Materials science and engineering

When water molecules (red and white) and sodium and chlorine ions (green and purple) in saltwater (shown at the right) encounter a sheet of graphene (pale blue, center) perforated by holes of the right size, the water passes through (on the left), but the sodium and chlorine of the salt are blocked.

A brighter future for filtered seawater

MIT researchers evaluate graphene’s potential for making desalination economically viable.

February 13, 2014

NSE undergrad Minh Dinh’s love of learning, materials, and programming leads him to research group role

February 12, 2014

Visiting graduate student Ryan Oliver with a microscope. Oliver's projects under associate professor of mechanical engineering A. John Hart include the Robofurnace, an automated system for making carbon nanotube forests and studying their growth, and high-throughput manufacturing of polymer microstructures for biosensing.

Improving carbon nanotube consistency in the lab

Bench-top 'Robofurnace' automates chemical vapor deposition process.

February 12, 2014

Mostafa Bedewy next to hood with a chemical vapor deposition system he uses to make and study carbon nanotube forests. Published research by Bedewy, with Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering A. John Hart and colleagues, showed that better production methods for aligned carbon nanotubes will require control of both collective chemical and mechanical factors governing their growth and self-...

Carbon nanotubes under stress

Postdoc Mostafa Bedewy shows complex competition between chemical activation and mechanical forces in growing CNT forests.

February 7, 2014

Professor A. John Hart with a folding paper cylinder. Paper's ability to fold and unfold many times and retain its integrity is a motivation for Hart's work on origami-inspired engineering.

Faculty highlight: A. John Hart

Mechanical engineering professor explores the science and technology of nano manufacturing.

February 5, 2014

Examples of materials discovered through new technique: Lithium-containing compounds called sidorenkites were identified as potential battery cathode materials through high-throughput computational exploration. No lithium-containing materials with the CO3 and PO4 chemical groups found in these compounds exist in nature — these materials are fully synthetic and unexpected. Depending on the specif...

Materials database proves its mettle with new discoveries

Project provides a systematic way of exploring the vast realm of unfamiliar materials.

February 4, 2014

In the top pair of images, sound waves (blue and yellow bands) passing through a flat layered material are only minimally affected. In the lower images, when sound goes through a wrinkled layered material, certain frequencies of sound are blocked and filtered out by the material.

A new wrinkle in the control of waves

Flexible materials could provide ways to manipulate sound and light.

January 24, 2014

Seeing beauty in a materials science world

Marshall Scholar Colleen Loynachan tackles materials science problems with a photographer’s perspective.

January 15, 2014

How the immune system fights off malaria

Study reveals immune cells that are critical to combating the parasite in early stages of infection.

January 13, 2014

Conventional layered lithium and transition metal cathode material (top) and the new disordered material studied by researchers at MIT (bottom) as seen through a scanning transmission electron microscope. Inset images show diagrams of the different structures in these materials. (In the disordered material, the blue lines show the pathways that allow lithium ions to traverse the material.)

Disordered materials hold promise for better batteries

MIT researchers find that contrary to conventional wisdom, cathodes made of disordered lithium compounds can perform better than perfectly ordered ones.

January 9, 2014

On a piece of graphene (the horizontal surface with a hexagonal pattern of carbon atoms), in a strong magnetic field, electrons can move only along the edges, and are blocked from moving in the interior. In addition, only electrons with one direction of spin can move in only one direction along the edges (indicated by the blue arrows), while electrons with the opposite spin are blocked (as shown b...

Graphene can host exotic new quantum electronic states at its edges

New approach to use of 2-D carbon material opens up unexpected properties, could unleash new uses.

December 22, 2013

CSHub members (left to right) Krystyn Van Vliet, principal investigator; Franz-Josef Ulm, faculty director; Jeremy Gregory, executive director; and Roland Pellenq, scientific director, hope to manipulate cement at the molecular level to make it more environmentally benign.

MIT research in concrete gets funding boost

The MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub seeks to advance the scientific basis for evaluating the environmental impact of concrete.

December 17, 2013

Comparison of graphene oxide before (left) and after (right) the new annealing treatment. The graphene sheet is represented by yellow carbon spheres, while the oxygens and hydrogens are represented as red and white spheres. Annealing causes oxygen atoms to form clusters, creating areas of pure graphene (as shown in the right image). This results in increased light absorption, improved conduction ...

New graphene treatment could unleash new uses

MIT team develops simple, inexpensive method that could help realize material’s promise for electronics, solar power, and sensors.

December 15, 2013

Silvija Gradečak seeks to better the world through new materials

Looking for better materials for solar cells, LEDs, and other technology, one molecule at a time.

December 6, 2013

The MIT team's experimental setup is pictured above.

Magnetic nanoparticles could aid heat dissipation

Particles suspended in cooling water could prevent hotspots in nuclear plant cooling systems and electronics.

November 19, 2013

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