Marshall also posted the first entry in the series, featuring his interviews with Bob Hall. I thought it would be neat to hear a little bit from Marshall himself about what he finds exciting about laser technologies and what has kept his interest in the field for over 35 years.

And for anybody who lives in the Capital Region in New York– if you ever visit the Schenectady Museum (which you should) in Schenectady, NY. You will find that a few of the exhibits there feature Marshall Jones and the work that he has done. I have attached a few photos of the exhibits for you to see.

But perhaps the most well-known instance of “lasers” in cinema are the lightsabers from the Star Wars saga. I put quotes around “lasers” because the way lightsabers behave in these movies is quite a bit different from the way lasers behave in real life. So I wanted to take a look at these fictional devices, how they supposedly work in the Star Wars universe, and compare that to how they might work in our own, real, universe.

Pinning down the canonical inner workings of a lightsaber is tricky, but from browsing through the sometimes contradictory information on StarWars.com, Wookieepedia, and HowStuffWorks.com, I managed to glean what I thought was a pretty good breakdown. In the Star Wars universe, lightsabers are typically custom-built by Jedi and Sith warriors, but all have several common elements. Each has a power source, a lightsaber crystal, one or more focusing crystals, and a stabilizing emitter system. The power source is typically a diatium power cell, often with a capacity of several megawatt-hours. The lightsaber crystal converts the power cell’s energy into a plasma that is then passed through and directed by the focusing crystals. Finally, the emitter system stabilizes the plasma into a blade shape using a mix of power modulation and magnetic field containment.

Did that make sense to anyone? No? Good, then I’m not alone. Science fiction is typically a blend of materials and physical laws that do exist, and those that don’t. Although real-life battery technology is coming along great, we are a long way off from creating handheld batteries with capacities like that the ones found in the lightsaber’s diatium power cell. Perhaps the key lies in discovering this fictional diatium material?

Also, crystals do have many useful optical and piezoelectric properties but I don’t know of one that could magically create plasma from electricity. However, I read that the crystals must be “attuned to the Force” by a Jedi or Sith in a meditation ritual that can take days. So maybe we should start there.

Where the explanations of lightsaber technology get really convoluted is when they start talking about how the blade is shaped and contained. Magnetic fields are currently used to contain plasmas, but they are generated by machinery that must also surround it – Generating such a magnetic envelope from a single, unidirectional source would likely require some new laws of physics. There are also no crystals that can “direct” a plasma.

In fact, a plasma “being directed” by a crystal lens doesn’t make any physical sense anyway. A plasma is really just an ionized gas – a gas in which the electrons have been stripped from their atomic nuclei. We see plasmas all the time. They make up and are emitted from every star, like our solar wind and solar flares. The interaction of the solar wind with Earth’s magnetic field produces the aurora, or northern lights, another form of plasma. Plasmas are also the stuff of every spark and lightning bolt.

Although my specialty isn’t in plasma physics, I can very generally say that plasmas can be created by bringing gases up to a high energy level. The higher the energy, the more atoms will be stripped of their electrons, and the better quality plasma we will have. It’s completely possible that one could create a plasma by producing a large enough voltage difference, a la lightning, or a powerful enough laser focus. However, enormous amounts of energy are required with either of these approaches, and it would be extremely difficult to control the plasma’s shape. An electrical arc can have wild shifts in direction, and it can hardly be controlled without being surrounded by magnets. A laser will go in a straight line, but of course it doesn’t stop. A laser-based lightsaber would require a block or a couple of mirrors floating in midair, moving in sync with the hilt – which is of course largely impossible. On top of that, they would certainly melt in the presence of such a plasma anyway. Further, all of this is saying nothing about what the actual quality of the plasma would be and how reliably or quickly it would cut through objects.

