HPC Spotlight is the name of the Brazilian science web series that shows some of the challenges and achievements of scientists in Brazil, through their scientific, professional and personal stories, told in episodes of about 10 minutes. Conceived by Versatus HPC, a Brazilian high performance computing company, and carried out together with Ibirá Filmes, the web series currently presents its second season, focused on scientists from the state of Minas Gerais.
B-MRS’s partnership with Versatus brings to the audience of B-MRS channels the opportunity to watch episodes related to the materials area first hand, before the official premiere. The launching takes place on Wednesdays, in the late afternoon, on B-MRS’s social media channels.
How the web series came about
The idea of making this innovative web series arose in the Versatus team after almost a decade of interaction with scientists from Brazilian institutions. “We know some of the many challenges they have to face on a daily basis. Barriers regarding submissions, financing, funds, deadlines, as well as regarding the valuation of their research,” says Cecília Scigliano, from Versatus. “When walking side by side with scientists and researchers to ensure that they have the most appropriate technological solution for their research, we know their objectives, advances, discoveries and conclusions… and we become increasingly fascinated by this universe!”, she adds.
Follow the launch of the next episodes, on Wednesdays, in the late afternoon, at:
Newsletter of the
Brazilian Materials
Research Society
Year 7, issue 6. July 3, 2020.
Featured Paper
Brazilian researchers developed a coating that offers active and smart protection against corrosion. The coating contains nanocontainers, made of a lamellar material, which store corrosion-inhibiting compounds and release them when necessary. The nanocontainers are also capable of extracting corrosive species from the environment and storing them internally. The work was recently reported on ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Know more.
B-MRS Lives & Webinars
– The B-MRS cycle of technical webinars ends its first month with five lectures carried out, with audiences of up to 500 participants. Learn more and access the recordings from the June webinars, here.
– Access the schedule for July and August, choose the webinars you are interested in and register (free), here.
B-MRS News
– Campaign for Democracy and for Life. B-MRS participates in the Campaign “Brazil for Democracy and for Life”. Learn more about the campaign.
– Covid-19 data. B-MRS and more than 70 scientific entities signed a letter on June 7 that was sent to the Ministry of Health and other government agencies, repudiating any omission or misrepresentation of data related to Covid-19. See the document.
Reading Tips
– Scientists are able to observe in real time how a boron nitride nanotube moves in solution. The result may contribute to the development of new materials that benefit from the interesting properties of these nanostructures (Journal of Physical Chemistry B). Know more.
– The Brazilian company Nanox Tecnologia and CDMF developed a virucidal material that, impregnated on the surface of polycotton fabric, inactivated the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in two minutes in tests carried out at USP. Know more.
– Summary of some articles that present recent nanotechnology contributions to the development of diagnostic tools, controlled-release drugs, vaccines and masks to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. See here.
Opportunities
– Open position (Researcher) at LNNano – CNPEM. Graphene and 2D materials in the area of bioelectronics. Know more.
Events and ONLINE events
– Webinars on research and teaching techniques and tools in the materials field. June – August, 2020. ONLINE. Organization: B-MRS. Site.
– 2º Webinar da ACS Publications “COVID-19: possibilidades de interação indústria-universidade nas áreas de vacinas, terapêuticos e diagnósticos”. July 7, 2020. ONLINE. Organization: American Chemical Society (ACS). Support: B-MRS. Site.
– Mini Reunião Anual Virtual da SBPC. July12 – 24, 2020. ONLINE. Site.
– IV Escola de Inverno em Física Aplicada à Medicina e Biologia (EIFAM). July20 – 31, 2020. ONLINE.Site.
– XLI Congresso Brasileiro de Aplicações de Vácuo na Indústria e na Ciência. Foz do Iguaçu, PR (Brazil). October 5 – 7, 2020. Site.
– 5th International Conference of Surfaces, Coatings and NanoStructured Materials – Americas (NANOSMAT-Americas). Foz do Iguaçu, PR (Brazil). October 7 – 10, 2020. Site.
– 7th Meeting on Self Assembly Structures in Solution and at Interfaces. Bento Gonçalves, RS (Brazil). November 4 – 6, 2020. Site.
– Pan American Ceramics Congress and Ferroelectrics Meeting of Americas (PACC-FMAs 2020). Panamá (Panama). November 15 – 19, 2020. Site.
– 4th Workshop on Coated Tools & Multifunctional Thin Films. Campinas, SP (Brazil). November 16 – 19, 2020. Site.
– XIX B-MRS Meeting + IUMRS ICEM (International Conference on Electronic Materials). Foz do Iguaçu, PR (Brazil). August 29 – September 2, 2021. Site.
