Posted: Friday, November 21, 2014 11:19 am

Tech engineers uncover new method for nanoscale surface properties By McKenzi Morris Staff Writer Daily Toreador - Dept. of Student Media, Texas Tech University |

Engineering Researchers at Texas Tech have discovered a new way to characterize surface properties of material at the nanoscale and different temperatures.

Gregory McKenna, a chemical engineering professor and a John R. Bradford Endowed Chair in Engineering, said knowing the properties of materials at different temperature is extremely important in engineering, and was part of the problem during the 1986 space shuttle disaster, according to a Tech news release.

McKenna and graduate student Meiyu Zhai worked together to discover new properties at the nanoscale, according to the release. The results appeared in the Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics.

The nanoscale is a funny range of sizes where materials have properties that are not what we expect, even at a step up at the microscale," McKenna said, according to the release. "We are developing methods to characterize surface properties and relate them to nanoscale behavior using a nanoindenter and other nano-mechanical measurement methods.

The Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, and the American Chemical Society-Petroleum Research Fund helped fund McKenna and Zhais project.

Posted in News on Friday, November 21, 2014 11:19 am.

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Tech engineers uncover new method for nanoscale surface properties