Posts Tagged ‘materials’
“Nanotechnology is an idea that most people simply didn’t believe”*…
Indeed, in the 1980s, even as nanotech pioneer Erik Drexler, a graduate student at MIT at the time, was doing the early work of defining and charting a course for the nascent field, MIT’s departments of electric engineering and computer science refused to approve his Ph.D. topic and plan of study (though ultimately the Media Lab did, and Erik earned his doctorate).
Today the reality– and centrality– of the field are only too apparent and have become the subject of trade and industrial policy… because while the U.S. led in the development of nanotech science, it lags in manufacturing and commercialization. In an excerpt from their book Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries, Ian Fletcher and Marc Fasteau explain…
Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter at scales from a fraction of a nanometer to a few hundred nanometers — sizes between individual atoms and small single-celled organisms — at which it has radically different properties. Nanotech is already significant in many industries. Integrated circuits are a form of nanotech. Other nanotech provides the light, strong composites in aircraft and space vehicles. Still other nanotech powers the solid-state lasers used to transmit information through the internet and the light-emitting diodes in LED light bulbs and flat-screen TVs. Nanotech also makes possible solar cells, the batteries in electric cars, and medical technologies such as vaccines. It is thus the unifying thread of many of today’s most advanced technologies. Unfortunately, America is falling behind.
In the future, nanotech-based quantum computing and communications will lead to more powerful computers, transforming national security and internet commerce by making currently secret communications insecure. Medical nanotechnologies will permit targeted interventions at the cellular level, providing new weapons against diseases, biological weapons, and defenses against them. China is known to be working on these.
Much of the science underpinning these advances was developed at firms and universities in the US. But the huge manufacturing industries built on it are mostly overseas. For example, the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology Kodak created didn’t save that firm from going bankrupt in 2012. But it did enable lucrative businesses for Korea’s Samsung, to whom Kodak licensed the technology, and LG, which bought Kodak’s entire OLED business in 2009. Today, American firms like Nanosys and Universal Display develop important nanotechnologies, but do not actually manufacture the end products and are thus relatively small.
How did the US get itself into this situation? A major government program, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), has been funded since 2001, but Washington failed to appreciate the importance of having both a technology and a manufacturing strategy. The prevailing wisdom was that if the academic science was supported, mass manufacturing would follow automatically. By contrast, successful rival nations in nanotech have focused on making these technologies manufacturable at scale, employing every policy tool from R&D subsidies to cheap capital to tariffs. A 2020 National Academies review of the NNI urged that the US recognize that ‘the recent, focused, and in some cases novel commercialization approaches of other nations may be yielding better societal outcomes.’…
A little wonky, but both fascinating and important: “Nanotechnology,” via the invaluable Delanceyplace.com.
(Image above: source)
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As we get small, we might send miniscule birthday greetings to a man who whose work has contributed to the development of medical applications of nanotech: Bert Sakmann; he was born on this date in 1942. A cell physiologist, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Erwin Neher) in 1991 for their work on “the function of single ion channels in cells”– work made possible in part by their invention of the patch clamp.
“While there might be a bit of genius in what we create, the real genius rests in whoever created the essential materials without which we could not create.”*…
Ben Reinhardt on how to mass-produce the new substances on which the cavalcade of wonders that populate ours lives depend…
I’m writing these words using plastic keys, on a composite wood desk, looking at a Gorilla Glass screen. The screen is linked to a machined-aluminum computer, inside of which doped silicon switches on and off a billion times per second.
One hundred and fifty years ago, not a single one of these materials existed.
Materials are not charismatic technologies like cars or computers. Yet they enable almost every one of humanity’s technical achievements: rebar unlocked the skyscrapers of the 1920s; chemically strengthened glass delivered us smartphones; and stainless steel, not created until 1913, brought with it the clinical equipment upon which modern medicine depends.
New materials create fundamentally new human capabilities. And yet, despite university teams regularly announcing triumphantly that they’ve created a material with seemingly magical properties like artificial muscles made out of carbon nanotubes or ‘limitless power’ from graphene, new materials-enabled human capabilities have been rare in the past 50 years.
Why is there such a gap between headlines and reality when it comes to new materials? Is there anything we can do about it?
The only way to answer those questions is to understand how a material goes from a tiny test tube sample to a commodity measured in megatons. Each step in the process requires different skills, mindsets, and resources. Each step is also governed by different incentives that make sense locally but create deadly traps for the entire process. Bypassing these traps needs systems-level solutions that take into account each step of the process – whether in policy, organizational reform, or new institutions – and unlock the progress that new materials enable…
Fascinating: “Getting materials out of the lab,” from @benjaminreinhardt.com in @worksinprogress.bsky.social.
See also: “The Wonder of Modern Drywall.”
(Image above: source)
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As we celebrate stuff, we might recall that it was on this date in 1892 that Dr. Washington Sheffeld, a pioneering dentist and dental surgeon, invented the collapsible metal toothpaste tube– making dental hygiene easier– and thus more regular– for millions. His original toothpaste recipe continues to be packaged and sold as “Dr. Sheffield’s: The Original Toothpaste.”
“Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand”*…
(Roughy) Daily has looked before at that most common– and essential– of substances, sand. (See here, here, and here.) Today, via Michaela Büsse, an update…
After water, sand is the second most used material in the world. Each year, approximately 40-50 billion metric tons of sand are consumed worldwide.
This accounts for 79% of all aggregates extracted and traded, making sand the literal foundation for global human infrastructure. Sand plays a vital role in the production of glass, steel, and concrete. Silica, one of the most common minerals found in sand, is the key ingredient in silicon chips and thus for the development of digital technologies. But sand is also fundamental to the creation and maintenance of land itself, rendering it constitutive to processes of urbanization. Artificial islands, port expansions, and beach nourishment projects consume vast quantities of sand. As the bedrock of urban infrastructures, sand is embedded in the very fabric of modern life. Yet, its ubiquity belies its complexity. As a sediment, sand is foundational for the functioning of ecosystems. The relentless expansion and intensification of cities is starving rivers and coasts of sediment, depleting sand at a rate that far exceeds its natural replenishment.
Intensive dredging of rivers and seabeds has fundamentally altered sedimentation patterns, disrupting the delicate equilibrium that governs ecosystems. Rivers, which once carried sand from mountains to coastlines, now struggle to replenish beaches and wetlands. This depletion has far-reaching consequences. Without sufficient sand deposits, coastlines are left vulnerable to erosion, rising sea levels, and the devastating impact of extreme weather events. In ecosystems already on the front lines of climate change—like deltas, wetlands, and estuaries—the effects of sand extraction are compounded. Delta regions, for instance, rely on continuous sediment deposits to counteract the natural sinking of land. When sand is removed faster than it can be replaced, these regions are exposed to subsidence, where land sinks at an accelerated rate, amplifying flood risk and increasing the salinization of freshwater resources. Such impacts are often delayed, manifesting years or even decades after extraction, making them challenging to monitor and mitigate effectively.
As global sand consumption surges to unprecedented heights, the profound and far-reaching consequences of extraction come sharply into focus. Numerous journalistic and scientific accounts warn of the “looming tragedy of the sand commons,” highlighting environmental concerns related to dredging and mining sand, such as pollution, biodiversity loss, and soil disturbance, as well as illegal practices in the sand trade. The reality of the sand trade is both dirty and messy, intertwining national and transnational politics. In regions like Southeast Asia, rapid urbanization and investments in large-scale infrastructure projects have spurred an unprecedented demand for this essential resource. Here, land reclamation has emerged as a flashpoint where extraction practices intersect with issues of sovereignty, livelihoods, and environmental justice, transforming sand into a highly sought-after and contested commodity. Building new land for some means taking old land from others. The exploitation of sand goes hand in hand with exploitative labor and geopolitical maneuvering.
Sand’s impending scarcity has fueled a black market, giving rise to “sand mafias”—criminal organizations that exploit extraction and trade through corruption, violence, and intimidation, often circumventing national mining and export bans. It is not uncommon for sand to become a matter of life and death for those who mine it as well as for those who seek to prevent it from being mined. Across the world, activists and local communities have mobilized against sand extraction and land reclamation, fighting the prevailing narratives of development and progress that often justify environmental exploitation. However, these initiatives are rarely successful, resulting (at best) in compensation payments to the affected communities. A transboundary governance of sand would require international standards, which many researchers and organizations have requested. Even so, it is nearly impossible to control the natural flow of sand.
As sand transitions from a sediment to a precious resource, it has become instrumental in urban ideals of late modernity. Cities like Dubai and Singapore epitomize how architectural ambitions is built on vast quantities of imported sand. Land built from scratch, towering skyscrapers, and sprawling infrastructure are testaments to sand’s transformative potential. Yet, these urban landscapes are haunted by their materiality: each grain is a silent witness to the ecological and social disruptions that enabled its journey. The sand in these structures embodies the persistence of environmental degradation, displaced labor, and the exploitation that made them possible. In this way, sand is both an architect and a specter of modernity’s unrestrained ambitions, leaving us to confront the shadows cast by our own constructions…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Granular Power: The Gritty Politics of Sand,” from @michaelabussey.bsky.social and @eflux.bsky.social.
* Jorge Luis Borges
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As we get grainy, we might send insightful birthday greetings to James Hansen; he was born on this date in 1941. An atmospheric physicist, he was Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (from 1981-2013). He is best known for his (June, 1988) testimony to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that there was 99% certainty the cause of climate change was known with 99% certainty to be the buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere– helping raise broad awareness of global warming– and for his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. (Hansen has since proposed a revised explanation of global warming, where the 0.7°C global mean temperature increase of the last 100 years can be to some extent explained by the effect of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide (such as methane).
Currently the Director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, he remains a climate activist.