So it seems quite impossible to create a lightsaber, as seen in the Star Wars films, using existing technologies, materials, and physical laws. But given the enthusiasm of Star Wars superfans out there, I wouldn’t be surprised if people are trying. Anyway, since I’m more of a nerd than a plasma physicist, I’ll pose this question to my colleagues: How do you think a real-life lightsaber could work?

Hello, my name is Doug Dinon, and I work for GE Global Research, headquartered in Niskayuna, NY (vic. of Albany).   I am the Advanced Manufacturing Site Leader establishing our new operation in Van Buren Township, Michigan. I would like to introduce what we will be doing:

For the past eight + years, GE’s Chairman has been investing in technology and R&D to stimulate new, high margin revenues through product innovation. As the technology pipeline matures, more products will be facing the challenge of rapid commercialization. Experience has shown that many of these new products demand significant advancements in manufacturing technologies and shifts in business execution methods. The risk GE faces is that technologies will outpace the ability of the company to commercialize products and ramp up manufacturing operations.

To this end, GE is starting up an Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center whose stated purpose is to achieve manufacturing readiness for advanced technologies. Manufacturing readiness involves development of inspection, joining, assembly, and machining technologies that can meet the needs of new products. But it also implies the ability to prepare the support operations for execution in manufacturing. For many new products, the supply chain is significantly different than existing supply chains within host businesses. The same is true for quality methods, maintenance, finance, information technology, environmental health & safety,  and sourcing.

To operationalize this concept, a cross functional team from GE Global Research and GE Aviation are developing the plan. The location is co-located with the GE Corporate I.T. initiative at the Grace Lake Corporate Center in Van Buren Twp, Michigan. GE Global Research and Aviation are partnering to bring in three full scale new manufacturing technology cells: a Ceramic Casting Program, a Spray Coatings Program, and a Composites Fiber Placement Program. The floor plans and the Engineering construction plans are being finalized. We forecast the first program will begin installation in August 2010. This new Global Research organization will include 25 on site Engineers and will integrate closely with GE Aviation’s Supply Chain Organization as well as additional Technologists from Niskayuna. This Operation will be collaborating with Visteon, local Businesses, Michigan Universities, and the Michigan Economic Development Council.

We are excited about this new opportunity in Michigan!.

The Chasm

The Valley of Death

The Technology Graveyard

Really bad movie titles? Not quite. These are industry terms for the oft-feared stage in which technology must make its transition from the research lab to the marketplace.

The question “How can we bring this technology to the factory” is very loaded. It means asking how we turn a technology, of which there are maybe one or ten prototypes or successful tests in the world, developed in a carefully controlled – or sometimes not – laboratory environment, reproduce hundreds if not thousands of the same piece of technology (or process run), consistently, with maximum control, minimum defects, and minimum cost, and build it into the business plan. This task needs inventiveness, quick thinking, and usually a lot of funding! Few new technologies actually make it through this area, as they are now more mature than basic research projects, but not mature enough to make an immediate business impact. Oftentimes neither the researchers nor the businesspeople have the time, expertise, or infrastructure to understand and handle the process development required. This creates the Valley of Death – or as we prefer to call it, the Adoption Gap.

Enter GE Global Research’s Pilot Development Center (PDC), and the team of engineers and scientists in the Process Systems Lab, part of Materials Systems Technologies. This is the group I joined after graduating the Edison Program in summer of 2007. We work right in the thick of The Adoption Gap, and love every minute of it. To us, this region provides a wealth of opportunities to invent new technologies while making a big impact at the business and customer level. Our group owns and runs the PDC, which in itself is a piece of enabling technology within GE: A 10,000 square foot reconfigurable space – a fully self-supporting replication of the environment found in most factory floors. Its function is that of an “incubator” in which manufacturing systems are conceived, built, tested, modified, and eventually shipped off to the business. At the PDC we combine the best production-grade equipment, practices, and environments with the best and brightest researchers and systems engineers at GE Global Research.

