TechBlog

CRYSTEX Composites

Mykroy/Mycalex (MM) Glass bonded mica material is a trade name of CRYSTEX Composites LLC. Since 1921, Mykroy/Mycalex composite remains the most versatile and efficient electrical and thermal-insulating materials refined to meet the exacting demands of technical markets. MM material is the only mineral, fully inorganic material, to bridge the performance gap between organic plastics and mineral ceramics. Mykroy/Mycalex material is a union, under simultaneous pressure and heat, of finely powdered electrical quality glass and precisely defined and classified mica. The resulting stone-like, dense ceramic, inherits all the insulating advantages of both constituents. It can be easily machined to close tolerances or transfer molded into intricate shapes with or without metal inserts. MM material is impervious to moisture, and does not outgas under high temperature or in vacuum environments. It manifests exceptional dimensional stability even at high temperature. It does not burn or carbonize and has an unlimited shelf life.

Unique in the United States, CRYSTEX Composites LLC has produced its own Synthetic Mica since 1955.

Continue reading ‘CRYSTEX Composites LLC’ »

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -

Engineers have created the first “active matrix” display using a new class of transparent transistors and circuits, a step toward realizing applications such as e-paper, flexible color monitors and “heads-up” displays in car windshields.

The transistors are made of “nanowires,” tiny cylindrical structures that are assembled on glass or thin films of flexible plastic. The researchers used nanowires as small as 20 nanometers - a thousand times thinner than a human hair - to create a display containing organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDS. The OLEDS are devices that rival the brightness of conventional pixels in flat-panel television sets, computer monitors and displays in consumer electronics.

Continue reading ‘Engineers make first ‘active matrix’ display using nanowires’ »

Check out the What is beyond Super Nova The end of Star! Our sun will find the same fate some day….

The Nintendo Wii’s use of a MEMS-enabled motion controller and the Apple iPhone’s use of accelerometers to change the display from horizontal to vertical are examples of how MEMS are creating new ways for people to interact with electronic devices. They illustrate the continued expansion of MEMS technology from its beginnings in the automotive and industrial markets to applications that include energy harvesting, wireless communications, “smart homes,” and biomedical.

Big numbersAccording to the analyst group Yole Développement, the market was worth $5.8 billion in 2006 and will grow to $10.7 billion by 2011. The leading MEMS application, inkjet heads, is followed closely by sensors for airbag deployment and tire inflation monitoring. Texas Instruments (TI) makes Digital Light Processing (DLP) MEMS for computer displays as well as for digital projection. Wicht Technologie Consulting says that TI was the top MEMS manufacturer in 2006, with $905 million in revenues. TI has reportedly shipped more than 10 million DLP sub-systems since 1996.

While MEMS technology is about more than high-volume production, others have been similarly successful with mass production. ST Microelectronics’ 3-axis accelerometer is the enabling force within Nintendo’s Wii, and Analog Devices says it has shipped more than 250 million MEMS accelerometers for automotive, consumer, and industrial applications.

Continue reading ‘MEMS is moving. Here’s where.’ »

A national team of scientists led by experts at Durham University are embarking on one of the UK’s largest ever research projects into photovoltaic (PV) solar energy.

The £6.3million PV-21 programme will focus on making thin-film light absorbing cells for solar panels from sustainable and affordable materials.

The four-year project, which begins in April (2008), is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under the SUPERGEN initiative.

Eight UK universities, led by Durham and including Bangor, Bath, Cranfield, Edinburgh, Imperial College London, Northumbria and Southampton, are involved in the project.

Continue reading ‘Durham University Leads UK Research Project Into Cheaper Solar Energy’ »

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued its first reference standards for nanoscale particles targeted for the biomedical research community—literally “gold standards” for labs studying the biological effects of nanoparticles. The three new materials, gold spheres nominally 10, 30 and 60 nanometers in diameter, were developed in cooperation with the National Cancer Institute’s Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (NCL).

Nanosized particles are the subject of a great deal of biological research, in part because of concerns that in addition to having unique physical properties due to their size, they also may have unique biological properties. On the negative side, nanoparticles may have special toxicity issues. On the positive side, they also are being studied as vehicles for targeted drug delivery that have the potential to revolutionize cancer treatments. Research in the field has suffered from a lack of reliable nanoscale measurement standards, both to ensure consistency of data from one lab to the next and to verify the performance of measurement instruments and analytic techniques.

False color scanning electron micrograph (250,000 times magnification) showing the gold nanoparticles created by NIST and the National Cancer Institute’s Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory for use as reference standards in biomedical research laboratories.The new NIST reference materials are citrate-stabilized nanosized gold particles in a colloidal suspension in water. They have been extensively analyzed by NIST scientists to assess particle size and size distribution by multiple techniques for dry-deposited, aerosol and liquid-borne forms of the material. Dimensions were measured using six independent methods—including atomic force microscopy (AFM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential mobility analysis (DMA), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). At the nanoscale in particular, different measurement techniques can and will produce different types of values for the same particles.

Continue reading ‘NIST Reference Materials Are ‘Gold Standard’ For Bio-Nanotech Research’ »

Cambridge, MA — Separating out particular kinds of cells from a sample could become faster, cheaper and easier thanks to a new system developed by MIT researchers that involves levitating the cells with light.The system, which can sort up to 10,000 cells on a conventional glass microscope slide, could enable a variety of biological research projects that might not have been feasible before, its inventors say. It could also find applications in clinical testing and diagnosis, genetic screening and cloning research, all of which require the selection of cells with particular characteristics for further testing.

Joel Voldman, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Joseph Kovac, a student in the department, developed the new system, which is featured as the cover story in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry.

Present methods allow cells to be sorted based on whether or not they emit fluorescent light when mixed with a marker that responds to a particular protein or other compound. The new system allows more precise sorting, separating out cells based not just on the overall average fluorescent response of the whole cell but on responses that occur in specific parts of the cell, such as the nucleus. The system can also pick up responses that vary in how fast they begin or how long they last.

Continue reading ‘MIT Sorts Cells With Beams Of Light’ »

Photonic crystal fiber’s ability to create broad spectra of light, which will be the basis for important developments in technology, has been explained for the first time in an article in the leading science journal Nature-Photonics.The fiber can change a pulse of light with a narrow range of wavelengths into a spectrum hundreds of times broader and ranging from visible light to the infra-red. This is called a supercontinuum.

This supercontinuum is one of the most exciting areas of applied physics today and the ability to create it easily will have a significant effect on technology.

This includes telecommunications, where optical systems hundreds of times more efficient than existing types will be created because signals can be transmitted and processed at many wavelengths simultaneously.

Continue reading ‘Light Is Shed On New Fiber’s Potential To Change Technology’ »