“It’s peculiar. It’s special. There’s very little of it, but it has this pivotal role in the universe.”*…
One of the oldest, scarcest elements in the universe has given us treatments for mental illness, ovenproof casserole dishes, and electric cars. Increasingly, our response to climate change seems to depend on it. But how much do we really know about lithium? Jacob Baynham explains…
The universe was born small, unimaginably dense and furiously hot. At first, it was all energy contained in a volume of space that exploded in size by a factor of 100 septillion in a fraction of a second. Imagine it as a single cell ballooning to the size of the Milky Way almost instantaneously. Elementary particles like quarks, photons and electrons were smashing into each other with such violence that no other matter could exist. The primordial cosmos was a white-hot smoothie in a blender.
One second after the Big Bang, the expanding universe was 10 billion degrees Kelvin. Quarks and gluons had congealed to make the first protons and neutrons, which collided over the course of a few minutes and stuck in different configurations, forming the nuclei of the first three elements: two gases and one light metal. For the next 100 million years or so, these would be the only elements in the vast, unblemished fabric of space before the first stars ignited like furnaces in the dark to forge all other matter.
Almost 14 billion years later, on the third rocky planet orbiting a young star in a distal arm of a spiral galaxy, intelligent lifeforms would give names to those first three elements. The two gases: hydrogen and helium. The metal: lithium.
This is the story of that metal, a powerful, promising and somehow still mysterious element on which those intelligent lifeforms — still alone in the universe, as far as they know — have pinned their hopes for survival on a planet warmed by their excesses…
[Baynham tells the story of this remarkable element, the development of it many uses (in psychopharmacology, in materials science, and of course in electronics– especially batteries), the rigors of extracting it for those purposes, and the challenges that its scarcity– and its potency– present…]
… Long before cell phones and climate anxiety and the Tesla Model Y, long before dinosaurs and the first creatures that climbed out of the ocean to walk on land, long before the Earth formed from swirling masses of cosmic matter heavy enough to coalesce, back, way back, to the infant universe, to the dawn of matter itself, there were just three types of atoms — three elements in the blank canvas of space. One of them was lithium. It was light, fragile and extremely reactive, its one outer electron tenuously held in place.
Everything we have done with lithium, all its wondrous applications in energy, industry and psychiatry, somehow hinges on this basic structure, a sort of magic around which we’re increasingly engineering our future. Lightness is usually associated with abundance on the periodic table — almost 99% of the mass of the universe is just the lightest two elements. Lithium, however, is the third lightest element and still mysteriously scarce…
That most elemental of elements: “The Secret, Magical Life of Lithium,” from @JacobBaynham in @noemamag.com.
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As we muse on materials, we might send densely-packed birthday greetings to Philip W. Anderson; he was born on this date in 1923. A theoretical physicist, he shared (with John H. Van Vleck and Sir Nevill F. Mott) the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physics for his research on semiconductors, superconductivity, and magnetism. Anderson made contributions to the theories of localization, antiferromagnetism, symmetry breaking including a paper in 1962 discussing symmetry breaking in particle physics, leading to the development of the Standard Model around 10 years later), and high-temperature superconductivity, and to the philosophy of science through his writings on emergent phenomena. He was a pioneer in the field that he named: condensed matter physics, which has found applications in semiconductor and laserr technology, magnetic storage, liquid crystals, optical fibers, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and biomedicine.
“Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity”*…
… but that authenticity can be hard to find…
In 2016, US retailer Target severed ties with textile manufacturer Welspun India after discovering that 750,000 sheets and pillowcases labelled Egyptian cotton were not 100% Egyptian after all.
Egypt has long been known for producing long- and extra-long-staple cotton, a variety of the crop with especially long threads that results in softer and more durable fabric – so products labelled Egyptian typically command a higher price. But the year after the Welspun incident, the Cotton Egypt Association estimated that 90% of global supplies of Egyptian cotton in 2016 were fake.
Egyptian cotton is not the only fabric that has fallen foul of mislabelling in recent years. In 2020, the Global Organic Textile Standard (Gots) said that 20,000 tonnes of Indian cotton had been incorrectly certified as organic – around a sixth of the country’s total production. In 2017, a Vietnamese silk brand admitted that half of its silk actually came from China. And in 2018, several British retailers had to withdraw “faux” fur products that turned out to be the real thing.
From choosing an organic cotton T-shirt to buying trainers made out of recycled plastic bottles, many of us opt to pay more in the hope that our purchase will be better quality, or help people or the planet. However, as the Welspun incident and others have shown, when it comes to textiles, we’re not always getting what we think we’ve paid for…
How can we tell if the clothes in our wardrobes really are what they claim to be? “Why fabric fraud is so easy to hide,” from @BBC_Future.
* Coco Chanel
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As we root around for the real, we might recall that it was on this date in 1938 that Howard Hawks’ comedy Bringing Up Baby premiered at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco. Featuring Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and a leopard, the film earned good reviews but suffered at the box office. Indeed, Hepburn’s career fell into a slump– she was one of a group of actors labeled as “box office poison” by the Independent Theatre Owners of America– that she broke with The Philadelphia Story (again with Grant) in 1940.
As for Bringing Up Baby, the film did well when re-released in the 1940s, and grew further in popularity when it began to be shown on television in the 1950s. Today it is recognized as the authentic screwball classic that it is; it sits at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and ranks among “Top 100” on lists from the American Film Institute and the National Society of Film Critics.
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