Tag Archives: silver

New Technique Creates Stronger, Lightweight Magnesium Alloys

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for creating stronger, lightweight magnesium alloys that have potential structural applications in the automobile and aerospace industries.

Engineers constantly seek strong, lightweight materials for use in cars and planes to improve fuel efficiency. Their goal is to develop structural materials with a high “specific strength,” which is defined as a material’s strength divided by its density. In other words, specific strength measures how much load it can carry per unit of weight. (more…)

Read More

How Silver Turns People Blue

Ingesting silver — in antimicrobial health tonics or for extensive medical treatments involving silver — can cause argyria, condition in which the skin turns grayish-blue. Brown researchers have discovered how that happens. The process is similar to developing black-and-white photographs, and it’s not just the silver.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers from Brown University have shown for the first time how ingesting too much silver can cause argyria, a rare condition in which patients’ skin turns a striking shade of grayish blue.

“It’s the first conceptual model giving the whole picture of how one develops this condition,” said Robert Hurt, professor of engineering at Brown and part of the research team. “What’s interesting here is that the particles someone ingests aren’t the particles that ultimately cause the disorder.” (more…)

Read More

Opposites Attract

UD professor reports milestone in fuel cell membrane research

It looks like a plastic candy wrapper that’s been charred on both sides, but it may hold the solution to commercially viable fuel cells.

About the thickness of a human hair, it is actually a thin polymer membrane sandwiched between two catalysts. The work is that of Yushan Yan, Distinguished Professor of Engineering at the University of Delaware, who is known for developing new catalysts and membranes to reduce the cost and improve the durability of fuel cells.

The membrane, he says, is a game changing development that shows great promise to revolutionize the way engineers and scientists think about traditional chemical crosslinking methods used to create strong fuel cell membranes. (more…)

Read More

On the Road to Plasmonics with Silver Polyhedral Nanocrystals

*Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Simpler Approach to Making Plasmonic Materials*

The question of how many polyhedral nanocrystals of silver can be packed into millimeter-sized supercrystals may not be burning on many lips but the answer holds importance for one of today’s hottest new high-tech fields – plasmonics! Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) may have opened the door to a simpler approach for the fabrication of plasmonic materials by inducing polyhedral-shaped silver nanocrystals to self-assemble into three-dimensional supercrystals of the highest possible density. (more…)

Read More

Study Improves Understanding of Method for Creating Multi-Metal Nanoparticles

A new study from researchers at North Carolina State University sheds light on how a technique that is commonly used for making single-metal nanoparticles can be extended to create nanoparticles consisting of two metals – and that have tunable properties. The study also provides insight into the optical properties of some of these nanoparticles.

Tuning the optical properties of nanoparticles is of interest for applications such as security technology, and for use in making chemical reactions more efficient – which has multiple industrial and environmental applications. (more…)

Read More