Non-traditional materials

These current and potential applications motivate the development of techniques for fabricating and manipulating objects with nanometer and micrometer feature sizes. This review gives a brief introduction to materials and techniques commonly used for microfabrication its focus is on those currently being explored in our laboratory. Our aim is to illustrate how non-traditional materials and methods for fabrication can yield simple, cost effective routes to microsystems, and how they can expand the capabilities of these systems. In a concluding section we provide brief descriptions of a number of other techniques for fabrication that, like those we are developing, may provide variable alternatives to photolithography. 

Thus, the numerous and instructive lessons of the well-developed field of science - chemistry of transition metal hydrides - allow to treat the results obtained for non-traditional materials more soberly. At the same time, these lessons call us to new enterprises. 

The non-technical nature of the problem becomes apparent when we consider a specific example. For instance, plastic bottles, which are tighter and cheaper than those made from glass, have superseded the traditional material in all sectors of the modern drinks industry. In Britain five billion plastic bottles are used a year, which leads to serious environmental problems. They are difficult to recycle or reuse and expensive to dispose of. They cannot be reused because of the need for sterility. Sterilising is done using high temperatures, which would cause softening or even melting if applied to plastics. 

Covers non-traditional agents and improvised industrial materials... 

Because all depolymerization processes will generate waste that may be classified as hazardous waste or at least chemical waste, it will always be economically preferable to separate as much non-PET material from the PET material as is practical. Traditional bottle washing procedures can produce used bottle flake that is clean enough to be used to make more bottles or somewhat less clean and less expensive material. Technologies have been proposed to dissolve the polyester scrap in appropriate solvents to separate PET from other materials such as cotton fiber or magnetic tape components [19]. 

Hartmann. T. 2000. Evaluation of phase- and element distribution after non-traditional in situ vitrification (NTISV) at Los Alamos National Laboratory on a simulated adsorption bed. Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings, 608, 619-624. 

Processable Aromatic Polyimides Based on Non-traditional Raw Materials... 

FIBERS. The field of fibers is an evolving one. with new technologies being developed constantly. With ihe increasing use of fibers in non-traditional textile applications, such as geoiexliles (qv). fiber-reinforced composites, specialty absorption media, and as materials of construction, new fiber types and new processing technologies can be anticipated. 

Inorganic non-oxide materials, such as III-V and II-VI group semiconductors, carbides, nitrides, borides, phosphides and silicides, are traditionally prepared by solid state reactions or gas-phase reaction at high temperatures. Some non-oxides have been prepared via liquid-phase precipitation or pyrolysis of organometallic precursors. However, amorphous phases are sometimes formed by these methods. Post-treatment at a high temperature is needed for crystallization. The products obtained by these processes are commonly beyond the manometer scale. Exploration of low temperature technique for preparing non-oxide nanomaterials with controlled shapes and sizes is very important in materials science. 

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