In a sensing phenomenon common in the animal world but unusual in manmade sensors, Penn State researchers have added a small amount of background noise to enhance very weak signals, in this case a light source too dim to sense.

Plagues of locusts, containing millions of insects, fly across the sky to attack crops, but the individual insects do not collide with each other within these massive swarms. Now a team of engineers is creating a low-power collision detector that mimics the locust avoidance response and could help robots, drones and even self-driving cars avoid collisions.

A supersensitive dopamine detector can help in the early diagnosis of several disorders that result in too much or too little dopamine, according to a group led by Penn State and including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and universities in China and Japan.

Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter that can be used to diagnose disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

The goal of room temperature superconductivity took a small step forward with a recent discovery by a team of Penn State physicists and materials scientists.

The surprising discovery involved layering two-dimensional materials called molybdenum sulfide with another material called molybdenum carbide. Molybdenum carbide is a known superconductor, which means that electrons can flow through the material without any resistance. Even the best of metals, such as silver or copper lose energy through heat. This loss makes long distance transmission of electricity more costly.

By Walt Mills

Layered van der Waals materials are of high interest for electronic and photonic applications, according to researchers at Penn State and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, in California, who provide new insights into the interactions of layered materials with laser and electron beams.

Two-dimensional van der Waals materials are composed of strongly bonded layers of molecules with weak bonding between the layers.

A device to monitor health conditions in the body using a person’s sweat has been developed by researchers at Penn State and Xiangtan University, according to Huanyu (Larry) Cheng, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics, Penn State.

“We want to be able to analyze the sweat from daily exercise or from the heat of the sun because in sweat we have a lot of biomarkers, like pH and glucose that will be a really nice indicator for disease progression or diagnostics,” Cheng said.

Penn State’s Center for Nanoscale Science releases a new website full of family-friendly, at-home science experiments

With families stuck at home because of the coronavirus pandemic, the need for quality online resources to help fill the time has skyrocketed. But don’t fret — Penn State’s Center for Nanoscale Science has just launched Mission: Materials Science.

The next generation of solar cells, made from flexible, wearable material, may soon charge our devices on the go, or provide critical electricity when other power sources are not available, like during a natural disaster.

An international team of scientists from Penn State and the University of Queensland, Australia, are developing new technology to help make these next-generation solar devices a reality.

A new supercapacitor based on manganese oxide could combine the storage capacity of batteries with the high power and fast charging of other supercapacitors, according to researchers at Penn State and two universities in China.

“Manganese oxide is definitely a promising material,” said Huanyu (Larry) Cheng, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics and faculty member in the Materials Research Institute, Penn State. “By combining with cobalt manganese oxide, it forms a heterostructure in which we are able to tune the interfacial properties.”

A new method to deliver proteins for therapy inside the body has been developed by a team of researchers at Penn State. This platform, which packages proteins within an acoustically sensitive nanoparticle carrier, uses ultrasound to image and guide the encapsulated protein to the exact location required, and then disrupt the shell allowing the protein to enter the cell.

Penn State engineers say computational power is key to technology for smart bandages, health tattoos and artificial organs.

Bulky, buzzing and beeping hospital rooms demonstrate that monitoring a patient’s health status is an invasive and uncomfortable process, at best, and a dangerous process, at worst. Penn State researchers want to change that and make biosensors that could make health monitoring less bulky, more accurate — and much safer.

By Walt Mills

A lithium-ion battery that is safe, has high power and can last for 1 million miles has been developed by a team in Penn State’s Battery and Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Center.

By Walt Mills

A method to observe a new class of topological materials, called Weyl semimetals, was developed by researchers at Penn State, MIT, Tohoku University, Japan and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. The material’s unusual electronic properties could be useful in future electronics and in quantum physics.

Joint strategic partnership with University of Freiburg to design sustainable materials using biological and bioinspired principles.

To broaden applications of living materials, expand Penn State’s leadership in the engineering sciences on the international stage and grow partnerships with researchers and students around the world, Zoubeida Ounaies, professor and associate head for administration in the Penn State Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been named the inaugural director of the Penn State Convergence Center for Living Multifunctional Material Systems.

An interdisciplinary team led by Penn State has received a five-year $3.7 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation’s new program on convergence research. The grant is in two phases, depending on successful completion of phase one milestones.

Convergence brings together disciplines that have not worked together before to solve problems of high complexity with societal impact. Penn State is one of 11universites to receive a convergence grant.

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

Lithium ion batteries often grow needle-like structures between electrodes that can short out the batteries and sometimes cause fires.  Now, an international team of researchers has found a way to grow and observe these structures to understand ways to stop or prevent their appearance.

