Seamlessly correcting defects in the face, mouth and skull is highly challenging because it requires precise stacking of a variety of tissues including bone, muscle, fat and skin. Now, Penn State researchers are investigating methods to 3D bioprint and grow the appropriate tissues for craniomaxillofacial reconstruction.

APS March Meeting 2020 – 2DCC Presentations

Two-dimensional materials are atomically thin, the most well-known being graphene, a single-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms. The semiconductor industry is interested in using 2D materials for future electronic devices to further shrink these devices and to lower energy consumption. However, a quick and accurate method of detecting defects in 2D materials is needed in order to determine if the material is suitable for manufacturing.

Use of an AC rather than a DC electric field can improve the piezoelectric response of a crystal. Now, an international team of researchers say that cycles of AC fields also make the internal crystal domains in some materials bigger and the crystal transparent.

By Walt Mills

A highly sensitive wearable gas sensor for environmental and human health monitoring may soon become commercially available, according to researchers at Penn State and Northeastern University.

A 2017 report of the discovery of a particular kind of Majorana fermion — the chiral Majorana fermion, referred to as the “angel particle” — is likely a false alarm, according to new research. Majorana fermions are enigmatic particles that act as their own antiparticle and were first hypothesized to exist in 1937. They are of immense interest to physicists because their unique properties could allow them to be used in the construction of a topological quantum computer.

A paper published in the Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics Journal details how researchers examined additive manufacturing methods and materials using atomistic-scale simulations to optimize their performance for ultimately stronger and more useful 3D-printed components. 

“We went down to the most fundamental level, looking at the physical chemistry and the strengths of these molecular interactions,” van Duin said.

Microscopic tiny swimmers shaped like donuts promise a wide range of application options: Fabricated with Nanoscribe’s 3D Microfabrication technology, they can move with their own propulsion and are able to transport particles to a desired location. Moreover, the 3D printed microtori can manipulate other microscopic swimming objects. Within an international research project scientists outlined the complex dynamics that chemically- and magnetically-driven microtori can unfold.

Next-generation solar cells that mimic photosynthesis with biological material may give new meaning to the term "green technology." Adding the protein bacteriorhodopsin (bR) to perovskite solar cells boosted the efficiency of the devices in a series of laboratory tests, according to an international team of researchers.

A new liquid-cell technology allows scientists to see biological materials and systems in three dimensions under an electron microscope (EM), according to researchers at Penn State, Virginia Tech and Protochips Inc. 

By Walt Mills

A few weeks ago the novelist Jonathan Franzen published an article in which he essentially gave up on the prospect of controlling the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, concluding it was time to begin preparing for a future filled with the risk of devasting environmental disaster. It was the culmination of all the bad news we have heard about the changing climate, and I, and many others, was filled with a growing sense of hopelessness.

While computers have become smaller and more powerful and supercomputers and parallel computing have become the standard, we are about to hit a wall in energy and miniaturization. Now, Penn State researchers have designed a 2D device that can provide more than yes-or-no answers and could be more brainlike than current computing architectures.

By discovering a way to combine lithium salts with ceramics, researchers in the Penn State College of Engineering and the Penn State Materials Research Institute may have created a new class of materials for longer-lasting batteries. According to researchers, the composite nature of the batteries could make recycling easier, reducing landfill waste.

The way barn owl brains use sound to locate prey may be a template for electronic directional navigation devices, according to a team of Penn State engineers who are recreating owl brain circuitry in electronics.

"We were already studying this type of circuit when we stumbled across the Jeffress model of sound localization," said Saptarshi Das, assistant professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics.

THE QUANTUM SCIENCE SUMMER SCHOOL (QS³) is an annual summer school with the mission of training graduate students and postdocs in condensed matter, materials, and related fields for the next “quantum revolution.” The aim is to provide students an interactive learning experience with both theoretical and experimental leaders in the field and a connection to new technology.

In 2017, MRI and Penn State began piloting a new program aimed to support the further development of strategic collaboration with industry.

