NTNU NANOLAB

NTNU's major nanotechnology initiative

Materials

Some of the news are only in Norwegian.

KIFEE symposium (15.08.2006)
The second Kyoto International Forum for Energy and Environment (KIFEE) Symposium is arranged in Trondheim, Norway on September 6th to 8th 2006. The symposium will provide a forum for material scientists and process engineers to discuss and exchange recent advances in the field of energy and environment.

The KIFEE Symposium is an important strategic event for NTNU, thus we would like to recruit a lot of participants to the plenary strategic sessions and also to the workshops. Our Japanese friends aim at a Japanese team of 25 to 30 people, and we should set a goal of at least 100 Norwegian participants, including people from industry, Master and Ph-students, researchers and professors.
More information about the Symposium, Programme and Registration >>

Priser til aluminiumsforskere(02.12.2005) NTNU-professorene Nils Ryum og Harald Øye har blitt tildelt henholdsvis Polyteknisk jubileumspris 2005 og hederspris fra Norsk metallurgisk forening og Polyteknisk forening. Mer...

New solar cells see the light ( 27/12/2005 ) A new generation of more efficient solar cells is on the horizon. More in the NTNU/Sintef research magazine Gemini

HYDROGEN IN MATERIALS ( 27/12/2005 ) The off-shore sector currently relies mostly on non-corrosive materials for underwater pipelines and production systems at great depths. In the late 1990s, there were several breakdowns and subsequent production stoppages in the North Sea , including on Åsgård and Draugen. This focussed attention on the problem of hydrogen in materials. Possible sources of hydrogen include hydrogen contamination in materials used for welding and hydrogen that develops in cathode protection. The hydrogen impairs the metal properties and can lead to small cracks and defects that occur, for example during welding, becoming critical. There is now considerable international focus on this problem and research scientists at SINTEF/NTNU want to gain more knowledge on the subject. SINTEF/ NTNU recently arranged a large-scale workshop about hydrogen in materials, which attracted representatives from several oil companies, material suppliers and international research institutes. SINTEF/NTNU is now working to achieve an EU project on the theme. (Story form Gemini )

SINTEF/NTNU ABLE TO MASS-PRODUCE SUPER-MATERIAL ( 27/12/2005 ) Scientists at SINTEF Materials and Chemistry are among the first groups in the world who have developed a process for large-scale production of carbon nanotubes. The scientists have been developing their unique expertise in plasma technology and hightemperature chemistry for 30 years. Production of the strongest material in the world takes place in a high-temperature reactor designed in Trondheim.

Carbon nanotubes has turned out to have unsuspected electrical and chemical properties in addition to its high strength and extremely low weight. This means that superstrong plastics, uncrushable boat hulls and superlight aircraft could become a reality.

At the moment, there is little or no international commercial production of carbon nanotubes. However, the n-Tech company at the Institute of Energy Technology produces a few grams a day by the arc discharge method. The Trondheim reactor has been designed and built for production on the kilogram scale.

The efforts of SINTEF and NTNU have received financial support from the Research Council of Norway, and SINTEF has applied for patents on its technology. (Story form Gemini )

Price for outstanding research (22.12.2005) Professor of physics – Asle Sudbø – has received The Research Council of Norway's price for outstanding research for 2005. Sudbø has received a lot of international scientific attention lately, in particular in connection with his research team's super fluidity/ superconductivity work, as portrayed by Nature . We congratulate!

Canadians want nano-cooperation (12.12.2005) A delegation of 15 Canadian researchers visited the Research Council of Norway recently. Some initial contacts were made in the hope that eventually a more formalized cooperation will be established between Norwegian and Canadian nano-related research institutions.
The most promising areas were the two counties have common interests, are within hydrogen technology, wireless communication and new materials. Norwegian national large-scale programmes of interests for the Canadians are NANOMAT, VERDIKT, FUGE, and RENERGI. More on the visit (in Norwegian only)

Top corrosion (07.11.2005) Every three months ScienceDirect lists the 25 most frequently downloaded journal articles from more than 2,000 titles in the ScienceDirect database. In this period, "Formation and characterisation of a chromate conversion coating on AA6060 aluminium" is the most popular article within the field of corrosion science. One of the co-writers is Kemal Nisancioglu at the Department of Material Science at NTNU. ScienceDirect (as of 07.11.2005)

New quantum state (28.10.2005) When hydrogen is cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero-point - and is being subjected to extreme high pressure - completely new forms are constituted. These are called quantum states. The discovery of these new states is the result of research by Asle Sudbø and his colleagues Egor Babaev, Jo Smiseth and Eivind Smørgrav at NTNU. This work was the feature story in Nature last fall. The group has since used high capacity computers ( NOTUR ) to test their results. Now they have discovered yet another quantum state. More at Physics Web