By Walt Mills

A device to quickly capture and identify various strains of virus has been developed, according to researchers at Penn State and New York University.

Currently, virologists estimate that 1.67 million unknown viruses are circulating in animal reservoirs, a number of which can be transmitted to humans. Known viruses, such as H5N1, Zika and Ebola have caused widespread illness and death. The world Health Organization states that early detection can halt virus spread by enabling rapid deployment of countermeasures.

Every day, more than 141 billion liters of water are used solely to flush toilets. With millions of global citizens experiencing water scarcity, what if that amount could be reduced by 50%? 

The possibility may exist through research conducted at Penn State, released today (Nov. 18) in Nature Sustainability. 

A new technique to change the structure of liquid crystals could lead to the development of fast-responding liquid crystals suitable for next generation displays, for example 3-D, augmented and virtual reality and advanced photonic applications such as mirrorless lasers, bio-sensors and fast/slow light generation, according to an international team of researchers from Penn State, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan.

Researchers at Penn State and Delaware have developed a theoretical method to improve the efficiency of thin-film solar cells by up to 33 percent. Flexible thin-film solar cells are needed to supply electrical power to fabrics, clothing, back packs and anywhere that a local autonomous power supply is required.

A better understanding of the mechanisms behind the cold sintering process (CSP) will lead to faster adoption and the cold sintering of many new materials, according to a team of Penn State researchers.

A new research partnership with Pennsylvania State University and the University of Sheffield aims to promote more sustainable supply chains to meet US policy standards.

Researchers from the Energy Institute at the University of Sheffield have now launched the USA branch of the Advanced Research Efficiency Centre (AREC-USA) at Pennsylvania State University. This research centre will promote collaboration between industry and universities. It will offer easy to access platforms that will help meet the challenges of sustainability across supply chains.

The theme of this year’s Materials Day is Mind the Gap Transiting Technology to Application. The gap between the university lab and commercialization of research is often called the Valley of Death.  During this Materials Day, we look for ways to close the gap.

Every scientific discovery has one thing in common: It started with a question. But, as Penn State materials scientist Jeffrey Catchmark will attest, sometimes the most ingenious answers come from questions you didn’t even know to ask.

Catchmark is developing new biomaterials by manipulating compounds found in nature. His research with biomaterials began with a single question: Is there an eco-friendly alternative to styrofoam?

Ibrahim Tarik Ozbolat, Hartz Family Career Development Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, has received four grants totaling about $1.5 million to explore ways to bioprint biological tissues like bone, lungs and other organs for use as models in a variety of studies.

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.

Under the right conditions, ordinary clear water droplets on a transparent surface can produce brilliant colors, without the addition of inks or dyes. This iridescent effect is due to “structural color,” by which an object generates color simply by the way light interacts with its geometric structure.

A new type of light-emitting diode lightbulb could one day light homes and reduce power bills, according to Penn State researchers who suggest that LEDs made with firefly-mimicking structures could improve efficiency.

Dramatically longer-lasting, faster-charging and safer lithium metal batteries may be possible, according to Penn State research, recently published in Nature Energy.

The researchers developed a three-dimensional, cross-linked polymer sponge that attaches to the metal plating of a battery anode.

By Walt Mills

The rapid growth of research on 2D materials – materials such as graphene and others that are a single or few atoms thick – is fueled by the hope of developing better performing sensors for health and environment, more economical solar energy, and higher performing and more energy efficient electronics than is possible with current silicon electronics.

By Walt Mills

ZIF glasses, a new family of glass, could combine the transparency of silicate glass with the nonbrittle quality of metallic glass, according to researchers at Penn State and Cambridge University, UK.

“We are sure of the transparency,” said John Mauro, professor of materials science and engineering, Penn State. “We’ll have to wait until larger samples can be made to know if it has the amazing ductility of metallic glass, but it looks promising.”

Topological control of electrons means future electronic roadways are now possible.

By Walt Mills

In the drive to find new ways to extend electronics beyond the use of silicon, physicists are experimenting with other properties of an electron beyond charge. In new work published on Dec. 7 in the journal Science, a team led by Penn State professor of physics Jun Zhu describes a way to manipulate electrons based on their energy in relation to momentum – called “valley degree of freedom.”

By Walt Mills

A material based on a natural product of bones and citrus fruits, called citrate, provides the extra energy stem cells need to form new bone tissue, according to a team of Penn State bioengineers. The new understanding of the mechanism that allows citrate to aid in bone regeneration will help the researchers develop slow-release, biodegradable citrate-releasing scaffolds to act as bone-growth templates to speed up healing in the body.

