) can be used to study cells at the molecular level. It’s an emerging field that’s ready to explode into mainstream medicine - but there’s a catch.

Alkemi feature, metals — By Blaine Brownell on September 28, 2009 at 8:00 am Alkemi is a recycled composite material composed of a minimum of sixty percent postindustrial scrap aluminum and polymeric resins for use as a solid surface material. It is strong, durable, and exquisite to the eye. Alkemi offers a fresh and innovative alternative to the traditional commercial options such as plastic laminate, stone, and glass. Alkemi may be sanded and buffed to a matte or a high-gloss surface, and the material can be cut and shaped using conventional woodworking tools.

ScienceDaily (June 3, 2009) — In nature, trees pull vast amounts of water from their roots up to their leaves hundreds of feet above the ground through capillary action, but now scientists at the University of Rochester have created a simple slab of metal that lifts liquid using the same principle—but does so at a speed that would make nature envious.

mico’s APEX expanded metal mesh offers many benefits such as texture, passage of light, air movement, reduction of solar gain, high strength-to-weight ratio and a variety of manufacturing material options. Carbon steel, galvanized steel, aluminum and stainless steel are commonly used to make expanded mesh, and Amico can also expand alloys such as brass, copper, Cor-ten, and titanium. One of the most striking aspects of expanded mesh is the small amount of raw material required to produce a large amount of product. The expanding method is a slitting and stretching process, which creates a product that is stronger and lighter than its original form and that will not unravel. Amico engineers can custom engineer new mesh designs based on functional requirements.

Founded in 2002 by manufacturing designer Max Durney and now gaining traction, Industrial Origami has come up with a strong, simple, brilliant, and relatively inexpensive way to build things: By precision folding sheets of aluminum and steel.

LumiSheet is the world's first unified BLU(Back Light Unit), which contains several reflected LEDs as a source of light unlike existing BLUs. For more complete information, a catalog is available below, or you can see more photos in the LumiSheet Gallery. Advantages:     • Available in 4mm and 8mm     • Long Lifetime: Over 50,000 hrs/11 years @ 12 hours a day     • 12 volt system uses 70% less power than T5 fluorescents     • Eco-Friendly: Contains no mercury or other heavy metals     • Waterproof: IP67 & IP68 Approved     • Custom Sizes up to 4'x8' with Quick Delivery Times     • Licensed LED's, Crystal Acrylic, UL, CE approved Applications:     • signage     • trade show and exhibition design     • sports and entertainment     • architecture and enviromental design     • point-of-purchase

August 11, 2010 A team of researchers have created a new cellulose aerogel with a number of remarkable properties. The team soaked cellulose in a metal compound solution and freeze-dried it, removing all the moisture and leaving behind an aerogel in the form of solid fibers. The resultant substance was flexible, unlike typical aerogels, and could also be formed into a flat piece of magnetic nanopaper that was capable of supporting extremely heavy weight per square inch. Researchers who developed this cellulose aerogel believe that it could find its use in fuel cells and in the study of materials science.

Researchers have found a way to make flexible silicon solar cells using only 1 percent of the material used in conventional solar cells. The cells are made of micron-sized silicon wires that are encased in a flexible polymer that can be rolled or bent.  The researchers at Cal Tech who developed the cells eventually see them being used in clothing, but, for now, the cells could create cheaper and easier-to-install solar panels. Large consumer electronic companies like Sharp have experimented with organic thin-film solar cells, which are flexible, but they're less efficient than those made with silicon.  This breakthrough is the latest in a recent crop of studies combining the efficiency of silicon (about 15 to 20 percent efficiency) with the flexibility of the organic thin-film cells, but this one has the distinction of using only 1/100th of the amount of silicon per cell as a traditional silicon wafer. An added bonus to this type of solar cell is that existing manufacturing technology could be used to make them, further helping to keep cost down.

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