Friday, February 13, 2009Volume 9, Issue 1
Ultrasound Workshop Set for February 26-27, 2009
Ultrasound is an important tool for healthcare and industrial infrastructure monitoring. This upcoming ultrasound workshop will bring together university, industry, and government experts to discuss advanced piezoelectric materials as tools for monitoring harsh environments and self-powered operation. The workshop will be held February 26-27 at the State College Ramada Conference Center. For more information and to register, visit the workshop Website: http://www.mri.psu.edu/conferences/erc2009/index.asp.
Faculty Spotlight: Barbara Shaw Tackles Corrosion
Corrosion is the deterioration of a material as it reacts with its environment. For many materials, and especially metals, corrosion is nearly inevitable. Refined and processed materials such as iron and steel will tend to revert over time to their original, lesser-energy starting materials. They will oxidize and rust. Coatings are the primary defense against corrosion.
Since her undergraduate studies at Florida Atlantic University, Barbara Shaw, professor of engineering science and mechanics, has worked to slow corrosion’s inevitable impact on material systems. In FAU’s ocean engineering program, corrosion was always a hot topic, and Shaw became interested in the subject while working in the lab of a professor who was an expert on the effects of corrosion on bridges.
After graduation, Shaw went to work for the Navy as a civilian engineer, studying marine corrosion and coating systems for Naval vessels. At the time the Navy was looking for a way to give the steel topsides of their ships greater protection and longer lifetime than paint alone could provide. Shaw worked on sacrificial coatings, which are metals applied on top of steel with a barrier coating of paint. If the paint barrier is breached, the more electrochemically active sacrificial metals, such as zinc, aluminum or some combination of the two, corrodes in preference to the steel and provides protection.
MCL on Facebook
For those in the research community who use Facebook AND use the MCL facilities, you might be interested in joining the new Facebook group, Penn State MCL Users. The group, which is open for anyone to join and invite others to join, was created to provide a convenient forum for MCL users to share hints, tips, and tricks with others who are using instrumentation, using the Portal, etc. Please feel free to join the group and post your hints, tips, and tricks and/or participate in the discussion boards (the current discussion topic is “Short Course Requests?” to collect requests for MCL short course topics for summer and fall 2009.
If you would like more information about the MCL Facebook group, please contact Elaine Sanders in the MCL Admin Office (phone: 814-865-2328, email: Validate to view address )
New X-Ray Diffraction Instrument in MCL Spins Off Technology from Large Hadron Collider
It doesn’t get much more cutting edge than the technology incorporated into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory. Though meltdown of a supermagnet in September, 2008, has delayed the scientists’ efforts to understand the nature of gravity and dark energy, one LHC program, known as the Medipex2 collaboration, has developed a pixel read-out chip that has spun off new technologies in various fields. One of these, known as the PIXcel detector, manufactured by PANalytical, Inc., has landed in MCL’s Powder X-Ray Diffraction Lab inside a new PANalytical X’Pert Pro MPD diffractometer, overseen by Materials Characterization Laboratory research assistant Nichole Wonderling.
Grants and Contracts
Materials research accounted for more than $9 million in contracts and grants for the months December and January! The largest of these contracts and grants (those greater than $200K) are listed below, along with a link to the complete list of contracts and grants. These data are provided by OSP Strategic Information Management System.
- Eden, Timothy; Wolfe, Douglas E; Cold Spray Coatings in Support of Military Combat Systems; Industry
- Werner, Douglas; Mayer, Theresa S; Engineering Materials with Customized Electromagnetic Properties (CET); Industry
- Yetter, Richard; Yang, Vigor;Kuo, Kenneth K; Allara, David L;A Unified Multiscale Approach for Nano-Engineered Energetic Materials- Add-On;U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command Acquisition Center
- Horn, Mark; Jackson, Thomas N; Dickey, Elizabeth C; Podraza, Nikolas J; SUPPLEMENT: Growth, Characterization and Modeling of Monolithic Silicon Microbolometer Materials for Uncooled Infrared Detectors;U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command Acquisition Center
- Lvov, Serguei; Yeboah, Yaw D; Chung, T C; Advanced Electrochemical Technologies for Hydrogen Production by Alternative Thermochemical Cycles;U.S. Department of Energy
- Castleman, Jr, Albert; Sen, Ayusman; Weiss, Paul S; Superatoms as Building Blocks of New Materials;U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command Acquisition Center
- Kuo, Kenneth; Yetter, Richard A; Yang, Vigor; Costanzo, Francesco;Fundamental Understanding of Propellant/Nozzle Interaction to Mitigate Erosion for Very High Pressure Propellant Applications - MURI;Office of Naval Research
For a complete list of the contracts and grants for December and January go to:
http://www.mri.psu.edu/awardsDec_Jan.asp
Seminars
February 18, 1:30 PM
189 MRL Building
Defect Structures and Their Impact in Functional Oxides
Prof. Clive A. Randall, MatSE, Penn State
February 25, 1:30 PM
189 MRL Building
Structuring of Composites and the Effect of Induced Anisotropy on Their Electrical Properties
Vivek Tomer, Penn State MRI
February 26, 12:30 PM
102 Chemistry Building
Abiological Self-Assembly: Predesigned Metallacycles and Metallacages via Coordination
Peter Stang, University of Utah