Proof that a new ability to grow thin films of an important class of materials called complex oxides will, for the first time, make these materials commercially feasible, according to Penn State materials scientists. 

Complex oxides are crystals with a composition that typically consists of oxygen and at least two other, different elements. In their crystalline form and depending on the combination of elements, complex oxides display a tremendous range of properties. 

By Walt Mills

The field of two-dimensional (2D) materials with unusual properties has exploded in the 15 years since Navasolov and Gheim pulled a single atomic layer of carbon atoms off of bulk graphene using simple adhesive tape. Although a great amount of science has been conducted on these small fragments of graphene, the challenge has been to create 2D materials at an industrially relevant scale. Now, researchers at Penn State have discovered a method for improving the quality of one class of 2D materials with potential to achieve wafer-scale growth in the future.

By Walt Mills

Cryogenic-Electron Microscopy (cryo-EM) has been a game changer in the field of medical research, but the substrate used to freeze and view samples under a microscope hasn’t advanced much in decades. Now, thanks to a collaboration between Penn State researchers and the applied science company Protochips, Inc., this is no longer the case.

PoreDesigner, a fully automated computational workflow process for altering the pore size of a bacterial channel protein, is the result of a collaboration between researchers from Penn State and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This process enables assembly of the proteins into artificial membranes for precise sub-nanometer scale separation of solutes of marginal size difference, which can improve water purification and bioseparations.

We invite you to attend our presentations at the APS March 2019 Meeting. Click here for a list of presentations by 2DCC researchers and users at the meeting.

Susan Trolier-McKinstry, the Steward S. Flaschen Professor of Ceramic Science and Engineering, Penn State, has been named a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Trolier-McKinstry is among the 86 new members and 18 foreign members elected for 2019. The NAE recognized her for "development of thin film multilayer ceramic capacitors and piezoelectric microelectromechanical systems."

While the polyester leisure suit was a 1970s mistake, polyester and other synthetic fibers like nylon are still around and are a major contributor to the microplastics load in the environment, according to a Penn State materials scientist, who suggests switching to biosynthetic fibers to solve this problem.

By Walt Mills

Antireflection (AR) coatings on plastics have a multitude of practical applications, such as reducing the glare on eyeglasses, computer monitors or on the display on your smart phone when out of doors. Now, researchers at Penn State have developed an AR coating that improves on existing coatings to the extent that it can make transparent plastics, such as Plexiglas, virtually invisible.

Researchers devise encryption key approach that cannot be cloned, reverse-engineered.

By A'ndrea Elyse Messer

Data breaches, hacked systems and hostage malware are frequently topics of evening news casts — including stories of department store, hospital, government and bank data leaking into unsavory hands — but now a team of engineers has an encryption key approach that is unclonable and not reverse-engineerable, protecting information even as computers become faster and nimbler.

By Walt Mills

A team of materials scientists from Penn State, Cornell and Argonne National Laboratory have, for the first time, visualized the 3D atomic and electron density structure of the most complex perovskite crystal structure system decoded to date. Perovskites are minerals that are of interest as electrical insulators, semiconductors, metals or superconductors, depending on the arrangement of their atoms and electrons.

When it comes to recording and modulating neurons in the brain, neuroscientists face two options: noninvasive tools with low spatiotemporal resolution, or implantable tools that are highly invasive and can only record or impact a small percentage of the brain’s neurons. Mehdi Kiani, Dorothy Quiggle Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State, is working to change that.

The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.4 million to a team of Penn State scientists to develop a new laboratory at the University with ultra-fast microscopes that will provide a high-resolution look at two-dimensional materials.   

New insight into how a certain class of photovoltaic materials allows efficient conversion of sunlight into electricity could position these materials to replace traditional silicon solar cells. A study by researchers at Penn State reveals the unique properties of these inexpensive and quick-to-produce halide perovskites, information that will guide the development of next generation solar cells. The study appears September 27 in the journal Chem.

Every second counts for those with life-threatening injuries, especially when help is far away. A new grant will help Penn State researchers develop an innovative foam that helps seal wounds quickly — whether on the battlefield, in rural areas or in other isolated locations far from hospitals.