So what’s been the PDC’s impact? Several projects for several GE businesses across the company have come through the PDC since it opened doors in 2004. You know that roll-to-roll manufacturing process developed for OLEDs? That process currently resides in the PDC, and as you know, has achieved numerous technical successes as a result of operating there. Two technologies for GE Aviation, one of which is currently in active pilot production at the PDC, have been developed here. The PDC was where we developed an ecomagination technology for GE Healthcare to reduce scrap losses of the rare element rhenium. At the PDC right now, my colleagues are developing another manufacturing technology for GE Healthcare’s MR coils, and I’m leading the task to transition a new reverse osmosis desalination technology into pilot production. And the fun doesn’t stop there – engineers in my group have been actively involved in making the Michigan Advanced Manufacturing and Software Technology Center a reality, using the successes of the PDC as a model.

Do you have any stories about transitioning technology from the lab to the market? What products or processes would you like to see pulled through The Adoption Gap? I encourage you to share and discuss!

The following is a brief preview of the blog content we intend to post:

-  Developments for imaging equipment and contrasting agents for predictive and preventative care supporting the Healthcare business.

- Materials innovations and advanced manufacturing and inspection techniques that will proliferate usage of cleaner energy sources and increase the efficiency of existing installed equipment. For example composite materials for wind turbines and jet engines, media and manufacture of reverse osmosis membranes for water purification, and technology advances associated with researching and manufacturing batteries and solar collectors – just to name a few.

Labs in Materials Systems technologies support the industrial GE businesses, I think this blog will have a range of threads that will interest everyone, not just people in technology fields. Please stop by often and let us know your thoughts.

It was the first time that GE Global Research organized a symposium on composites and I am proud to say it was a very big success with more than 140 participants. We started the symposium with a keynote followed by presentations covering the automotive, aerospace and energy sector. We then had a panel discussion on the challenges of high volume production followed by a presentation of GE global research and the composite material activities.

Scott Finn our chief engineer was the keynote speaker. Scott delivered a great speech covering the carbon fiber composite with a multi industry perspective. His presentation made clear that affordability was essential to see high penetration of carbon fiber composite in industrial application.

We continued the symposium with speakers from EADS, BMW and GE Energy, covering the aerospace, automotive and energy sector. Some of the reoccurring themes that came up in the presentations were that the volume of carbon fiber composite structure is increasing, the cost of carbon fiber is high, and the manufacturing process is laborious. Those are topics actively worked on at GE Global Research, which put us at the forefront of the challenges to solve.

We had a lively panel discussion with the presenters, which I facilitated with questions around high volume production. Although a lot of challenges have to be solved in order to respond to the demand, none of the panel members seemed to be afraid of high volume production. This was very good to hear from representatives of the automotive, aerospace and energy sector!

During the following day, we had presentations clustered in three categories: manufacturing technologies, materials and additives and design and simulation. We heard remarks looking at the market from different perspective and it was clear that design, materials and manufacturing have to work together in order to make carbon fiber composite structure economically viable solution in our near future. At the end of the symposium, Carlos Haertel, the GE Global Research Europe managing director as well as Klaus Drechsler, the head of the TUM Carbon Composite Center of Excellence closed the event with an excellent wrap up of the one-day and half event.

The mood throughout the symposium was great and the evening and mealtime discussions were lively with many players from the industry exchanging ideas and different points of view. We believe the event provided a great opportunity to meet and discuss ideas with key industry members and we are looking forward to holding a similar event next year.

The applications for high performance composite materials are growing rapidly. We have been investigating the introduction of carbon fiber into wind blades using an automated system, carbon composite risers for offshore drilling (GE Oil and Gas), rapid curing resin systems for small to medium sized aircraft components (GE Aviation), and composite for turbomachinery applications (GE Oil and Gas). Composites offer many benefits over traditional metallic materials including higher strength-to-weight ratios and improved corrosion resistance. Our challenge at the CML is to find ways to produce these composite parts cost effectively.

