{"id":357,"date":"2019-12-31T10:36:39","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T16:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/?p=357"},"modified":"2022-09-02T12:59:19","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T17:59:19","slug":"another-year-of-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"Another Year of Progress (?)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always when reflecting over a year that is ending, there\nis good news and there is bad news.  We\u2019ll\nstart with the good.  A lot of technology\nis being created.  As mentioned last\nmonth, new material properties are being created.  The one that I find the most fascinating is\nthe creation of transparent wood<\/strong>! \nThis material was developed at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in\nStockholm. [Ref. 1] The wood is capable of both storing heat and being\ntransparent, although the transparency becomes translucent as the heat is\nreleased.  The figure shows the fully\ntransparent wood on the left and the translucent heat release wood on the\nright.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In order to manufacture the wood, the researchers took balsa\nwood and removed its lignin (provides strength and color) and added acrylic\ninto the remaining tissues filling the empty space remaining from the removal\nof the lignin and hollow spaces that carry water within the tree.  This produced the structure that restored the\nstrength lost by the removal of the lignin and provided the optical properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another report [Ref 2] describes increasing the strength of silver\nconductor by introducing very sight amounts of copper.   Their\n42% increase in strength is due to their discovery of a new mechanism that works\nat the nanoscale.  They started with the\npremise that all metals have defects, which leads to undesirable\nqualities.  To compensate for these\nchanges, many have solved that issue by creating alloys to make materials\nstronger, which tends to reduce electrical conductivity.   The\nteam, including researchers from the University of Vermont, Lawrence Livermore National\nLab, Ames lab, Los Alamos Nations Lab, and UCLA, began with the fact that as a\nmaterial size is reduced to the size of a crystal, the material gets stronger.\n(Hall-Petch relation).  This relation no\nlonger holds when the material is in the 10s of nanometers.  The boundaries between grains becomes\nunstable and can move.  (Significantly more\ndetail is in the referenced article.) \nIntroduction of copper atoms, which are slightly smaller than silver atoms,\nallows the copper atoms to move into defect areas in the grain boundaries.  The team reported the maximum strength is\nachieved with boundaries that are 7 nanometers apart.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future of semiconductors is continuing down the path of\ncontinual size reduction.  The next\nrelease of the Roadmap will provide the requirements for individual structures\nthat will be measured in tenths of nanometers. \nWhile that is still years away, the fact that such structures are being contemplated\nimplies the development of equipment that will be able to increase our ability\nto evaluate phenomena in the single digit nanometer and and below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There appears to great things happening, so what is the bad news.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the bad news is that the true application of the scientific method is being compromised occasionally.\u00a0 I am not going to pick one specific study.\u00a0 There have been retractions from researchers when others in the field have pointed out that their investigations have produced data that was removed in the final determination of the findings.\u00a0 This is nothing new, but the increase in retractions has been growing since the mid 1990s. [Ref. 3] While the referenced article points out that retractions are not all bad, the increase in fabricated results or falsification has risen along with the rise in retractions.\u00a0 We must have trust in research that is reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2019\/apr\/03\/scientists-invent-transparent-wood-in-search-for-eco-friendly-building-material<\/a><\/li>
  2. https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/uvmnews\/news\/inventing-worlds-strongest-silver<\/a>  <\/li>
  3. https:\/\/alumni.berkeley.edu\/california-magazine\/just-in\/2016-03-16\/retraction-action-science-fraud-more-retractions-could-be<\/a>\n<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As always when reflecting over a year that is ending, there is good news and there is bad news.  We\u2019ll start with the good.  A lot of technology [..]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":359,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}