2011 News Archive

December 19, 2011 - "I wanted to let you know that we are making a significant change to our IP policies at Penn State - we will no longer insist on owning the Intellectual Property that issues from industry sponsored research." -- Henry C. Foley, Ph.D., Vice President for Research & Dean of the Graduate School

December 16, 2011 - Penn State has made significant changes to its intellectual property policies. Effective Friday (Dec. 16), intellectual property that results from industry-sponsored research no longer is mandated to be owned by the University.

December 13, 2011 - A new chemical technique for depositing a non-crystalline form of silicon into the long, ultra-thin pores of optical fibers has been developed by an international team of scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom. The technique, which is the first of its kind to use high-pressure chemistry for making well-developed films and wires of this particular kind of silicon semiconductor, will help scientists to make more-efficient and more-flexible optical fibers. (Photo Credit: John Badding Lab, Penn State)

December 9, 2011 - Controlling power consumption in mobile devices and large scale data centers is a pressing concern for the computer chip industry. Researchers from Penn State and epitaxial wafer maker IQE have created a high performance transistor that could help solve one of the vexing problems of today’s MOSFET technology - reducing the power demand whether the transistors are idle or switching. (Photo Credit: Penn State)

December 1, 2011 - Researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Institute at Penn State are part of a multidisciplinary team of researchers from universities and national laboratories across the U.S. who have fabricated piezoelectric thin films with record-setting properties. These engineered films have great potential for energy harvesting applications, as well as in micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS), micro actuators, and sensors for a variety of miniaturized systems, such as ultrasound imaging, microfluidics, and mechanical sensing. (Photo Credit: Trolier-McKinstry, Penn State)

September 19, 2011 - The most efficient colloidal-quantum-dot solar cell ever created will be described in a scientific paper to be published in a print edition of the journal Nature Materials by a team of scientists that includes John Asbury, assistant professor of chemistry at Penn State University. (Photo Credit: Sargent Lab, University of Toronto.)

September 19, 2011 - A grain of salt or two may be all that microbial electrolysis cells need to produce hydrogen from wastewater or organic byproducts, without adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere or using grid electricity, according to Penn State engineers. (Photo Credit: Bruce Logan, Penn State)

September 6, 2011 - A team of Penn State University scientists has invented a new system that uses magnetism to purify hybrid nanoparticles -- structures that are composed of two or more kinds of materials in an extremely small particle that is visible only with an electron microscope. (Photo Credit: The Schaak/Williams research groups, Penn State)

September 2, 2011 - A technique that uses hydrogen to improve transistor performance on real-world graphene devices has been demonstrated on the wafer-scale by researchers in Penn State’s Electro-Optics Center (EOC). In a paper published in the August 1, 2011, online edition of Nano Letters, the researchers demonstrated a 3x improvement in electron mobility of epitaxial graphene grown on the silicon face of a 100 mm silicon carbide wafer, as well as a similar improvement in radio-frequency transistor performance. (Photo Credit: Joshua Robinson, Penn State EOC)

August 24, 2011 - The Millennium Science Complex - Penn State’s newest 297,000-square-foot research facility - won’t have any classrooms inside, but it will soon provide a state-of-the-art scientific environment for university researchers. (Photo Credit: Penn State)

August 11, 2011 - With the support of a Phase II grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Penn State materials scientists and medical researchers are working to develop a process to destroy malaria parasites in the blood using low-power microwaves. (Photo Credit: Penn State)

August 1, 2011 - Rising up along Pollock Road between Shortlidge and Bigler roads on Penn State's University Park campus, the 297,000-square-foot Millennium Science Complex is impressive for its size alone. But what is truly remarkable about the new building is in the details. (Photo Credit: Patrick Mansell, Penn State)

July. 24, 2011 - Latex paints and drug suspensions such as insulin or amoxicillin that do not need to be shaken or stirred may be possible thanks to a new understanding of how particles separate in liquids, according to Penn State chemical engineers, who have developed a method for predicting the way colloidal components separate based on energy. (Photo Credit: Joseph McDermott, Penn State)

