Invented by UChicago scientists, a new kind of solar cell could spur useful technology. Holes help make sponges and English muffins useful (and, in the case of the latter, delicious). Without holes, they wouldn’t be flexible enough to bend into small crevices, or to sop up the perfect amount of jam and butter. In a new study, University of Chicago scientists find that holes can also improve technology, including medical devices. Published in Nature Materials, the paper describes an entirely…
… than existing plastic-based materials. One day soon, buildings could become more energy-efficient—and environmentally sustainable—with insulating material developed from wood by researchers in Sweden. The newly-developed material offers as good or even better thermal performance than ordinary plastic-based insulation materials, according to researchers reporting recently in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.Yuanyuan Li, an assistant professor at Wallenberg Wood Science Center, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, says that the new insulating material is an aerogel integrated wood which is…
… with a non-noble metal cocatalyst Mo2C under visible light. Nanomaterials frontier towards hydrogen energy. Halide perovskites have been emerging as promising photocatalytic materials for H2-evolution from water due to their outstanding photoelectric properties. However, the lack of proper surface reactive sites greatly hinders the photocatalytic potential of these fascinating compounds. Here, Mo2C nanoparticles have been anchored onto methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3) as a non-noble-metal cocatalyst to promote H2-evolution reactions. They published their work on May. 28 in Energy Material Advances….
Toward ceramics tailored for optimized bone self-repair. Your chance of breaking a bone sometime within the next year is nearly 4%. If you’re unlucky enough to need a bone replacement, it’ll probably be based on a metal part. Unfortunately, metal parts are sometimes toxic over time, and will not help your original bone regrow. Calcium phosphate ceramics—substitutes for the bone mineral hydroxyapatite—are in principle an ideal alternative to conventional metals because bone can eventually replace the ceramic and regrow. However,…
Mimicking the human body, specifically the actuators that control muscle movement, is of immense interest around the globe. In recent years, it has led to many innovations to improve robotics, prosthetic limbs and more, but creating these actuators typically involves complex processes, with expensive and hard-to-find materials. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Penn State University have created a new type of fiber that can perform like a muscle actuator, in many ways better than other options…
Researchers have analysed the properties of an organic polymer with potential applications in flexible electronics and uncovered variations in hardness at the nanoscale, the first time such a fine structure has been observed in this type of material. The field of organic electronics has benefited from the discovery of new semiconducting polymers with molecular backbones that are resilient to twists and bends, meaning they can transport charge even if they are flexed into different shapes. It had been assumed that…
Researcher Laura Rossi and her group at TU Delft have found a new way to build synthetic materials out of tiny glass particles – so-called colloids. Together with their colleagues from Queen’s University and the University of Amsterdam, they showed that they can simply use the shape of these colloids to make interesting building blocks for new materials, regardless of other properties of the colloidal particles. Rossi: “This is striking, because it opens up a completely new way to think…
Giving off a comfortable glow, candles set the ambiance for a special dinner or just a quiet evening at home. However, some lighting alternatives, such as electronic candles, give off unwanted blue wavelengths that interfere with the body’s circadian rhythm. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Electronic Materials have fabricated an improved bendable organic LED that releases candlelight-like light for flexible lighting and smart displays that people can comfortably use at night. Previously, Jwo-Huei Jou and other researchers developed organic…
An international research team, led by DIPC and Princeton University, discovered that almost all materials in nature exhibit at least one topological state, contradicting the 40-year-old assumption that topological materials are rare and esoteric. In a paper published this week in Science, the team also introduces the new concept of “supertopological” to the theory of band topology. For the past century, students of chemistry, materials science, and physics have been taught to model solid-state materials by considering their chemical composition,…
Study shows what happens when crystalline grains in metals reform at nanometer scales, improving metal properties. Forming metal into the shapes needed for various purposes can be done in many ways, including casting, machining, rolling, and forging. These processes affect the sizes and shapes of the tiny crystalline grains that make up the bulk metal, whether it be steel, aluminum or other widely used metals and alloys. Now researchers at MIT have been able to study exactly what happens as…
CU Boulder scientists have successfully synthesized graphyne, which has been theorized for decades but never successfully produced. For over a decade, scientists have attempted to synthesize a new form of carbon called graphyne with limited success. That endeavor is now at an end, though, thanks to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder. Graphyne has long been of interest to scientists because of its similarities to the “wonder material” graphene—another form of carbon that is highly valued by industry…
A team of researchers from Bordeaux, Augsburg and Bayreuth has studied 61 different metals over the course of multiple years. The results have been published in the prestigious journal “Nature Sustainability“ – The most significant finding was that the raw materials critical to modern technology, in particular, have a relatively short usage period. How long are metallic and mineral raw materials usable in the economic cycle – and when do they dissipate? Researchers from Bordeaux, Augsburg, and Bayreuth, answer these…
Scientists have synthesized the first belt-shaped molecular nanocarbon with a twisted Möbius band topology—a Möbius carbon nanobelt—that paves the way for the development of nanocarbon materials with complex topological structures. Obtaining structurally uniform nanocarbons—ideally as single molecules—is a great challenge in the field of nanocarbon science in order to properly relate structure and function. Thus, the construction of structurally uniform nanocarbons is crucial for the development of functional materials in nanotechnology, electronics, optics, and biomedical applications. An important tool for…
Incorporating known physics into neural network algorithms allows them to discover new insights into material properties. Researchers at Duke University have demonstrated that incorporating known physics into machine learning algorithms can help the inscrutable black boxes attain new levels of transparency and insight into material properties. In one of the first projects of its kind, researchers constructed a modern machine learning algorithm to determine the properties of a class of engineered materials known as metamaterials and to predict how they…
New material is capable of capturing trace amounts of benzene, a toxic pollutant, from the air and crucially use less energy than existing materials to do so. Researchers at University of Limerick, Ireland have developed a new material that has the ability to capture toxic chemicals from the air. The material is capable of capturing trace amounts of benzene, a toxic pollutant, from the air and crucially use less energy than existing materials to do so, according to the researchers….
The technological advancement of optical lenses has long been a significant marker of human scientific achievement. Eyeglasses, telescopes, cameras, and microscopes have all literally and figuratively allowed us to see the world in a new light. Lenses are also a fundamental component of manufacturing nanoelectronics by the semiconductor industry. One of the most impactful breakthroughs of lens technology in recent history has been the development of photonic metasurfaces — artificially engineered nano-scale materials with remarkable optical properties. Georgia Tech researchers…
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