Items Tagged With Materials Science

FEI Company announced that Brazil's National Institute of Metrology, Standardisation and Industrial Quality—INMETRO—has selected FEI to supply a suite of tools that enable nanoscale materials research. The selected systems include FEI's ultra-high resolution Titan™ S/TEM, a Tecnai™ TEM and a Nova NanoLab 600 DualBeam™ tool. These systems will be used by the institute and other Brazilian institutions at INMETRO's new nano-materials centre in Rio de Janeiro.

Argonne National Laboratory scientists in collaboration with Xradia have created a new X-ray microscope technique capable of observing molecular-scale features, measuring less than a nanometre in height. Combining X-ray reflection together with high resolution X-ray microscopy, scientists can now study interactions at the nanometre-scale which often can exhibit different properties and lead to new insights. Improving our understanding of interactions at the nanoscale holds promise to help us cure the sick, protect our environment and make us more secure.

Research at CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory has shown that incorporating nanoparticles into body armour can make it lighter, more flexible and more effective. Current body armour relies on a stiff and relatively heavy layer of ceramic material to absorb ballistic impact. This makes body armour heavy and unwieldy. The Daresbury team, together with researchers from Tuskegee and Florida Atlantic universities in the USA, are evaluating new nanocomposite materials which can be woven into fabrics to provide greater flexibility as well as better ballistic protection. They have found that incorporating spherical nanoparticles of silicon or titanium dioxide or carbon nanotubes in a plastic or epoxy matrix offers improved ballistic resistance together with greatly improved flexibility.

Johns Hopkins researchers have devised a way to use a brief burst of electricity to release biomolecules and nanoparticles from a tiny gold launch pad. The technique could someday be used to dispense small amounts of medicine on command from a chip implanted in the body. The method also may be useful in chemical reactions that require the controlled release of extremely small quantities of a material.

FEI today announced that Japan’s JFE Steel Corporation has ordered a Titan™ 80-300 for its research centre in Kawasaki. JFE Steel, a leading global supplier of steel products, is the first Japanese customer to order the Titan S/TEM. In its 2006 fiscal year, it produced more than 30 million tons of raw steel and reported more than US $23 billion in revenues.