We collaborate with many other groups on our projects. These include other labs at the various GE Global Research sites, external companies (particularly those located in Europe), and universities. We are very fortunate to be located right on the campus of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In fact, this past Friday, GE and the TUM signed an important agreement specifically concerning composite materials and manufacturing research. This is very exciting for us because it opens up opportunities for collaboration on an even wider range of topics such as preforming technologies, thermoplastics and new material systems. The future looks bright for composite materials research!

The machining process we developed at GE Global Research is based on a thermal material removal process. Due to this, it is directly applicable to the rough machining of metal parts and significant volumes of material disappear in a flash. Check out the system in action in the following video:

Here you see a machining coolant (the white fluid) sprayed from a jet nozzle at 300-400 PSI. This test cut uses a copper/tungsten alloy tool, which cuts into a nickel based super alloy and removes metal 10 times faster than the traditional creep feed grinding process! When the tool is close to the super alloy, electric discharges occur and melt part of the super alloy. Thermal erosion is the main material removal mechanism and the source of the bright flashing in the video.

Rough machining is often the more time consuming and costly portion of casting into a complex shape such as a 3-D airfoil for a jet engine or an impeller for a crude oil pump. A conventional machining operation either needs to be repeated multiple times or may take many hours or in some cases weeks to complete.

This system, now called BlueArcTM can function as either a milling or a grinding process. At GE manufacturing sites BlueArcTM has been used to reduce cutting cycle time between 20% and 80% with material for the machining of compressor impellers, blisks, buckets, nozzles, and low rigidity parts like honeycomb seals.

Thanks for taking a few minutes to think about super-alloy machining with me; I look forward to future correspondence.

One technique for measuring a material’s relative toughness is ballistic impact testing, or “shooting it with a bullet”. Recently such testing was performed through our partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. Even relatively high strength ceramics, such as silicon carbide or silicon nitride, fail catastrophically in such ballistic tests. The following video shows the result of firing a steel ball projectile into a silicon carbide plate at >150mph.

GE researchers have used this same basic ceramic, silicon carbide, to develop a strong and tough ceramic composite material. Silicon carbide fibers, roughly 1/6th the diameter of a human hair, are used to reinforce a silicon carbide matrix. Careful engineering of the bonding between the fibers and matrix yields a CMC material that is many times tougher than traditional ceramics. In fact, the composite is tough enough to withstand the same ballistic impact conditions without failure.

GE’s ceramic matrix composites are able to operate at temperatures exceeding 2,000°F, well above the capability of current nickel alloys typically used as high temperature structural materials in gas turbines. The ceramic composite is also 1/3 the density of nickel, giving a significant weight advantage for aviation applications. As the world’s leading manufacturer of gas turbine engines for both aviation and power generation applications, we at GE are excited about the potential this new ceramic matrix composite holds for increasing the efficiency and power output of such engines while simultaneously reducing emissions. In fact, we believe GE’s ceramic matrix composites are going to redefine what is possible in the world of aviation and energy.

Over the past several years, the process for making this CMC has been transitioned from GE Global Research to GE Ceramic Composite Products, LLC, GE’s production facility in Newark Delaware, where it is manufactured under the HiPerComp® name. GE is also actively developing and testing several types of turbine components made of CMC. GE Energy has field -tested CMC shrouds in a 7FA engine (170 MW simple cycle) for over 5000 hours. A GE CMC combustor liner has also run for >12,000 hours in a 5 MW Solar Turbines engine. GE Aviation has run a CMC combustor liner and CMC blades in a government demonstrator engine. CMC low-pressure turbine vanes are being used in the GE – Rolls Royce F136 development engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. Flight-testing of this engine will begin in 2010, and this CMC vane could be the first production application of HiPerComp®.

