March 2024 Composites Blog
March 4, 2024
New Composite Material May Help Canada Transition to Nuclear Energy
Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada have high hopes for their newly developed glass-ceramic composite which could be used to store nuclear waste. Professor at Saskatchewan, Andrew Grosvenor and PhD student Mehrnaz Mikhchian recently completed a one-year study which focused on testing the new composite’s capacity to store nuclear waste. Grosvenor had the following description of the composite material, he said, “Think of a chocolate chip cookie. The dough is a glass matrix, and the chocolate chips are crystallites of a crystalline-ordered oxide material.” He further explains that the “study determined that after a very long period of being exposed to water and extensive studies, that the corrosion (resistance) of these glass-ceramic composites was equivalent if not better than just the glass on its own.” Apparently, the new composite material also contains a higher percentage of waste than glass. The researchers hope that their glass-ceramic composite is recognized as the next generation material for nuclear waste storage. Andrew Grosvenor believes the material may be important in helping Canada adopt nuclear energy and he has already had conversations with Canadian organizations that are willing to use this new technology. Learn more here.
March 19, 2024
Microscale Structures Can Now be Mass Produced With New 3D Printing Technique
Microscale Structures Can Now be Mass Produced With New 3D Printing Technique
Microscopic 3D-printed structures have potential in several applications such as vaccine delivery, microelectronics, and microfluidics. Production speeds for these structures have been greatly accelerated thanks to a new 3D printing technique. The need for highly precise coordination between light delivery, stage movement, and resin properties made the scalable production of such custom microstructures very difficult. However, thanks to a new 3D printing technique introduced by researchers at Stanford University, microstructures can now be produced at an accelerated pace and at a larger scale. In fact, researchers estimate that the new processing technique can produce up to 1 million customizable and highly detailed microstructures per day. The new 3D printing technique builds on a prior technique that was also developed at Stanford. The technique is referred to as continuous liquid interface production or CLIP. CLIP cures resin rapidly using UV light that is projected in slices. A oxygen permeable window above the UV light projector is a key component of the process. This component enables the creation of a dead zone that prevents uncured resin from sticking to the window, which allows delicate features to cure without having to rip each layer from the window, this in turn leads to faster printing. Author of the study and professor of translational medicine at Stanford, Joseph DeSimone said “Using light to fabricate objects without molds opens up a whole new horizon in the particle world." Learn more about this topic here.
