material – Agilent Technologies Blog

Happy “Back to the Future” Day!

Russell Lee — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 14:30:05 +0000

November 1989 saw the release of the popular science fiction movie, “Back to the Future Part II.” In this time-bending adventure, several characters travel to a date far off in the future: October 21, 2015. With this date now actually upon us, how well did the movie predict our current world and technologies?

BTTF correctly predicted flat-screen televisions that can access a ridiculous number of channels, portable videogames, video conferencing and an obsession with movie sequels. On the other hand, the movie also thought that by now we would have flying cars, anti-gravity hoverboards and self-lacing shoes. And it believed that fax machines would continue to be state-of-the-art. (Remember, the film was released before the rise of the Internet and the Web, if you can believe such a world ever existed).

Several predictions involved areas where Agilent participates. In the movie’s version of 2015, portable handheld devices could measure a person’s health and vital statistics. Vehicles were fueled by garbage and compost. Wet clothes could dry themselves. And food could be rehydrated within seconds. These technology marvels may yet become reality in the coming years.

In the meantime, Agilent technologies have helped enable numerous innovations that were once thought impossible. In the real world of today, a handheld FTIR can analyze chemicals, foods and polymers. Vehicles can run on non-petroleum biofuels. We can synthesize DNA. We can predict whether a medication is likely to help you based on your genetic type. And clothing can be manufactured from nano-based materials that repel stains.

But you may need to wait a few more years for self-lacing shoes…

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Agilent is Helping to Make Aerospace More “Green”

Russell Lee — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 15:00:26 +0000

One of the biggest challenges facing the aerospace industry is how to make aircraft lighter, more efficient and therefore more environmentally friendly.

Advanced materials such as carbon composites can make aeronautic components stronger and lighter. Manufacturers could achieve an even bigger weight reduction – as much as 15 percent – by replacing rivets with adhesives. This would result in lower fuel consumption and smaller, quieter engines. The problem is that current testing methods were developed for metals, not composites.

To address this, the European Union has funded a three-year R&D initiative called ENCOMB (short for “Extended Non-Destructive Testing of Composite Bonds”). ENCOMB’s primary objective is “the identification, development and adaptation of methods suitable for the assessment of adhesive bond quality.”

Agilent is one of 14 partners in ENCOMB, which also includes Airbus, the European Aeronautics Science Network and the University of Bristol. In a technology evaluation, the Agilent 4100 ExoScan Series FTIR handheld spectrometer was the only solution that showed high potential for surface-quality measurements across ENCOMB’s four measurement scenarios.

“This has been a very successful partnership for Agilent, says Agilent’s Phil Binns. “Once again we have seen the direct relevance of our new handheld instrumentation in the advanced materials market and its potential to open doors for us.”

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The Invention of Nylon

Russell Lee — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 15:00:04 +0000

September 4 is the birthday of Julian Hill, who was born in 1904. Hill was a member of the Du Pont research team led by Wallace Carothers tasked with investigating polymers. Polymers are large molecules created by chaining smaller molecules together.

At the time, researchers could not synthesize a polymer with a molecular weight of more than 4,200. In 1930, Hill shattered that record by creating a 12,000-weight polyester substance. The new substance could be stretched and pulled into long strands that were remarkably strong. Unfortunately, Hill’s material had a very low melting point. Carothers’ team was able to make a more stable version four years later.

(Sadly, Carothers never saw the success of his achievement. Believing himself to be a failure, he committed suicide in 1937.)

“Nylon” was introduced at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Originally used for toothbrush bristles, it became so critical for parachutes that it was restricted to only military use during World War II. Nylon also became an industry-changing substitute for silk stockings. When nylon stockings were first offered for sale in New York City in 1940, more than four million pairs were sold within a few hours. Women gladly paid a premium for the superior material.

Du Pont executives originally considered the material useless. By the time they got around to registering the name, “nylon” was so widely used that it could no longer be trademarked. (Shortly before his death in 1991, Hill declared that “the human race is going to perish by being smothered in plastic.”) Today, nylon is in everything from clothing to cars, making up two-thirds of the world’s luggage.