In a CT system, the scintillator converts x-rays to light, which is translated into electrical signals by a photodiode. In the 30+ year history of CT imaging, only 2 scintillator materials have been used – neither of which satisfied the stringent stability, efficiency, uniformity, and speed requirements we thought would be possible with a new HDCT system. The new scintillator we were working to develop had to have at least 50X faster speed, and meet or exceed the other primary factors of light output, transparency, afterglow, radiation damage, density, stopping power, spectral match to the photodiode, and environmental and temperature stability.

The research on this new scintillator material, that later came to be called Gemstone, began in October 2000 with the simple vision of delivering a CT detector that would provide a step-change improvement in image quality over on the competitors in the market. By the end of 2001, we examined over 150,000 possible material compositions, processed hundreds of unique compositions to converge on the origins of Gemstone. It took a full 3 years to obtain a composition close to today’s Gemstone performance. In late 2004, GE Healthcare started a pilot facility in Milwaukee. The pilot facility was later expanded to a state-of-the art clean room and full-scale manufacturing facility.

The primary goal for this new scintillator was to have very fast speed while meeting other performance requirements. After evaluating hundreds of thousands of materials as potential candidates, we finally selected a rare earth based garnet material as the new scintillator. This material has a cubic garnet structure that can enable high transparency without having to grow a single crystal. Cerium was selected as the activator to leverage its fast transition and its emission spectra, which is well-matched to the silicon photodiode’s sensitivity curve. Heavy rare earths are selected to increase stopping power of the scintillator to achieve higher quantum detection efficiency. Extensive research was conducted to optimize the composition in order to achieve the best performance for CT applications. The final composition of this material not only delivered performance, it also enabled a robust manufacturing process.

The fan blade and fan case have very demanding but very different mechanical requirements to pass FAA certification. Among other things, the fan blade must be able to withstand an 8lb bird impact event, while the fan case needs to be able to contain a fan blade release under full power. These requirements lead to quite different solutions. To speed development, we have developed and validated very sophisticated analytical models and techniques that enable us to accurately simulate the transient dynamic response of these very complicated events (Figure 2). These model can take anywhere from one to three weeks to execute on our fastest high-performance computers. We have validated these models through the use of progressively complex testing (Figure 3), starting with coupons and panels and moving to subscale rig and ultimately full-engine tests.Because of cost and schedule, our goal and track record is to get the FAA certification tests right the first time. Despite our many successes, we are not satisfied. We need to continue to push the envelope in terms of weight and performance to get to the next break though in composite technology that will lead to more fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly engines. We are looking at new composite material systems (fibers, fiber architecture, and resins) and manufacturing technology. The analytical methods and experimental validation will provide the foundation on which to continue to advance the state-of-the-art, and speed new product introduction.

This is truly an exciting time to be involved with composites. The opportunities are exploding both inside and outside GE. I am very fortunate that GE has many divisions that are increasing the use of composites in their products. More about that later; for now I have some experimental fabrication techniques to attend to and a telecom with my engine teammates in Cincinnati.

Hey everyone. We just came out with some exciting news yesterday about the formation of a new business that is going to revolutionize the world of pathology, and it all started in GE’s Research Lab. About four years ago, we started a small program with some seed money to explore the potential for digitizing pathology slides. We had already done it for X-ray. Why not pathology? So we visited some pathology labs to learn more about how pathologists do their work. Pretty soon, we realized that we are on to something big. But we also realized that something was missing. When it comes to diagnostic imaging, GE is the best. We have been doing it for nearly 100 years since the invention of the Coolidge X-ray tube. But we need to complement our expertise with expertise in pathology. Fortunately, we linked up with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) – one of the world’s foremost center’s for the study of pathology.

Four years after we started, we have taken an idea and created a whole new business with UPMC. It’s the first time in GE’s history that we formed a company with an academic institution. I can’t believe it. As a scientist, you always dream about taking a great idea in the lab and seeing it make a difference in the world. Having a company result from your team’s research in the lab? It doesn’t get any better than this.

