Component Management

  A team of researchers has developed a faster and easier way to make sulfur-containing polymers that will lower the cost of large-scale production. The achievement, published in Nature Chemistry and Angewandte Chemie, opens the door to creating new products from this class of polymers while producing far less hazardous waste.

A recent discovery by a team of researchers led by Tulane University advances fundamental knowledge that could one day lead to more energy-efficient computers, televisions, cellphones and other electronics. The researchers' discovery of a new magnetic topological semimetal is featured in the latest edition of the prestigious journal Nature Materials. The Tulane team was led by physics professor Zhiqiang Mao, the Tulane School of Sc...

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists recently used synchrotron X-ray scattering to fully capture the hierarchical structure in self-organised carbon nanotube materials from the atomic to micrometer scale. Their work, recently published in ACS Nano, is the first to continuously map the structural order of nanotube ensembles across four orders of magnitude in length scale, all while employing a single technique.

2D materials have opened up new horizons in the field of materials science over the last ten years. Now EU-funding has fed into the creation of a combination of structures to form suspended buckyball sandwiches, offering interesting properties for further research. Scientists have created a new structure by encapsulating a single layer of fullerene molecules between two graphene sheets.

Master Bond EP39MAOHT is a room temperature curing system which is said to be good for demanding bonding, sealing, coating, potting and encapsulation applications. According to the company it is a versatile product that combines convenient handing, good flow, thermal conductivity, electrical insulation and high temperature resistance.

Ellsworth Adhesives Europe has announced the addition of the new Dymax 1406-M adhesive to its product range. This medical device material has been designed especially for small needle bonding. As a next generation needle bonding adhesive, 1406-M is ideal for manufacturers looking to switch to LED curing in small gauge needle applications.

Catheters, intravenous lines, and other types of surgical tubing are a medical necessity for managing a wide range of diseases. But a patient’s experience with such devices is rarely a comfortable one. Now MIT engineers have designed a gel-like material that can be coated onto standard plastic or rubber devices, providing a softer, more slippery exterior that can significantly ease a patient’s discomfort. The coating can even be ...

Materials that assemble themselves and then simply disappear at the end of their lifetime are quite common in nature. Researchers at the TUM have now successfully developed supramolecular materials that disintegrate at a predetermined time – a feature that could be used in numerous applications. Plastic bottles, empty cans, old toys, torn T-shirts and worn-out mobile phones – day for day, mankind produces millions of tons of wast...

In order to manufacture components for its Swinglink range of bucket conveyors in the UK, materials handling company Gough Engineering has invested in high quality, high pressure injection moulds. The decision allows the Staffordshire based company to improve moulds using the latest technology, protect future supplies and secure UK manufacturing costs given the varying exchange rates after recent political events.

In a new whitepaper from Pryor, it is revealed how manufacturers can verify the quality of part marks to optimise inventory control and asset tracking processes. With inventory control and asset tracking more important than ever across the manufacturing sectors, the marking, identification and traceability specialist Pryor has published a free whitepaper, which explains how manufacturers can better verify the quality of part marks.