Research into new materials is an increasingly critical field for science and industry. Agilent offers several analytical solutions for materials testing, manufacturing and R&D, including its award-winning Cary 7000 Universal Measurement Spectrophotometer.

Working with new materials also requires highly sensitive measurement capabilities. Keysight Technologies (Agilent’s electronic measurement business) recently introduced a new series of femto/picoammeters and electrometers for materials science. The B2980A Series can measure currents as low as 0.01 fA (or 0.01 x 10^-15 of an ampere), as well as resistance as high as 10 petaohms (PΩ or 10 x 10¹⁵ ohms).

“Evaluating new materials often requires highly sensitive electronic measurement,” says Keysight’s Masaki Yamamoto. “With the new B2980A Series, engineers and researchers can trust their test results and improve their development speeds.”

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Introducing Generation Z

Russell Lee — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 15:00:47 +0000

The post-millennials. The 2Ks. The iGens. The Plurals. The Homeland Generation. The Silent Generation.

They are known by many names. But this latest demographic group targeted by advertisers and marketers (born between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s) are today’s teenagers. Raised on the Internet and social media, they have fewer verbal and interpersonal skills. And they will be Agilent’s next generation of customers and employees.

New York PR firm Sparks & Honey recently posted a thought-provoking profile of Generation Z. Among its findings and predictions about Gen-Z:

They have an 8-second attention span (Millennials have a 12-second attention span)
They are unconstrained by traditional gender roles
They are racially diverse and mixed
They are less physically active and more likely to be obese
They are smart, confident, competitive and entrepreneurial
They want to have an impact on the environment and the planet

Growing up in the post-Information Age, Gen-Zers are the beneficiaries of the past century of electronics. “Scientists a hundred years ago could not have imagined what we have today,” says Agilent President and CEO Bill Sullivan. “We have seen dramatic innovations and changes in electronics technologies: the invention of the transistor, the development of integrated circuits and the rise of wireless communications.”

But Sullivan believes that this young generation will see an even more dramatic revolution: the century of biology. “I believe that biology will transform the next 100 years of human life even more than electronics transformed the past 100 years,” he said last year to an audience of engineering students at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Agilent today has world-class capabilities in cost-effectively synthesizing very high-quality DNA and RNA. Using our solutions, scientists may soon be able to isolate the genomic changes that lead to Down syndrome, autism, cancer and other diseases.

“But the century of biology will not be limited to life sciences and diagnostics. We are on the verge of being able to engineer biology much as we do with electrical devices today. This has the potential to lead to new materials, new biofuels and even new foods.

“Imagine a world that no longer runs the risk of exhausting its fuels and natural resources. Imagine a global food supply that ensures adequate nutrition for everyone. Imagine being able to live longer and healthier, with a higher standard of living and quality of life.”

Generation Z may be in for an amazing ride. And with a new focus on chemicals and energy, pharmaceuticals, food safety, the environment, diagnostics and research, Agilent hopes to play a major role in making this exciting future possible.

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Measurement at the Atomic Level

Russell Lee — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 15:00:41 +0000

July 20 celebrates the birthday of German physicist Gerd Binnig, who was born in 1947. In 1981, Binnig helped develop the first scanning tunneling microscope. In 1986, he developed the first atomic force microscope. That same year, Binnig was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.

A scanning tunneling microscope operates by measuring electron-level electrical currents between a conducting tip and the surface being examined. With resolution of 0.1 nanometers by 0.01 nanometers, an STM can view individual atoms.

(A human hair is about 100,000 nanometers in diameter. A strand of human DNA is about 2.5 nanometers in diameter. Your fingernails grow about one nanometer every second.)

An atomic force microscope operates by “feeling” the surface being examined with a mechanical probe, using very precise scanning. An AFM also operates at fractions of a nanometer, with resolution 1,000 times better than the physical limits of optical imaging.

Today, Agilent is one of the world’s leading providers of atomic force microscopes, considered the foremost tool for examining and measuring matter at the nanoscale. Agilent recently introduced STM and inverted light microscope (ILM) capabilities to its state-of-the art 7500 AFM platform. Agilent’s AFMs can perform a broad range of studies pertaining to single molecules, cell membranes, DNA, proteins and other life science applications. In materials science, applications include electrical characterization, graphene studies and polymer studies.

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