Highlights

Surfactants are everywhere in nature and everyday life: animals rely on lung surfactants to breathe, and mayonnaise would separate into oil and water without them. To develop advanced multiphase polymeric materials, the efficacy of synthetic surfactants must be determined and optimized.

Apr 30, 2009

Crack Interaction With Grain Boundaries in Zinc Bicrystals

D. Catoor, K.S. Kumar, A.F. Bower, Y. Wei and W.M. Curtin

Grain boundaries are inherent defects in most materials of technological relevance. Understanding how a growing crack interacts with them will enable design of microstructures to enhance the material toughness, a

Apr 30, 2009

Kinetic model of whisker growth in Sn films

E. Buchovecky, A.F. Bower, E. Chason, S. Kumar Division of Engineering, Brown University

The spontaneous growth of whiskers from Pb-free Sn solder films on Cu substrates poses a serious threat to the reliability of electronic circuits. Researchers at Brown are using experiments and computer simulations to understand the mechanisms for the formation of Sn whiskers. As part

Apr 30, 2009

BrownOut: Engineering Educational Outreach

J. Blume, Division of Engineering

Classroom Visits Program J. Blume, Division of Engineering Brown undergraduates and faculty visit local science/math classes or youth programs to present engineering topics to students in Grades K-12. Presentations are developed by students and faculty based on current research or topics covered in the Brown curriculum. Student groups, such as the National Society of Black Engineers Student Chapter, Engineers without Borders, and th FSAE Care Team participate. Example Presentations

Apr 29, 2009

Mechanics of crack deflection at a twist grain boundary

Yujie Wei, Allan F. Bower, Huajian Gao

Heterogeneous brittle solids such as ceramics, lamellar intermetallics, and olycrystalline hexagonal-close-packed (hcp) metals such as Zr, Zn and Cd are echnologically important and broadly used. Zirconium, for example, has a low bsorption cross section for neutrons, and is therefore used in nuclear energy pplications. Titanium aluminide (TiAl) is a candidate material for many

Apr 23, 2009

JHU Materials Research Science Engineering Center (2005)

Multiple States of Nanoring Magnetic Tunnel Junctions

Background: The geometry of a nanoring magnet provides unique magnetic configurations of onion, vortex, and twisted, which can be exploited in nanoring magnetic tunnel junctions (NRMTJs) .

Apr 20, 2009

UChicago Materials Research Center (2014)

Granular materials in a Hele-Shaw Cell

Xiang Cheng (University of Chicago) Lei Xu (Harvard University) Aaron Patterson (Morehouse College) Heinrich Jaeger (University of Chicago) Sidney Nagel (University of Chicago)

A Hele-Shaw system was used by University of Chicago MRSEC researchers, Sidney Nagel and Heinrich Jaeger and their research groups, to explore the zero-surface-tension properties of granular "fluids."Â’ Theoretically, it was determined by Paul Wiegmann, also at the University of Chicago, that fluid fingering in the zero-surface-tension limit should lead to singular cusp structure locally and fractal geometry globally.Â’ Granular flow provides the first experime

Apr 20, 2009

UChicago Materials Research Center (2014)

Charge transport in arrays of multicomponent nanostructures

Jong-Soo Lee (University of Chicago) Elena V. Shevchenko (Argonne National Laboratory) Dmitri V. Talapin (University of Chicago)

Researchers, Dmitri Talapin and collaborators, at the University of Chicago MRSEC have been studying electronic properties of new nanoscale materials consisting of both magnetic and semiconducting components (FePt and PbS).Â’ These components are integrated into individual nanostructures forming multicomponent quantum-confined objects.Â’ The core-shell morphology maximizes the interaction between the components and provides a convenient platform for studying

Apr 1, 2009

UNL Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (2014)