Osram’s Planon lamp systems are new light sources with high output and extremely uniform luminance in a flat panel design. The Planon lamp is a flat, dimmable, mercury-free discharge light source. Its sleek shape and high luminance makes it the perfect solution for liquid crystal displays (LCD) and backlight applications, yielding up to twice the maintained output of conventional and cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) technologies.
Producing instant full light output across a wide range of temperatures, Planon far exceeds the performance capabilities of many mercury-containing fluorescent lamps. Its extremely long lamp life is unaffected by rapid switching cycles, making Planon the ideal solution for effect lighting or other special-purpose general lighting application strategies. [Excerpted from the Osram website; suggested by CJ Brockway, Seattle.]
Andy Ouderkirk and fellow 3M scientist Mike Weber were zapping polymers with powerful lasers as part of a materials science experiment when Ouderkirk realized he could bind together hundreds of sheets of polymer film to create a highly reflective material. The resulting plastic mirror is much cheaper to produce than the traditional vacuum-coated glass variety. And it reflects light waves from across the spectrum: because the film doesn't absorb infrared, it can be used as an invisible window coating, screening out solar rays without blocking any visible light and radio waves, as metallic screens do. 3M plans to launch its first plastic-mirror products later this year. "There's an incredible breadth of apps," says Ouderkirk. "We're having a good time exploring." [Researched by Valerie Cover.]
Almute is an engineered metal panel that absorbs sound. Manufactured by Peer Inc., Almute represents the culmination of many years of development in advanced sintering and fine-grain metal processing. Peer Inc. mixes aluminum grains mixed with pre-alloyed metal powders and forms them into rigid panels in a sintering furnace. Sintering allows the particles to fuse together at a temperature below their melting points, and the result is a strong, durable panel that is nevertheless highly porous. It is this porosity that gives Almute its broad-band acoustic absorption characteristics.
Almute may be used outdoors in harsh, corrosive, and high temperature environments, and is non-flammable. Almute is easily cut and installed on-site, and also provides RF and EM shielding. [Excerpted from the Almute website; suggested by Jeff Miller, Seattle.]
The SmartSlab has been described as the world's toughest digital video display for walls, floors, billboards and buildings. Each slab is designed in a honeycomb structure inspired by the optics of a fly's eye. Instead of using standard pixels it uses hexels (hexagonal pixels) that provide an 18% better resolution than just the standard pixel.
The SmartSlab display is suitable for any position in any environment; it is capable of holding a ton of weight; it is water, fire and vandalism resistant and doesn't power down an entire energy grid when powered up. The SmartSlab is bright too: the standard luminance is 1,000 Cd/m2 and a high brightness model is available at 5,000 Cd/m2.
Moreover, the SmartSlab can also be used as a speaker, providing a 3D immersive "heightened reality" sound system. [Suggested by Timothy Grech, Pittsburgh.]
In the same way that the inventions of steel in the 1800s and plastic in the 1900s sparked revolutions for industry, a new class of amorphous alloys is poised to redefine materials science as we know it in the 21st century.
Welcome to the 3rd Revolution, otherwise known as the era of Liquidmetal alloys, where metals behave similar to plastics but possess more than twice the strength of high-performance titanium. Liquidmetal alloys were conceived in 1992, as a result of a project funded by the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), NASA, and the U.S. Department of Energy, to study the fundamentals of metallic alloys in an undercooled liquid state, for the development of new aerospace materials.
Arguably the first major breakthrough in materials technology since the development of thermoplastics, Liquidmetal alloys offer superior mechanical properties compared to other highly engineered materials. Compared to crystalline metallic alloys, Liquidmetal is much more resistant to permanent deformation from impact, and 3 times more elastic or resilient. [Excerpted from the NASA website; suggested by Scott Gustafson, Los Angeles.]
British Columbia-based Interstyle makes several lines of beautiful hand-crafted, etched glass mosaics which are impervious to liquids and vapors, resistant to fading or discoloring, simple to install with standard tools, frostproof, and easy to clean. The tiles come in mesh-mounted sheets which can be applied directly to walls and countertops and can be wrapped around curved surfaces. The sheets can be cut into strips to be used as decorative borders in combination with other cladding materials.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Interstyle mosaics is their rich color quality. Because the pigment is imbedded at the back of the tile, light refracts through the thickness of the glass, and allows colors to become deep and liquid.
Cargill Dow has invented a new technology to produce performance polymers entirely from annually renewable resources. Using a patented technology, they start with natural sugars derived from plants such as corn, wheat, beets and rice and use fermentation to create lactic acid (a food additive) and some simple refining steps to create polylactide polymers (PLA). The result is the only commercially viable polymer to combine performance and cost competitiveness with outstanding environmental benefits.