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.

A team of researchers from Penn State placed first at the Materials Research Society (MRS) iMatSci Innovators competition at the MRS 2017 Fall meeting in Boston. Their technology, called “LESS,” reduces the amount of flush volume required to remove solids and residue from toilet bowls by 90 percent and could improve hygiene and save significant water resources in water-scarce environments.

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.

An artificial system using a DNA-laced hydrogel can receive a chemical signal and release the appropriate protein, according to Penn State researchers. Further stimulation by the chemical signal continues to trigger a response.

A hydrogel is a network of polymer chains that attract water and can be used to simulate biological tissue.

Many systems in cells and in the human body are set up with a signal and response pathway. One of the best known is that of glucose, a small sugar that triggers the release of insulin.

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.

An international team of researchers, including scientists from Shinshu University (Japan) and the director of Penn State’s ATOMIC Center, has developed a graphene-based coating for desalination membranes that is more robust and scalable than current nanofiltration membrane technologies. The result could be a sturdy and practical membrane for clean water solutions as well as protein separation, wastewater treatment and pharmaceutical and food industry applications.

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.

An investigational compound developed by Penn State researchers that targets and destroys cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed has been approved for phase one clinical human trials by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Research Breakthrough: Cold sintering of ceramics instead of high-temperature firing

The possibilities for the new field of two-dimensional, one-atomic-layer-thick materials, including but not limited to graphene, appear almost limitless. In a new paper in the journal 2D Materials, Penn State researchers report two discoveries that will provide a simple and effective way to “stencil” high quality 2D materials in precise locations and overcome a barrier to their use in next-generation electronics.

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.

In every decade for the past 30 years, the transmission electron microscope (TEM) has developed new topics that dominated the decade. In the 1990s, environmental electron microscopy allowed samples to be examined under more natural conditions. From 2000 to 2010, aberration correction brought samples into sharper focus, like a double pair of eyeglass lenses. In the current decade, looking at reactions taking place inside the TEM, in situ, is the major topic for microscopy.

Strands of cow cartilage substitute for ink in a 3D bioprinting process that may one day create cartilage patches for worn out joints, according to a team of engineers.

"Our goal is to create tissue that can be used to replace large amounts of worn out tissue or design patches," said Ibrahim T. Ozbolat, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics. "Those who have osteoarthritis in their joints suffer a lot. We need a new alternative treatment for this."

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.

Jeffrey Catchmark, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, is working to commercialize a patent-pending biofoam pad for wound and trauma care.

The material is bioabsorbable, soft and resilient, unique properties useful in treating wounds in surgical, military, veterinary and other settings.

A lithium-ion battery that self heats if the temperature is below 32 degrees Fahrenheit has multiple applications, but may have the most impact on relieving winter "range anxiety" for electric vehicle owners, according to a team of researchers from Penn State and EC Power, State College.

A technique that combines the ultrasensitivity of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with a slippery surface invented by Penn State researchers will make it feasible to detect single molecules of a number of chemical and biological species from gaseous, liquid or solid samples. This combination of slippery surface and laser-based spectroscopy will open new applications in analytical chemistry, molecular diagnostics, environmental monitoring and national security.

A new material that is both highly transparent and electrically conductive could make large screen displays, smart windows and even touch screens and solar cells more affordable and efficient, according to materials scientists and engineers at Penn State who have discovered just such a material.

The development of a reusable microfluidic device for sorting and manipulating cells and other micro/nano meter scale objects will make biomedical diagnosis of diseases cheaper and more convenient in regions where medical facilities are sparse or cost is prohibitive. Researchers at Penn State have recently filed a patent to develop such a device.

An international team of researchers, led by Penn State, has developed ultrasensitive gas sensors based on the infusion of boron atoms into the tightly bound matrix of carbon atoms known as graphene. The group is composed of researchers from six countries and includes the 2010 Noble laureate and graphene pioneer Konstantin Novoselov, and Morinobu Endo, the discoverer of carbon nanotubes.

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.

The winners of the first annual MRI Humanitarian Materials Initiative awards, sponsored by Covestro LLC (formerly Bayer MaterialScience LLC) and the Materials Research Institute (MRI), were announced at Materials Day 2015 on the University Park campus.

The leaves of the lotus flower, and other natural surfaces that repel water and dirt, have been the model for many types of engineered liquid-repelling surfaces. As slippery as these surfaces are, however, tiny water droplets still stick to them. Now, Penn State researchers have developed nano/micro-textured, highly slippery surfaces able to outperform these naturally inspired coatings, particularly when the water is a vapor or tiny droplets.

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.

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.