In its mission to transform the way we generate, supply, transmit, store and use energy, the Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC), housed within the U.S. Department of Energy, has selected two projects with participation by the Penn State Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering for funding.

Birgitt Boschitsch has earned many titles – mechanical engineer, Penn State doctoral student, bourgeoning entrepreneur. But no matter how she’s using her talents, she always remembers why she pursued engineering.

“Day-to-day, I get to work on interesting technological problems,” she said. “But there’s also a long-term societal impact that engineers can have, which is ultimately solving problems for people around the world.”

A team of researchers from Penn State’s Materials Research Institute and the University of Utah has developed a wearable energy harvesting device that could generate energy from the swing of an arm while walking or jogging. The device, about the size of a wristwatch, produces enough power to run a personal health monitoring system.

The Center for Lignocellulose Structure and Formation (CLSF), an Energy Frontiers Research Center (EFRC) established by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2009 and led by Penn State scientists, has once again had its funding renewed by the DOE for an additional four years. The DOE established ERFCs to accelerate fundamental research and scientific breakthroughs in energy-relevant areas to meet critical energy challenges of the 21st century. The CLSF, which is receiving its third round of funding, was one of only nine centers nationwide recommended for a four-year renewal.

By Walt Mills

For the first time, researchers have created a nanocomposite of ceramics with a two-dimensional material that opens the door to new designs of nanocomposites with a variety of applications, such as solid-state batteries thermoelectrics, varistors, catalysts, chemical sensors and much more.

Forty-four graduate students competed for prizes in the PPG Elevator Pitch Competition held May 22, 2018 in the Millennium Science Complex. The five finalists will present their two-minute pitch during the Millennium Café on May 29 at 10 a.m.

A new cover article appearing in the high-impact scientific journal Chemical Society Reviews, a publication of The Royal Society of Chemistry, details the emerging field of two-dimensional materials for next generation electronic devices and the challenges of contact engineering at the few-nanometer scale. In the review article “Contact Engineering for 2D Materials and Devices,” Saptarshi Das, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics, Daniel Schulman, Ph.D. candidate in materials science and engineering, and Andrew Arnold, Ph.D.

A team of chemists at Penn State has developed a designer’s toolkit that lets them build various levels of complexity into nanoparticles using a simple, mix-and-match process.

By Walt Mills

A slippery rough surface (SRS) inspired by both pitcher plants and rice leaves outperforms state-of-the-art liquid-repellent surfaces in water harvesting applications, according to a team of researchers at Penn State and University of Texas at Dallas.

The team reports their work online today in Science Advances, an open-access journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Lightning and volcanos both produce glass, and humans have been making glass from silicon dioxide since prehistory. Industrialization brought us boron-based glasses, polymer glasses and metallic glasses, but now an international team of researchers has developed a new family of glass based on metals and organic compounds that stacks up to the original silica in glass-forming ability.

Glass-forming ability is the ability of a liquid to avoid crystallization during cooling.

By Walt Mills

In two recent publications, teams of researchers led by Penn State provide new understanding of why synthetic two-dimensional materials often perform orders of magnitude worse than predicted, and how to improve their performance in future electronics, photonics, and memory storage applications.

By Walt Mills

The most economical way to kill the bacteria that cause common food-borne illnesses – mostly caused by Salmonella enterica – is heat, but the mechanisms that kill Salmonella at lower temperatures were not fully understood until now, according to a team of researchers.

 Bacteria can develop ways to cope with heat shock, so it is important to develop a complete understanding of how heat kills them.

Graduate students Shruti Subramanian, Natalie Briggs and Kayla Cooley were awarded the Young Scientist Award, at the The 45th Conference on the Physics and Chemistry of Surfaces and Interfaces (PCSI – 45) January 14th – 18th in Hawaii.

For the first time, physicists have built a two-dimensional experimental system that allows them to study the physical properties of materials that were theorized to exist only in four-dimensional space.

Providing safer drinking water to those in need may be a little easier. According to Penn State researchers, a new desalination technique is able to remove salt from water using less energy than previous methods.