NatureWorks clear plastic polylactide PLA can be shaped into a variety of bottles, containers, trays, film and other packaging. NatureWorks LLC operates a global-scale facility in Blair, Nebraska, USA, capable of producing more than 140,000 metric tons (300 million pounds) of NatureWorks PLA per year. From cradle to resin, the production of NatureWorks PLA uses 68 percent less fossil fuel resources than traditional plastics (PET) and it is the world's first greenhouse-gas-neutral polymer. [Excerpted from the NatureWorks LLC website; suggested by Carsten Stinn, Seattle.]
Suspensions is a product developed by Cannon/Bullock which consists of layers of handmade translucent wall coverings and fabrics that are suspended within panels of clear high-impact polyester resin. Each layer is hand laid and finished with a variety of textures, and thus each piece is unique. The panels can be used for everything from walls, furniture and case goods to lighting fixtures and window treatments.
Suspensions is offered in sheets 4' x 8' which may be easily cut on site. The gauge or thickness of sheets may be specified as well as the surface texture. Custom colors, patterns, and designs, as well as graphics can also be incorporated. [Suggested by Alex Spencer, Seattle.]
Plastics come in many forms. They are used to make boats, magnifiers, skis and all manner of household items. Transparent plastic sheet panels would be ideal in the manufacture of windows or headlamps of cars, for example, and tinted plastic foils could more readily be used to protect against the sun – if only the material was not so easily scratched. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP in Dresden have developed a process by which plastic sheet panels and foils can be rapidly coated with a scratchproof glassy layer at moderate costs.
There are various means of applying a transparent scratchproof coating to plastic materials: liquid coatings such as paint or sol-gel applications - or methods such as plasma chemical vapor deposition, sputtering or electron-beam evaporation, whereby the coating is applied in a vacuum. Liquid coatings are relatively inexpensive, but do not ensure such a hard and wear-resistant surface as do vacuum coating processes. High-rate electron-beam evaporation is copmaratively the least expensive vacuum coating process. To achieve coatings of extreme hardness and resilience it is necessary to apply an intensive plasma during the evaporation process. "We evaporate quartz glass, which is then deposited on the plastic surface," explains Dr. Manfred Neumann of the FEP. "The system we use can coat foils or sheets with a width of up to 40 centimeters, but in principle coating widths of several meters are quite possible." The coating speed with plasma-activated high-rate electron-beam evaporation is around 100 times greater than with other vacuum coating processes – applying a thickness of up to a micrometer per second.
Clear and hard glass surfaces of this kind open up new potential applications for plastics – in car windows and headlamps, solar collectors, floor coverings and wall panels. A thin surface coating only six micrometers in depth makes the plastic as wear-resistant as normal glass. The high speed of the process substantially reduces costs – and the greater the volume of plastic coated, the less expensive the job becomes. [Excerpted from the Fraunhofer Institute's website]
Renewable raw materials ease the burden on the environment. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT in Pfinztal near Karlsruhe, led by Prof. Peter Eyerer and Dr. Norbert Eisenreich, are developing a thermoplastic material – deformable under heat – based on natural resources. The unusual thing about this material, which is known as Arboform, is that although it possesses similar properties to wood, it can be cheaply injection-molded like a plastic. This can be a major advantage in production, for example, in the manufacture of molded parts for the automobile industry.
One of the raw materials used in Arboform is lignin. This is the substance that gives wood its rigidity. Lignin is the second most frequently occurring polymer in nature. Every year millions of tons of it are produced as a by-product in the paper industry. Up to now lignin has mainly been burned in order to produce energy, but this renewable material can also be used in a different way: when lignin is mixed with natural fibers, the thermoplastic material Arboform is formed. This can be used in many applications as a substitute for synthetic materials derived from oil. "We have been working for two years on the optimum composition of natural polymers and natural fibers," Helmut Nägele and Jürgen Pfitzer of the ICT report. The scientists are working on ways of making Arboform more malleable and more heat-resistant.
Because Arboform possesses the same material properties as wood, it can be used in the design of the base material. In the future wooden materials made from lignin could replace traditional synthetics such as polyamide or other substances used to build computers, televisions or mobile phone cases. The scientists are tailoring the "liquid wood" to special processing technologies and product requirements and are implementing their innovations at the spin-off company, Tecnaro GmbH. [Excerpted from the Fraunhofer Institute's website.]
