Materials Discovery Could Help Meet Electronic Industry Needs
A material made of common elements that has the potential for use in everyday electronics such as cellphones and which could make them both cheaper more environmentally friendly, has been discovered by researchers at the University of British Columbia.
The research team used the REIXS beamline of the Canadian Light Source (CLS) University of Saskatchewan to quantify the material’s behaviour: “We’ve recently discovered a family of materials that have an exciting property of having very adjustable magnetic properties,” said lead researcher Alannah Hallas, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UBC. “Magnetic materials are super important because they are the backbone of many modern technologies.”
The high-entropy material is composed of a disordered mixture of fi ve or more elements. While entropy, or the disorder of a system, is usually considered a disadvantage, this new material proved to have useful properties such as its adjustable magnetism.
The research, conducted through the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, involved creating the material under high heat and
rapidly cooling it to create a disordered crystal lattice. This disorder was then imaged at the CLS.
Mario González-Rivas, a PhD candidate working on the project, said that making the high-entropy crystals was not the most diffi cult part of the experiment. Rather, the challenge was fi nding the optimal level of disorder: “There’s a fair amount of optimising to do . . . (but) the method we describe in the paper is scalable and is industrially relevant,” he said.
The team’s breakthrough is important because many magnetic materials for high-tech products are made from rare earth elements — which are relatively rare. They are also diffi cult to mine and to purify.
“This type of research could be promising for any application that needs magnetic materials,” added Hallas. “Just by changing the ratios of the atoms, we can elicit a wide range of behaviours and strengths.”
While the fi eld of high-entropy materials is relatively new — having fi rst appeared in scientifi c literature in 2015 — signifi cant strides are already being made, including from the Hallas team with help from the CLS.
Alannah Hallas and Mario González-Rivas (Credit: CLS)
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Alliance to Build Knowledge around In-Situ Microscopy
RMS Awards – Nominations Open
Applications are now open for a wide range of prestigious RMS Awards – These include the RMS President’s Award, the RMS Vice Presidents’ Award, RMS Scientifi c Achievement Award, Chris Hawes Award for Outreach and Education, Chris Hawes Award for Outreach and Education and the Early Career Award. The closing date for nominations is 21 April 2023.
The Society is also currently accepting nominations for Honorary Fellowships - awarded for eminence in microscopy or related branches of science, or for exceptional service to science.
Several of the previous award-winners attended the RMS Annual General Meeting in September 2022 to receive their accolades in person.
The event was held at the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Burlington House in London, with around 70 attendees, and more than 40 others watching a live-stream of the event online. Details on the nomination process can be found on the RMS website.
From left: G. Moldovan, T. Kostovčík, N. Randall, M. Willinger, J. Neuman, G. Boetsch, Ch. Sichting
Alemnis Ag, Imina Technologies, NenoVision s.r.o and point electronic GmbH have announced the formation of the In-Situ Alliance to share know-how and technology for in-situ microscopy and testing, to accelerate innovation and adoption of new techniques and to foster new applications across disciplines.
Providing characterisation tools, solutions and services, the alliance has also been strengthened by principle investigator on in- situ techniques, Professor Dr Marc Georg Willinger Chair of Electron Microscopy, Technische Universität München.
Electron Microscopy (EM) has advanced beyond imaging and related analysis since development of techniques such as AFM, electrical probing, sample manipulation and force sensing and is widely used across different disciplines in research and engineering.
The Alliance aims to connect industry and academia in its mission to both advance development of in-situ tools and techniques while expanding the research and knowledge base to a wider audience of potential users and developers.
Alliance members will be attending mmc 2023, Manchester UK,4-6 July; M&M 2023 Minneapolis, USA, 23-27 July; and IMC20, Busan, Korea, 10-15 September
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tooz technologies becomes Zeiss Group’s competence centre for augmented reality products
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The shares of the joint venture company tooz technologies, founded together with Deutsche Telekom in 2018, have been acquired by the Zeiss Group, bringing the optical and optoelectronics developer into potential growth areas in the virtual reality glasses markets.
Previously each partner held 50% of the shares in the start-up, which develops high-tech optics in the area of augmented reality. Zeiss and Deutsche Telekom pooled their expertise in the fi elds of
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RMS President Grace Burke with Hon Fellows from left: Professors Ed Boyes, Barry Carter and David Williams
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tooz to Become AR/VR Competence Centre of ZEISS Group
optics, optoelectronics and connectivity – three critical factors for realizing market-ready smart glasses - which has successfully led to the development of seamlessly integrated complete solutions for smart glasses over the past years.
“In a challenging and exploratory technological environment, we have achieved all the goals and milestones that we set together with Zeiss and Deutsche Telekom,” said Dr Kai Ströder, CEO of tooz. “Now is the right time to focus on the unique selling points: serial production and visual correction in imaging systems. We will also retain our start-up organisation as part of the ZEISS Group to remain agile in this complex and dynamic technological race.”
As the Zeiss Group’s AR/VR competence centre, tooz will further drive the development and integration of optics for augmented reality products completely independently. In the future, tooz will also equip optical systems from other manufacturers of AR/VR optics with prescription lenses to place products with an integrated prescription on the global markets.
“tooz covers specifi c competencies and technologies for design, engineering and manufacturing processes, which complement the existing capabilities at Zeiss quite well. tooz will benefi t in particular from production and process know-how and the signifi cant experience in the approval of medical optics and will be better positioned on the international market in the future,” said Gerrit Schulte, Head of Zeiss Ventures.
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