Recent Patents on Materials Science - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2012

This review paper provides an overview of the use of hydrogen (H2) gas towards the selective catalytic reduction of nitrogen oxides (NOx) under strongly oxidizing conditions found in many industrial flue gas streams and in the exhaust emissions of diesel-powered vehicles. Patenting activities in the last 15 years are discussed. The advantages in using the H2-SCR of NOx control technology especially at low-temperatures as to the current NH3-SCR technology are also discussed. Regarding the stationary NOx control applications, Pd-based catalysts exhibit NOx conversion and N2-selectivity values in the 80-95% range, depending on the chemical promoter and support composition used have been reported. On the other hand, Pt-based catalysts present lower NOx conversion and N2-selectivity values (<90%) especially when 10-20 vol% water is present in the flue gas stream. For mobile applications, different formulations of Pd-based catalysts (support and promoter chemical composition) have been reported with NOx conversions higher than 85%. The issue of hydrogen supply has been tackled through the development of on-board hydrogen generation technologies, such as plasma reforming and partial oxidation of diesel fuel.

From the beginning of mankind, people have fought over territories, religion, food, and honor. However, as mankind became more civilized, weaponry became more advanced. There is a continuous need to develop armor to better protect soldiers from the ever changing weaponry. In order to discuss recent patents in body armor and vehicular armor, the history and development of weapons and armor will be discussed. After the history and development of weapons and protective armor, recent patents in body armor and vehicular armor will be reviewed. Body armor patents are broken down into fabrics, armor systems, and helmets. Vehicular armor is divided into ceramics, attachable armor, composites, and transparent armor. The patents reviewed are a sample of the ideas and designs being created in the industry in order to better protect soldiers, policemen, and the like from harm. Analyzing the different aspects of body armor and vehicular armor we gain a better sense of the specific needs, in terms of protection, that have yet to be developed.

The present review of the most recent patents outlines the progress made over the last five years in the search of novel materials and processes that might allow large amounts of hydrogen to be stored on board of vehicles. Worth of note are the results of certain ab-initio calculations proving that some compounds not yet synthesized might, actually, show features approaching the requirements of the US Department of Energy. Significant progress has been made concerning the absorption/desorption reversibility of Li-N-H compounds (amides/imides, LiH, Li3N), borohydrides and boranes. These materials, at the actual state of the art, appear still largely inadequate to comply with DOE targets. However, their intrinsic high mass capacity offers wide margin for further research in this area. The achievements made with alanates, magnesium-based hydrides and bcc-alloy hydrides, although of great significance from a point of view of the fundamental research, nonetheless, appear to be of limited impact from a practical point of view, at least for automotive applications. This is mainly due to the relatively low intrinsic mass capacity of these materials.

This paper reviews research on patents of intermetallic matrix composites synthesized methods, such as mechanical alloying, hot pressing, sintering, self-propagating high-temperature synthesis, spark plasma sintering and chemical reacting. The present status and applications in various fields as well as the prospects of intermetallic compounds are presented too. It's indicated that in order to enlarge the applications areas, people should intensify not only the investigation of theories but also the research on preparation methods and processes which influence the structure and performance of materials. At the same time, a further study for optimizing the processing parameters is required to improve the property of materials. Future directions in this field have been suggested.

The study in ferroelectric photovoltaic (PV) effect has become an important topic in fields of condensed matter physics and materials sciences in recent years. For the rapidly growing needs in solar energy, the interest in developing ferroelectric PV devices with specific properties has drastically increased. This paper firstly focuses on the fundamental aspects of PV effect in ferroelectric materials, and presents a review on the latest developments in ferroelectric PV cells. For the application of ferroelectrics on solar cells, relevant patents are also presented and discussed, to describe the main characteristics of ferroelectric PV cells and achieve the understanding on their future development.

Plasmonics is concerned with the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and conduction electrons at metallic/dielectric interfaces and has been a hot research area since 2000. Plasmonics is now attracting more research activities because a plasmonic nanostructure is one of the most promising candidates to serve as the light scattering and trapping agent to reduce the physical thickness of current solar cells while maintaining the optical thickness. In this patents review, we describe the basic mechanisms of plasmonic thin-film solar cells, summarize the common design and fabrication techniques, and discuss the future prospects.

The patents annotated in this section have been selected from various patent databases. These recent patents are relevant to the articles published in this journal issue, categorized by materials, biomaterials, biological materials, magnetic materials, medical implant materials, nanomaterials, ceramics, plastics, polymers, semi-conductors, coatings, composites, paper, wood, textile, methods, design and techniques....