“Globally, there is reduced access to fresh water,” said Bruce Logan, Evan Pugh University Professor in Engineering and the Stan and Flora Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering. “More and more, the waters that are being used are impaired, either due to salt or other contaminants, so we are seeing an increasing need to rely on less optimal water sources.”

Since their invention in 1962, semiconductor diode lasers have revolutionized communications and made possible information storage and retrieval in CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray devices. These diode lasers use inorganic semiconductors grown in elaborate high vacuum systems. Now, a team of researchers from Penn State and Princeton University have taken a big step toward creating a diode laser from a hybrid organic-inorganic material that can be deposited from solution on a laboratory benchtop.

In London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, a whisper can be heard far across the circular whispering gallery as the sound curves around the walls. Now, an optical whispering gallery mode resonator developed by Penn State electrical engineers can spin light around the circumference of a tiny sphere millions of times, creating an ultrasensitive microchip-based sensor for multiple applications.

By Max Wetherington, MCL Staff Scientist

A theoretical method to control grain boundaries in two-dimensional materials could result in desirable properties, such as increased electrical conductivity, improved mechanical properties, or magnetism for memory storage or information processing, among other applications.

We have come a long way from leaky sulfur-acid automobile batteries, but modern lithium batteries still have some down sides. Now a team of Penn State engineers have a different type of lithium sulfur battery that could be more efficient, less expensive and safer.

The properties of materials can behave in funny ways. Tweak one aspect to make a device smaller or less leaky, for example, and something else might change in an undesirable way, so that engineers play a game of balancing one characteristic against another. Now a team of Penn State electrical engineers have a way to simultaneously control diverse optical properties of dielectric waveguides by using a two-layer coating, each layer with a near zero thickness and weight.

A new, lightweight composite material for energy storage in flexible electronics, electric vehicles and aerospace applications has been experimentally shown to store energy at operating temperatures well above current commercial polymers, according to a team of Penn State scientists. This polymer-based, ultrathin material can be produced using techniques already used in industry.

Squid-inspired proteins can act as programmable assemblers of 2D materials, like graphene oxide, to form hybrid materials with minute spacing between layers suitable for high-efficiency devices including flexible electronics, energy storage systems and mechanical actuators, according to an interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers.

Finding practical hydrogen storage technologies for vehicles powered by fuel cells is the focus of a $682,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, awarded to Mike Chung, professor of materials science and engineering, Penn State.

Chung's recent research on superabsorbent polymers, which shows potential to aid in oil spill recovery and cleanup, may also be a storage vehicle for hydrogen fuel cells.

One of the latest ventures to come out of Penn State, Persea Naturals, began with an unintended discovery. Gregory R. Ziegler, professor of food science in the College of Agricultural Sciences, was extracting starch from avocado pits when he noticed something interesting. When avocado pits are pulverized, an enzymatic reaction produces a bright orange color. After extracting the starch, Ziegler just couldn’t get the color to wash away.

CIMP-3D Advances Direct Metal Printing: Learn how the Center is advancing and deploying additive manufacturing technology for critical applications.

By now it is well understood that thinning a material down to a single atom thickness can dramatically change that material’s physical properties. Graphene, the best known 2D material, has unparalleled strength and electrical conductivity, unlike its bulk form as graphite. Researchers have begun to study hundreds of other 2D materials for the purposes of electronics, sensing, early cancer diagnosis, water desalination and a host of other applications.

The structural properties of proteins that could eventually become important materials for manufacturing and medicine are revealed by a novel optical technique that works rapidly to sort through amino acid sequences even inside living bacteria, according to a team of engineers.

"There remains an urgent need for fast and efficient techniques that can screen the properties of large numbers of protein sequences with minimal sample volume or in living cells," the researchers report online in the journal Analyst.

Six University faculty members have received the 2017 Faculty Scholar Medals for Outstanding Achievement.