Flexibility and communicative working environments are the determining factors in office design for the future. Moveable partitions from Hüppelux offer "maximum flexibility and practicality combined with top quality." Scales range from room-in-room systems for shop-floors or versatile office layouts to giant mobile-walls for foyers or auditoria. Hüppelux claims "there are virtually no limits to individual design in terms of shape, material and color. All the usual interior surfaces are possible, and individual design ideas can be turned into reality." [Excerpted from the Hüppelux website; suggested by Carsten Stinn]
Insulation materials used for sound insulation, as thermal cladding and in fire prevention play an important role in modern building. Ever since asbestos and a number of other building materials were identified as hazardous, demand has continually grown for non-fibrous building materials that do not present any risk to health. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP in Stuttgart have developed the fiber-free material, Reapor. It is waterproof, fireproof, and even resistant to acid attack. It is extremely stable and at the same time light in weight, it insulates against heat and cold, and absorbs sound. Furthermore, it is extremely environment-friendly. It is made of 90% recycled glass, and can itself be recycled in its entirety. To round off its merits – it is easy to machine, to saw or to drill.
Reapor’s basic material is the granular expanded glass Liaver, a spherical and lightweight building material made from recycled glass. It has already found uses in building, for example as an additive to mortar or plaster to reduce material density and thereby weight. In the production of Reapor, the granular expanded glass is sintered. The tiny spheres of glass are heated and certain agents added. At the points where the Liaver spheres touch, extremely stable bonds or sintering necks are generated. This phenomenon is due to that fact that the glass only melts at the points of contact, and thus no additional binding agents are required. A further useful property of Reapor is that the customer can specify the size and distribution of the pores – in accordance with the desired degree of thermal or acoustic insulation, and weight requirements. [Excerpted from the Fraunhofer Institute website.]
A light emitting diode is an electronic component that converts electrical energy into light or infrared radiation in the range of 550 nm (green light) to 1300 nm (infrared). An LED is made of semiconductor material, such as gallium arsenide phosphide, that glows when electricity is passed through it. (The first digital watches and calculators had LED displays, but many later models use liquid-crystal displays.)
Although LED technology has not historically possessed the necessary intensity appropriate for lighting applications, Bruck has developed a low-voltage fixture powerful enough for accent or display lighting. The benefits of LED light include: 1) little or no heat emission and 2) color control superior to neon or fiber optics.
The Bothell, Washington-based company Microvision has targeted three principal categories of applications for personal displays that span a broad range of fields of use, ranging from defense and public safety to consumer electronics and entertainment. Microvision is currently developing personal display solutions in the following areas:
Wearable "augmented reality" displays Incorporated into eyeglasses, goggles or helmets, Microvision's technology will display an image that doesn't block the user's view but will instead superimpose a high-contrast monochromatic or color image on top of it. This ability can enhance the safety, precision and productivity of professionals performing complex tasks.
Wearable three-dimensional / interactive displays Microvision's technology can be incorporated into eyeglasses, goggles or helmets to create a stereoscopic, 3-d effect. These compact, high-resolution displays can further enhance the visual realism of the interactive experience to make the simulated environment more engaging.
Hand-held two-dimensional displays Microvision's technology will be integrated into cellular phones and pagers, allowing users to tap into business networks or the Internet to view e-mail, web pages, faxes and files as if on a full-size desktop monitor. This ability affords greater convenience and utility to users of these devices.
The Clodagh Collection comprises one running line and three custom broadloom products named Buncrana, Glanmire, Kildare and Lisadell. These three-dimensional, textured offerings, which employ Lees’ next-generation TriAx tufting technology, are constructed of DuPont Antron Legacy nylon, and are 5/64-inch gauge, 40 oz. face weight products. TriAx allows yarn to be manipulated to a three-dimensional level of precision by accurately placing and controlling design and textural elements in unlimited pile heights. This creates intriguing surface textures and color interest through highlighting and refraction, giving depth and loft to plain colors in an unprecedented way; solids look like they are constructed of more than one color.
Pilkington Profilit is a translucent cast glass structural glazing system which consists of a series of self-supporting glass channels within an extruded metal perimeter frame. The system is relatively cost-effective, and well-suited for exterior and interior curved wall applications. The long, sweeping wall of Steven Holl's Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, for instance, is comprised of Pilkington Profilit. The U-shaped glass channels are formed by computer-controlled furnaces, and are inherently strong enough to be installed without additional vertical or horizontal supports. A high-quality translucent silicone sealant which matches the natural tint of the glass must be used at all joints to make the system weather-tight.
