In the 1990s, they combined thin-film coating techniques with getter technology for the LHC and that paved the way for the solar panel applications we see today at the Geneva International Airport.

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Communities of people that enjoy discussing the latest in laminating film, coating steel coils and creating more efficient ways to ventilate ridges, whatever that means.

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Marrying piezoelectrics with a thin film microchip coating, those scientists Down Under have for the first time identified just how much energy your pressure can generate.

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And, as well as all the environmental benefits of eliminating paint, the film-coating has the added advantage that it can save fuel by reducing the friction between the aircraft's skin and the air.

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But when it is stretched, the liquid coating the film recedes into the expanded pores, exposing their edges and reducing lubrication, causing it to become rougher.

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One Saturday evening in early 2001 Rabinowitz mixed the drug with a solvent, transforming the mound of powder into a film 1 micron thick (that's a thousandth of a millimeter) coating a piece of foil.

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But Dr Bruel found that if a hydrogen-treated wafer is first fused to another wafer that has been given a glass coating, the force of the gas bubbles will instead cause a thin silicon film to peel off the one and on to the other.

ECONOMIST: Chip technology