2015

CO₂ has become a challenge for our society and we have to develop new materials for its photo-/electrocatalysis, chemoresistive sensing, and storage. Particularly, for the variety of electrochemical applications the selective interaction of CO₂ and charge transfer with solids is in the foreground, but their origins are poorly understood.

Science in a nutshell: During a Polybahn ride from Central up to the ETH Zurich ETH members have the time to inspire the audience for their work. In this issue, Prof. Ralph Spolenak, Nanometallurgy, explains why his group plays with defects. (German)

The Department of Materials is happy to announce that on December 2/3, the Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology has appointed Eric Dufresne (*1974), currently tenured Associate Professor at Yale University, New Haven, USA, as Full Professor of Soft and Living Materials.

Researchers at polymer technology and soft materials groups have discovered that vegetable oils can be used to make improved super strong plastic fibres.

The ETH Zurich’s student association (VSETH) has selected Martin Willeke as a recipient of the “Golden Owl”. Each year, VSETH confers the owls to lecturers in appreciation of their excellence in teaching.

The mechanism of flow in glassy materials is of both fundamental interest and technological importance. To elucidate the mechanism by which glassy materials flow, researchers at the Soft Materials Laboratory in collaboration with a group in FORTH (Greece) have used superposition rheometry applied to model nearly hard sphere colloidal glasses during flow in combination with simulations. The main microscopic mechanism of flow can be identified as a convective cage release.

André Studart and his colleagues of the Complex Materials group added magnetic particles at different concentrations to resins of varying viscosities. Applying a low magnetic field during the 3D printing process allowed the team to control the orientation of the particles, and hence the texture, within the printed object.

Icosahedral short-range order (SRO) often dominates the structure and thus the properties of metallic glasses. Scientists of the Laboratory of Metal Physics and Technology have now clarified via MD simulations how such icosahedral SRO influences glass formation and mechanical properties.

ETH material researchers at the Complex Materials group are developing a procedure that allows them to mimic the complex fine structure of biological composite materials, such as teeth or seashells. They can thus create synthetic materials that are as hard and tough as their natural counterparts. 

Scientists from the Laboratory for Mesoscopic Systems, together with researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute and University of St. Andrews, have measured phase transitions in a frustrated magnetic metamaterial made up of mesoscopic magnets using low energy muons.