They are James Adair, professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering and pharmacology; Adri van Duin, professor of mechanical engineering and professor of chemical engineering; Frederico Rodriguez Hertz, professor of mathematics; Christine Keating, professor of chemistry; Sophie De Schaepdrijver, professor of history; and Joshua Smyth, distinguished professor of biobehavioral health and medicine.

Written by Krista Weidner

That constant change is what motivates materials scientist Lauren Zarzar in her research.

“The world around us is always changing—materials are constantly being exposed to different external pressures, external stimuli,” says Zarzar, assistant professor of materials science and engineering and assistant professor of chemistry. “Many materials we use are static in their properties and functions, but I’m interested in designing materials that respond to changes in the environment.”

An endowed professorship is opening doors for two Penn State students to obtain laboratory experience as undergraduates. These materials science and engineering majors, Atraphol Sae-Tang and Evan McHale, are conducting research for their senior theses in the Millennium Science Complex with Susan Trolier-McKinstry, Steward S. Flaschen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. Their respective research may be just the beginning of larger, innovative projects at Penn State.

Aiming to develop non-invasive techniques to diagnose and evaluate treatment strategies for degenerative disease and injuries.

Battery-operated medical devices implanted in human bodies have saved countless lives. A common implant, the cardioverter defibrillator, sends a jolt of electricity to the heart when needed, preventing a heart attack or heart failure. While patients’ lives are improved by this technology, if the device causes an infection or the battery needs to be replaced, more invasive procedures are necessary.

Take a look at the latest advances in the science of 2D technology.

Many groups are working to discover new, safer ways to deliver drugs that fight cancer to the tumor without damaging healthy cells. Others are finding ways to boost the body’s own immune system to attack cancer cells. For the first time, researchers at Penn State have combined the two approaches by conjugating biodegradable polymer nanoparticles encapsulated with chosen cancer-fighting drugs into immune cells to create a smart, targeted system to attack cancers of specific types. 

A new concept in energy harvesting could capture energy that is currently mostly wasted due to its characteristic low frequency and use it to power next-generation electronic devices. In a project funded by electronics giant Samsung, a team of Penn State materials scientists and electrical engineers has designed a mechanical energy transducer based on flexible organic ionic diodes that points toward a new direction in scalable energy harvesting of unused mechanical energy in the environment, including wind, ocean waves and human motion.

Controlling the way fluorinated polymer chains twist and turn may enable fast and flexible electrical circuits, according to collaborative research conducted at Penn State. The findings may offer substantial impact on the development of new polymer-type materials used in flexible electronic applications.

Five Penn state faculty members have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the organization announced.

By creating atomic chains in a two-dimensional crystal, researchers at Penn State believe they have found a way to control the direction of materials properties in two and three dimensional crystals with implications in sensing, optoelectronics and next-generation electronics applications.

A new tool that uses a forest-like array of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes that can be finely tuned to selectively trap viruses by their size can increase the detection threshold for viruses and speed the process of identifying newly-emerging viruses. The research, by an interdisciplinary team of scientists at Penn State, is published in the October 7, 2016 edition of the journal Science Advances.

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences' Ismaila Dabo uses computer simulations to help design and improve the materials that bring us power.

Originally from Paris, France, Ismaila Dabo has family roots in Guinea, a West African nation blessed with abundant sunshine to match the sunny optimism of its people. But despite these powerful sources of energy, there is a lack of electricity to power the country. 

A newly discovered method for making two-dimensional materials could lead to new and extraordinary properties, particularly in a class of materials called nitrides, say the Penn State materials scientists who discovered the process. This first-ever growth of two-dimensional gallium nitride using graphene encapsulation could lead to applications in deep ultraviolet lasers, next-generation electronics and sensors.

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 (8/22/16) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Someday, chemically protective suits made of fabric coated in self-healing, thin films may prevent farmers from exposure to organophosphate pesticides, soldiers from chemical or biological attacks in the field and factory workers from accidental releases of toxic materials, according to a team of researchers.

(Or will these potentially life-saving technologies never make it out of the lab?)

Five years after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that caused the partial meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, more than 10 million bags of contaminated topsoil sit in radioactive pyramids scattered across the landscape. Contaminated water flows through the radioactive ground into the ocean or is captured and stored on the power plant site until some method of disposal can be figured out.

