Materials Science and Engineering

MIT President L. Rafael Reif welcomes family, colleagues, friends, former students, and other associates of the late MIT Institute Professor Mildred “Millie” Dresselhaus to a symposium celebrating her life and career.

Celebrating Millie

Symposium commemorates the life and career of pioneering professor and beloved mentor Mildred Dresselhaus.

November 29, 2017

Micrographs of a metal surface after impact by metal particles. Craters are formed due to melting of the surface from the impact.

How to get sprayed metal coatings to stick

When spraying metal coatings, melting hurts rather than helps, MIT research reveals.

November 22, 2017

MIT postdoc, Grace Han, handles a new chemical composite that could provide an alternative to fuel by functioning as a kind of thermal battery.

A new way to store thermal energy

MIT researchers create material for a chemical heat “battery” that could release its energy on demand.

November 16, 2017

A new material produced by Juejun Hu and his team can be repeatedly stretched without losing its optical properties.

Researchers develop flexible, stretchable photonic devices

Light-based devices could be used as biomedical sensors or as flexible connectors for electronics.

November 7, 2017

A team of researchers at MIT, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of California at Berkeley hope to close the materials-science automation gap, with a new artificial-intelligence system that would pore through research papers to deduce “recipes” for producing particular materials.

Artificial intelligence aids materials fabrication

System could pore through millions of research papers to extract “recipes” for producing materials.

November 5, 2017

New tools for brain exploration: Class of 1942 Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering Polina Anikeeva and colleagues developed soft polymer-based devices to stimulate and record activity of brain and spinal cord tissue.

Interdisciplinary materials science a key to progress

Bringing together researchers from different science and engineering fields for Materials Day Symposium promises solutions to energy, health, and other needs.

November 5, 2017

The sliding of a perfect twin boundary, with mirrored crystal lattices on both sides, was long considered to be impossible at room temperature in metals. Here, authors show that it is possible when a nanoscale twin boundary within a copper nanopillar is compressed along certain orientations, through in-situ transmission electron microscopy (left) and molecular dynamics simulation (right).

New property found in unusual crystalline materials

Materials with a special kind of boundary between crystal grains can deform in unexpected ways.

October 25, 2017

The winning team, named A Salt Solution, won $10,000 for a prototype of a simple, low-cost hydrogel that can be incorporated into water desalination plants or placed directly into bodies of water to collect uranium. The team members are: (left to right) Jasmine Harris, Cynthia Lo, and William “Robin” Lindemann.

Hydrogel that extracts uranium from water wins MADMEC

Teams developing materials solutions for ships and buildings split second and third prizes.

October 13, 2017

A new analysis indicates that, without proper planning, there could be short-term bottlenecks in the supplies of some metals, particularly lithium and cobalt, that could cause temporary slowdowns in lithium-ion battery production. This map shows today’s trade flows of key ingredients for battery production, with exports from each country shown in red and imports in green.

Will metal supplies limit battery expansion?

Rise of electric vehicles and grid storage may cause bottlenecks, but no showstoppers, analysis suggests.

October 11, 2017

MIT researchers have developed an “air-breathing” battery that could store electricity for very long durations for about a third the price of current technologies, with minimal location restraints and zero emissions.

Making renewable power more viable for the grid

“Air-breathing” battery can store electricity for months, for about a fifth the cost of current technologies.

October 11, 2017

The new MIT Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) will streamline the organization of materials research on campus and enhance collaboration, Vice President for Research Maria Zuber (center) says. To Zuber’s left is MRL Director Carl Thompson, the Stavros Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. They are joined by newly named MRL Co-Director Geoffrey Beach, who is an associate pro...

Introducing the Materials Research Laboratory at MIT

Materials Processing Center, Center for Materials Science and Engineering merger brings together formidable resources for advancing next-generation materials.

October 10, 2017

A new paper describes the importance of doing detailed economic analysis and having in-depth conversations with people using the technology that a research project is focused on.

Why researchers should step out of the lab

Project reveals benefits of communicating with industry when conducting research.

October 4, 2017

Stephanie Bauman, an intern in the Materials Process Center and Center for Materials Science and Engineering's 2017 Summer Scholar program, holds a sample of manganese gallium, a new material known as an antiferromagnet, that can serve as the basis for long lasting, spintronic computer memory devices. She worked in the lab of assistant professor of electrical engineering Luqiao Liu.

Developing new magnetic device materials

Summer Scholar Stephanie Bauman interns in Luqiao Liu lab synthesizing and testing manganese gallium samples for spintronic applications.

October 2, 2017

Fast-moving magnetic particles could enable new form of data storage

Recently discovered phenomenon could provide a way to bypass the limits to Moore’s Law.

October 2, 2017

The aim of their new wristband is to make “temperature personal,” says Embr Labs co-founder David Cohen-Tanugi PhD ’15. “We want people who are often uncomfortable and have little control over temperature to have more control and more relief in everyday life,” he says.

“Personal thermostat” startup heats up for commercialization

MIT spinout prepares to launch line of wristbands that keep wearers thermally comfortable.

September 27, 2017

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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