What’s amazing is that pathologists have essentially been studying slides the same way it has been done for more than 125 years ago back in the 19th century. You looked at tissues samples on a slide under a microscope. We thought it was about time to bring this practice into the digital age. Now, I should point out that pathologists work with stunning speed and precision to make diagnoses today. But just think what we could do if we could give them better technologies, better tools and more value-added information with which to study. That’s what this new company is all about.

We want to take the prototype digital pathology scanner developed in GE’s Research Lab and take it to market. You may ask, what will this all mean? How will a digitized world of pathology be better than what exists today? It will be better for lots of reasons.

Today, pathologists can look at one protein or biomarker on one slide and bascially tell a patient whether they have or don’t have cancer. In a digital pathology-enabled world, we want to enable pathologists to look at slides on a computer screen that may contains 10s, even 100s of proteins or biomarkers on one slide. We want pathologists to have information that will not only tell them whether someone has cancer; we want that slide to tell them what type of cancer and how it will likely behave. Most importantly, we want to provide enough information for doctors to tailor therapies in a more personalized way. And instead of storing thousands of glass slides in warehouses and having to ship them by truck or plane between doctors for consultations, we want to enable instantaneous file sharing and virtual consultation online.

When you look further out into the future, digital pathology has the potential to enable the next wave of disease detection in molecular medicine. The added knowledge we can acquire about new biomarkers and an individual’s biochemical composition could enable doctors to identify whether patients are predisposed to certain types of disease and how patients will respond to certain treatments. This knowledge could be especially useful in developing more targeted drug therapies that can be tailored to a patient based on their genetic makeup. Imagine a drug prescribed for a cancer patient that doctors are certain will aggressively treat that patient’s cancer because they have a full understanding of the disease signatures of that patient’s particular form of cancer. These are the kind of things being talked about for the future.

In addition to be a part of the original research team that developed the prototype scanner, I am proud to now be a part of the new company, Omynx, leading the R&D division. For more information about this new venture, here is a link to the press release.

It’s the classic New Year’s Resolution. This year, I am going to shed those extra 15 lbs., lay off the sweets, start eating better… and drink lots of water. So you join a gym and what’s the first thing to do? You get a body composition assessment. That’s when you hear terms like BMI (body mass index) and waist-to-hip ratio. Also, many weight scales that you buy today can determine both your weight and body fat percentage.

BMI, waist-to-hip ratio and body fat percentage are standard ways to assess a person’s body composition. But what if we could something more to extract even more valuable information? Combining state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging technologies with scientific knowledge in diet, nutrition and lifestyle with, GE is joining forces with Nestlé’s Research Center in a research collaboration to take body composition assessment to a whole new level.

Nestlé scientists, who conduct research into the effects of nutrition, diet and lifestyle on health and wellness, will conduct clinical trials with individuals using GE Healthcare’s Lunar iDXA^TM imaging system. The Lunar iDXA^TM system can provide information beyond the traditional body measurements by providing images of body fat location, and the amount of muscle and bone. These measurements will play a key part in helping Nestlé scientists learn more about the relationships between diet, lifestyle and metabolic health. See the following two Lunar iDXA^TM images. The one on the left shows the skeleton from which bone mineral density is determined. The image on the right shows the body composition information as well. From that information, the amounts of fat and muscle in the differents of the body can be determined (including the abdominal region).

The news today is filled with stories about how food, exercise and lifestyle impact our weight and overall health. I think it is something most everyone has a strong curiosity about. We want to know how our actions – what we eat, how much we exercise – impact our well-being. Measuring body weight provides us with one piece of information about our health. Knowing the location of your body fat, and how that affects your health can provide an individual with more definite goals for weight management. Being able to also measure muscle and bone simultaneously is also key for managing bone health.

I will be leading team here at GRC on the diagnostic side, and we are really looking forward to participate in this new endeavor. The coming together of medical imaging and diagnostics with diet, lifestyle and nutrition research represents an extraordinary opportunity to discover new frontiers in nutrition and health.