XIX B-MRS Meeting + IUMRS ICEM
(Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, August 29 – September 2, 2021)
You can suggest news, opportunities, events or reading tips in the materials field to be covered by B-MRS Newsletter. Write to comunicacao@sbpmat.org.br.
During the month of June, five technical webinars were held on the Zoom platform, with live transmission via B-MRS’s Facebook platform, within the Live & Webinars program, organized by B-MRS in partnership with instrumentation companies.
By the end of August, 12 more webinars will be offered. The program includes a variety of subjects, from fundamentals and applications of techniques widely used by the Materials research community, to the presentation of state-of-the-art research instruments and digital tools for teaching in the field of Materials.
The already held online seminars had audiences of up to 500 participants. “We are happy to see that many people, especially young people, are using this pandemic time to gain knowledge and for self-improvement,” says Professor Mônica Cotta, president of B-MRS, who has participated in all the seminars.
SEM image of a cluster of zinc hydroxydolibate crystals. Each crystal is a nanocontainer.
Traditional coatings are often effective in protecting steel structures from corrosion by providing a physical barrier that prevents contact between the substrate and corrosive elements. However, when wear generates cracks or pores in these coatings, the substrates are exposed and eventually corrode.
A scientific team from the Brazilian Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) developed a nanotechnology-based coating that offers active protection against corrosion. When the coating shows a flaw, exposing the substrate to corrosive elements, two anti-corrosion mechanisms are activated without human intervention. The coating has very special additives to carry out this intelligent procedure: nanocontainers capable of storing a compound that inhibits corrosion (molybdate) and release it, on demand, in the presence of corrosive elements.
UFPR’s nanocontainers are structures of nanometric dimensions that appear in the form of overlapping two-dimensional sheets (lamellae), separated by a space of a few angstroms. It is in this interlamellar space that molybdate is stored. When a nanoreservoir comes into contact with corrosive environments, such as the sodium chloride (NaCl) solution used in the UFPR experiments, a negative ion exchange reaction occurs: molybdate anions leave the interlamellar space and chloride anions occupy these spaces. In this exchange, the molybdate is free to form a protective film on the exposed substrate surface, while the corrosive anions are “trapped” in the nanoreservoir.
Schematic representation of the active protection mechanism against corrosion provided by the coating additive with intelligent lamellar nanoreservoir.
“The main contribution of the work is related to the active corrosion protection of steel. While traditional coatings provide only barrier protection, that is, passive protection, the intelligent coating developed in this work promotes active protection, releasing the molybdate corrosion inhibitor from the lamellar nanoreservoir on demand, through an anion exchange mechanism,” summarizes Débora Abrantes Nunes Leal, doctoral student of the Graduate Program in Materials Engineering and Science at UFPR and corresponding author of the article reporting the research, recently published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. “In addition to releasing the inhibitor in a controlled manner, the lamellar nanoreservoir also “captures” the chloride anions, acting as a trap for these species and, therefore, also contributes to reducing the corrosive environment,” concludes the doctoral student.
Industrial scale use
Produced by means of a quick and simple process and using low-cost, abundant raw materials with low environmental impacts, such as zinc, UFPR’s nanocontainers have the potential for large-scale manufacturing process. When used as coatings additives, as in the UFPR research, nanocontainers could increase the useful life of steel structures found in atmospheres with high concentrations of corrosive compounds, such as, for example, marine atmospheres or close to chemical plants.
According to Débora, there is already a market, mainly in Europe, still incipient, of intelligent coatings to combat corrosion for the aeronautical and petrochemical industries. However, these coatings use as reservoirs of anticorrosive compounds, mainly polymeric microcapsules or double lamellar hydroxides, which are more complex to manufacture, costly and have a greater environmental impact than the lamellar hydroxyses used in UFPR’s nanocontainers . According to the authors of the article, these materials had never been used to store and release corrosion inhibitors before this work, neither in industry nor in the scientific literature.
All the work reported in the article of ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces was carried out by Débora Abrantes Nunes Leal within her still-in-progress doctoral thesis, which started in 2017. The research is guided by Professor Cláudia Marino (advisor), who is an expert in corrosion and protection of materials, and by Professor Fernando Wypych (co-advisor), whose expertise is the synthesis and characterization of lamellar materials. The work received funding from the Brazilian agencies Capes, CNPq and Finep.
Currently, the research on nanocontainers continues, and the authors indicate that they will soon present new results, including those related to the use of other corrosion inhibitors.
The authors of the paper. From the left: Débora Abrantes Leal, Fernando Wypych, Cláudia Eliana Bruno Marino.
[Paper: Zinc-Layered Hydroxide Salt Intercalated with Molybdate Anions as a New Smart Nanocontainer for Active Corrosion Protection of Carbon Steel. Débora Abrantes Leal, Fernando Wypych, and Cláudia Eliana Bruno Marino. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2020, 12, 17, 19823–19833. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.0c02378.]