June. 24, 2011 - The eye of the peacock mantis shrimp has led an international team of researchers to develop a two-part waveplate that could improve CD, DVD, blu-ray and holographic technology, creating even higher definition and larger storage density. (Photo Credit: Shutterstock)

May. 2, 2011 - MVC is a scientific visual and artistic competition sponsored by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Institute. Created to celebrate the quality of research in Materials at Penn State, this competition promises to increase awareness of materials science through the creativity and visualization of our researchers. (Photo Credit: Flavio Griggio, Penn State)

Apr. 11, 2011 - Symmetry is a concept that we have recognized throughout history, says Penn State materials scientist Venkatraman Gopalan. We see symmetry in snowflakes, hear it in music and admire it in a human face. Many types of materials, particularly crystals, grow symmetrically. (Photo Credit: Gopalan Lab, Penn State)

Mar. 24, 2011 - An environmentally friendlier method of separating oil from tar sands has been developed by a team of researchers at Penn State. This method, which utilizes ionic liquids to separate the heavy viscous oil from sand, is also capable of cleaning oil spills from beaches and separating oil from drill cuttings, the solid particles that must be removed from drilling fluids in oil and gas wells. (Photo Credit: Painter Group, Penn State)

Mar. 14, 2011 - A safe, simple, and cheap method of creating perfectly etched micron and smaller size wells in a variety of substrates has been developed by researchers in Penn State's Department of Chemical Engineering. Similar patterned surfaces are currently made using complex and expensive photolithography methods and etch processes under clean room conditions and used in the fabrication of many optical, electrical, and mechanical devices. (Photo Credit: Erik Hsiao, Penn State)

Mar. 3, 2011 - In 1897, H.G. Wells created a fictional scientist who became invisible by changing his refractive index to that of air, so that his body could not absorb or reflect light. More recently, Harry Potter disappeared from sight after wrapping himself in a cloak spun from the pelts of magical herbivores. (Photo Credit: Elena Semouchkina, ECE Department, Michigan Tech University)

Mar. 1, 2011 - A team of scientists led by John Badding, a professor of chemistry at Penn State University, has developed the very first optical fiber made with a core of zinc selenide -- a light-yellow compound that can be used as a semiconductor. The new class of optical fiber, which allows for a more effective and liberal manipulation of light, promises to open the door to more versatile laser-radar technology. (Photo Credit: Justin Sparks)

Feb. 21, 2011 - Nanotechnology may open a new door on the treatment of liver cancer, according to a team of Penn State College of Medicine researchers. They used molecular-sized bubbles filled with chemotherapy drugs to prevent cell growth and initiate cell death in test tubes and mice.

Feb. 15, 2011 - Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) has collaborated with The Pennsylvania State University to develop a breakthrough material that can significantly improve the performance of spacecraft antennas. The electromagnetic metamaterial is considered to be the first commercially viable product of its kind and is one of the first practical implementations of electromagnetic metamaterials that improves a real-world device.

Feb. 9, 2011 - Joan Redwing, professor of materials science and engineering, and Raymond Schaak, associate professor of chemistry, have received a second round of funding from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement for work involving solar energy conversion. The Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards were created to build communities of scientist around potentially transformative research ideas, according to RCSA president James M. Gentile. Scialog stands for scientific dialog. (Photo Credit: Chito Kendrick, Penn State)

Feb. 7, 2011 - Penn State is recognized as the leading university worldwide in the field of alternative energy research. Following are five brief videos, part of Penn State's Advancing Energy series, highlighting a small sample of the variety of cutting-edge energy research at Penn State. The topics include solar photovoltaics, advanced batteries, microbial fuel cells, and alternative diesel fuels. (Photo Credit: Penn State)

Jan. 30, 2011 - Cheaper, lighter and more energy-efficient broadband devices on communications satellites may be possible using metamaterials to modify horn antennas, according to engineers from Penn State and Lockheed Martin Corp. (Photo Credit: Penn State)

Jan. 11, 2011 - The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was not the largest in history nor will it be the last, according to T.C. (Mike) Chung, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. But a recent patent-pending material developed by Chung could dramatically reduce the environmental damage if deployed on a wide scale. (Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com)