They all represent a unique merger of structure, form and function. These natural and man made structures rely on an exquisite control of materials internal structure, often referred to as the micro- or nanostructure of the material, to achieve their function.

The seashell is made of calcium carbonate, the same material that chalk is made of. However, in the seashell, the calcium carbonate is packed in the form of a ‘brick and mortar’ structure with the calcium carbonate, forming the bricks and a thin polymer layer forming the mortar. Any crack that forms in this complex architecture is diffused along a complex, tortuous path absorbing a lot of energy and making the shell resistant to catastrophic failure. In the absence of such an architecture, calcium carbonate that forms chalk breaks easily.

In the case of the lotus leaf, the surface of the leaf sheds water and is thus classified as superhydrophobic. The key reason for this effect is the present of textures on the surface, at multiple length scales, from nano to micro.

The human skin is an excellent example of a multi-functional material, which can act as a barrier layer, as a deformable protective and self-healing layer, a heat regulatory mechanism among other functions. This is because the skin is a complex composite material whose components have been carefully put together to seamlessly perform these functions.

The evolution of the jet engine of today owes a lot to the development of unique metallic and ceramic materials that can function in the hot and harsh environments present in the engine’s combustion environment, while maintaining the highest levels of structural integrity.

The digital revolution has relied heavily on our ability to make ultrapure silicon, with very few defects.

Even though the examples cited above all rely on control of material structure, there are a few fundamental differences. It is these differences that make nanomaterials so exciting and their potential so large. This is especially true when nanotechnology is applied to traditional materials, such as metals and ceramics. Over the past two decades, my research has focused on making metals and ceramics with better mechanical, physical or chemical properties and we are now beginning to use the tools of nanotechnology to make these materials dramatically better.

One key difference between most engineered and natural materials is what has been referred to as a ‘top-down’ versus ‘bottoms-up’ approach. Traditionally, new materials have been developed by taking the material available in the earth’s crust, extracting the needed substance (like iron), usually mixing them with other materials and then shaping the material into its final form, typically at high temperatures. In fact, human progress over the centuries has often been based on our mastery over materials, so much so that from the stone age to the iron age to the age of silicon, time has been marked by the type of materials that dominated the world at that point of time. The major advantages of this approach is the ability to produce materials and systems with a remarkable degree of repeatability and consistency, in large numbers where needed and using these economies of scale to drive down costs.

Natural materials, on the other hand are made typically by putting the right material at the right place at the right time, through a process that is often referred to as self-assembly. It is this process that enables natural materials to have an exquisite control of the materials microarchitecture.

We are now beginning to see the convergence of materials science with biology, and new methods to synthesize, manipulate, order and visualize materials at near atomic scales are beginning to emerge. The challenge from an industrial perspective is to translate these scientific innovations to productive and cost-effective technology. Towards this goal, we are working on developing methods to self-assemble ceramics, but unlike fundamental research in this area, a key metric we use to judge the process is scalability. A second difference is that, unlike the calcium carbonate that is self assembled by nature, GE’s interest is in self assembling ceramics that are capable of performing in the harsh environments of a jet engine or a gas turbine. Like the proteins and ceramic precursors that nature uses, a ‘toolkit’ for such self-assembly needs to be developed, especially for non-oxide ceramics such as nitrides and carbides.

We are using block copolymers and ceramic precursors to do such self-assembly. The protocol starts with the self-assembly of a polymeric ceramic precursor into an ordered structure, using an amphiphilic block copolymer as a template. This ordered nanostructure is stabilized via cross-linking of the precursor in order to endure subsequent high-temperature processing without undergoing an order-to-disorder transformation. Controlled pyrolysis is then performed in such a way that the ordered structure is conserved while pores are eliminated during the decomposition of block copolymer and the ceramization of the polymeric precursor. The end result of this process is an ordered, high density, nanostructured ceramic with silicon carbonitride as the major component.

For further details refer to our recent publication.