Newsletter of the
Brazilian Materials
Research Society
Year 7, issue 5. June 9, 2020.
B-MRS Lives & Webinars
– Learn about our new cycle of webinars on research and teaching techniques and instruments in the materials field. There are 17 free webinars, in Portuguese or English, covering a broad thematic range. Registration to participate in the Zoom meeting is now open. Check out all webinars, choose the ones that interest you and register! Here.
– See our coverage of the online discussion panel on materials research and Covid-19, held on May 7. Here.
Featured Paper
A Brazilian scientific team developed a composite material film that makes hydrogen production more efficient in water electrolysis, which is a clean, simple and inexpensive method for generating this promising alternative fuel. The scientists proved that the material’s roughness was fundamental to obtain the catalytic effect. The work was recently reported on ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Know more.
B-MRS University Chapters
– The B-MRS UCs Program has a new page on our website. Find out how this program works and see the map with the UCs created in 14 universities of the 5 Brazilian regions. Here.
B-MRS News
– Donations to poor communities. B-MRS and other scientific societies support initiatives that collect donations for poor communities and slums. See the list of nationwide actions that are receiving donations, here.
– Environmental policies. B-MRS supports the note of repudiation of the dismantling of environmental policies in Brazil, prepared by scientific entities in the area of biodiversity.See the document.
News from B-MRS members
– Professor Edgar D. Zanotto (DEMa – UFSCar), founding member of B-MRS, is the author of some of the most cited and downloaded articles in 2019 in the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids. Know more.
XIX B-MRS Meeting + IUMRS ICEM
(Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, August 29 – September 2, 2021)
– Scientists develop a coating for fabrics that prevents viruses from adhering to the surface and withstands ultrasonic washing (ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces). Know more.
– Using lasers to confine lithium atoms, scientists experimentally produce, for the first time, the so-called “Pauli crystals,” whose formation is based on the exclusion principle of Quantum Mechanics (preprint of the arXiv platform).Know more.
– Using an ultra short pulse laser, researchers in Brazil produce bismuth tungstate with a highly organized structure, which makes it possible to use this material as a photocatalyst, among other applications (Scientific Reports).Know more.
– Scientists from Brazil, together with researchers from Japan, by means of a straightforward fabrication approach, create edible optical fiber using seaweed gelatin and a mold. The new optical fiber opens up possibilities in the area of diagnosis and treatment of diseases (Scientific Reports).Know more.
Events and ONLINE events
– Webinars on research and teaching techniques in materials field. June – August, 2020. Organization: B-MRS. Site.
– University Chapter webinar: Spatial coherence in near field optics. June 12, 2020. Organization: B-MRS UC Pará. Site.
– Webinar “COVID-19: perspectivas sobre vacinas, terapêuticos e diagnósticos”. June 17, 2020. Organization: American Chemical Society (ACS). Support: B-MRS.Site.
– I Workshop Internacional da Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Física da UFRPE. June 30 – July 1, 2020.Site.
– XLI Congresso Brasileiro de Aplicações de Vácuo na Indústria e na Ciência. Foz do Iguaçu, PR (Brazil). October 5 – 7, 2020.Site.
– 5th International Conference of Surfaces, Coatings and NanoStructured Materials – Americas (NANOSMAT-Americas).Foz do Iguaçu, PR (Brazil). October 7 – 10, 2020.Site.
– 7th Meeting on Self Assembly Structures in Solution and at Interfaces.Bento Gonçalves, RS (Brazil). November 4 – 6, 2020.Site.
– Pan American Ceramics Congress and Ferroelectrics Meeting of Americas (PACC-FMAs 2020). Panama (Panama). November 15 – 19, 2020.Site.
– 4th Workshop on Coated Tools & Multifunctional Thin Films.Campinas, SP (Brazil). November 16 – 19, 2020.Site.
– XIX B-MRS Meeting + IUMRS ICEM (International Conference on Electronic Materials). Foz do Iguaçu, PR (Brazil). August 29 – September 2, 2021.Site.
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You can suggest news, opportunities, events or reading tips in the materials field to be covered by B-MRS Newsletter. Write to comunicacao@sbpmat.org.br.
HPC Spotlight is the name of the Brazilian science web series that shows some of the challenges and achievements of scientists in Brazil, through their scientific, professional and personal stories, told in episodes of about 10 minutes. Conceived by Versatus HPC, a Brazilian high performance computing company, and carried out together with Ibirá Filmes, the web series currently presents its second season, focused on scientists from the state of Minas Gerais.
During the month of June, five technical webinars were held on the Zoom platform, with live transmission via B-MRS’s Facebook platform, within the Live & Webinars program, organized by B-MRS in partnership with instrumentation companies.