Today at the Penn State Conference Center Hotel during CARBON 2016—the World Conference on Carbon, Morgan Advanced Materials, a U.K.-based global leader in engineered carbon and ceramic materials, announced a precedent-setting industrial partnership with Penn State to establish a local research and development center in Innovation Park at Penn State. The Carbon Science Center of Excellence (COE) aims to drive global developments in the field of carbon research around Morgan’s core competencies, materials and application engineering.

The era of quantum computers is one step closer as a result of research published in the current issue of the journal Science. The research team has devised and demonstrated a new way to pack a lot more quantum computing power into a much smaller space and with much greater control than ever before. The research advance, using a 3-dimensional array of atoms in quantum states called quantum bits -- or qubits -- was made by David S. Weiss, professor of physics at Penn State University, and three students on his lab team.

One of the founding staff members of the Materials Research Institute, Jeff Shallenberger, returned to Penn State in April after 10 years in industry. Jeff has been appointed the leader of the Surface Analysis Group within the Materials Characterization Lab (MCL). The surface group at MCL includes new XPS and Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) instrumentation as well as Auger electron spectroscopy services. Jeff’s expertise involves surface sensitive spectroscopies, particularly x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

Namiko Yamamoto, assistant professor of aerospace engineering at Penn State, was recently awarded $376,599 through the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology program for her research proposal titled “1D-Patterned Nanocomposites Structured Using Oscillating Magnetic Fields.”

Electronic materials have been a major stumbling block for the advance of flexible electronics because existing materials do not function well after breaking and healing. A new electronic material created by an international team, however, can heal all its functions automatically even after breaking multiple times. This material could improve the durability of wearable electronics.

A team of chemical engineers at Penn State has developed a beneficial biofilm with the ability to prevent the biofouling of reverse osmosis (RO) membranes.

The biofilm allows membranes to limit their own thickness via a quorum-sensing circuit, and ultimately to reduce the occurrence of biofouling in membrane-based water treatment systems by releasing chemicals that repel undesirable bacteria.

A method to rotate single particles, cells or organisms using acoustic waves in a microfluidic device will allow researchers to take three dimensional images with only a cell phone.

Acoustic waves can move and position biological specimens along the x, y and z axes, but for the first time researchers at Penn State have used them to gently and safely rotate samples, a crucial capability in single-cell analysis, drug discovery and organism studies.

A new way to use the chemical reactions of certain enzymes to trigger self-powered mechanical movement has been developed by a team of researchers at Penn State University and the University of Pittsburgh. A paper describing the team's research, titled "Convective flow reversal in self-powered enzyme micropumps," is published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Penn State researcher Chunshan Song has a plan to address one of the most important issues facing the world today — reducing greenhouse gas emissions to curb the negative impacts of climate change.

A nature-inspired method to model the reflection of light from the skin of silvery fish and other organisms may be possible, according to Penn State researchers.

Two Penn State engineering professors, Seong Kim, professor of chemical engineering and materials science and engineering, and Zoubeida Ounaies, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor of Mechanical Engineering, have been awarded a $695,000 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to develop a new class of low-density energy materials.

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated a simple charge-based mechanism for regulating the formation and dissolution of liquid-like structures inside cells. The research provides a first step in deciphering how these poorly-understood structures, which lack outer membranes, function in the cell -- and how they may have evolved. A paper describing the research by Penn State scientists will appear on Dec. 21 as an advance online publication of the journal Nature Chemistry.

A pilot program in Penn State's College of Engineering is providing financial support to faculty to transition their early-stage research results through a proof-of-concept phase, with the ultimate objective of forming a start-up company or licensing the technology to an established business.

The College of Engineering ENGineering for Innovation & ENtrepreneurship (ENGINE) grant program is currently funding four projects.

Steel is one of the most common structural materials, truly one of the foundations of modern civilization. An alloy of iron and carbon, steel has been made since biblical times. With two thousand years of experience in steelmaking, it would seem all there is to know about steel would already be known. But for Allison Beese, McFarlane Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, the secret world of steel is still unfolding.

