Specialty Chemicals

Recent engineering innovation in nanomaterials has promised to remake field from electronics to medicine, as scientists gain increasing ability to manipulate materials at even the smallest scales.

Carbon nanotubes have been cast as one of a new wave of super-materials that are set to redefine engineering solutions in industries from aerospace to electronics. But nanotubes remain difficult to manufacture at a usable scale, a challenge that engineering researchers at Rice University hope to overcome with a new method of creating negatively-charged carbon nanotube liquid crystals.

Researchers at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln could have found an innovative engineering solution to one of the trickier problems in materials science - making a structural fiber that is both strong enough to bear heavy loads and tough enough not to break under duress.

A new engineering innovation in the so-called "artificial leaf" could make the technology practical for people living in the difficult conditions that it was initially intended - rural and small-town residents in developing countries without consistent access to normal electric grids.

The process for producing a key chemical for consumer products could be simplified and even improved thanks to engineering research and development at the University of Michigan that could lead to a new way to prevent the oxidation of copper.

A major leap forward in so-called "green chemistry" could lead to the production of certain key chemicals from entirely sustainable sources.

Foggy glasses might not seem like a particularly daunting engineering challenge, but the broader problem of condensation on glass can actually cause problems everywhere from the highway to the research lab.

A new take on an old material could shake up the market for carbon capture, promising better efficiency in more challenging environments.

Engineering research continues to turn up new possibilities of the latest wonder material, graphene, as a group from the Georgia Institute of Technology has found a way to use it to produce a wireless data transfer hundreds of times faster than anything available with current technology.

Some of the biggest names in technology and social engineering research have joined forces to award financial prizes to scientists working on projects aimed at extending human life and curing disease.