A new symmetry operation developed by Penn State researchers has the potential to speed up the search for new advanced materials that range from tougher steels to new types of electronic, magnetic, and thermal materials. With further developments, this technique could also impact the field of computational materials design.

The tiny transistor is the heart of the electronics revolution, and Penn State materials scientist have just discovered a way to give the workhorse transistor a big boost, using a new technique to incorporate vanadium oxide, one of a family of materials called functional oxides, into the device.

Commercially available cell sorters can rapidly and accurately aid medical diagnosis and biological research, but they are large and expensive, present a biohazard and may damage cells. Now a team of researchers has developed a cell sorter based on acoustic waves that can compete with existing fluorescence-activated cell sorters and is an inexpensive lab on a chip.

A drop of water self-heals a multiphase polymer derived from the genetic code of squid ring teeth, which may someday extend the life of medical implants, fiber-optic cables and other hard to repair in place objects, according to an international team of researchers.

A device to mix liquids utilizing ultrasonics is the first and most difficult component in a miniaturized system for low-cost analysis of sputum from patients with pulmonary diseases such as tuberculosis and asthma.

Communicating with teens, tweens, and even some of their elementary aged counterparts in the digital age can be challenging. Accustomed to rapid, sometimes immediate feedback from the myriad of electronic devices at their fingertips, their attention span and interest level are often short and can make engaging them in any topic a struggle.

DFT is a powerful quantum theory developed by Walter Kohn, Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner in 1998. Researchers have applied DFT to a range of problems including materials choices for batteries, hydrogen storage, superconductivity and catalysis. It is a crucial component in the recently announced Materials Genome Initiative, which emphasizes efforts to train American innovators to discover, develop, manufacture and deploy advanced materials in a more expeditious and economical way.

Separating circulating cancer cells from blood cells for diagnostic, prognostic and treatment purposes may become much easier using an acoustic separation method and an inexpensive, disposable chip, according to a team of engineers.

A device for precisely positioning small objects using acoustic waves has now been used to position fragile protein crystals a few micrometers or less in size in the path of a crystallography X-ray beam. This technique will make it possible to collect data on previously intractable samples and will expand the scope of what is now possible with X-ray crystallography.

When it comes to engineering single-layer atomic structures, "minding the gap" will help researchers create artificial electronic materials one atomic layer at a time, according to a team of materials scientists.  

The gap is a miniscule vacuum that researchers in Penn State's Center for 2-Dimensional and Layered Materials believe is an energy barrier keeping electrons from easily crossing from one layer of material to the next.

Developing the cloak of invisibility would be wonderful, but sometimes simply making an object appear to be something else will do the trick, according to Penn State electrical engineers.

"Previous attempts at cloaking using a single metasurface layer were restricted to very small-sized objects," said Zhihao Jiang, postdoctoral fellow in electrical engineering, Penn State. "Also, the act of cloaking would prevent an enclosed antenna or sensor from communicating with the outside world."

A little change in temperature makes a big difference for growing a new generation of hybrid atomic-layer structures, according to scientists at Rice University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University and Pennsylvania State University.

Rice scientists led the first single-step growth of self-assembled hybrid layers made of two elements that can either be side by side and one-atom thick or stacked atop each other. The structure's final form can be tuned by changing the growth temperature.

A simple, scalable method of making strong, stretchable graphene oxide fibers that are easily scrolled into yarns and have strengths approaching that of Kevlar is possible, according to Penn State and Shinshu University, Japan, researchers.

Your name takes up a kilobyte of space. With the latest $300 16-gigabyte hard drive in your computer, you have 15,999,999,000 bytes left for Starcraft, Hover, and Myst, not to mention all those e-mails you absolutely must keep, or the 700 bookmarks on your Netscape browser, and the programs for greeting cards and spreadsheets and slide shows that you hardly ever use, even, if you work for this magazine, the 20,000 names and addresses of your subscribers and eight complete back issues, in case you can't remember what you wrote. And it all fits on your desk.