Preservation of the high-pressure states of materials at ambient conditions is a long-sought-after goal for fundamental research and practical applications. A team of scientists led by Drs. Zhidan (Denise) Zeng, Qiaoshi Zeng, and Ho-Kwang Mao from the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research (HPSTAR) and Prof. Wendy Mao from Stanford University report an innovative breakthrough where they were able to maintain the extraordinary properties of high-pressure materials in free-standing, nanostructured diamond capsules without the support of traditional…

Rice lab leads effort to generate thickness-independent piezoelectricity in atom-thick materials. There’s still plenty of room at the bottom to generate piezoelectricity. Engineers at Rice University and their colleagues are showing the way. A new study describes the discovery of piezoelectricity — the phenomenon by which mechanical energy turns into electrical energy — across phase boundaries of two-dimensional materials. The work led by Rice materials scientists Pulickel Ajayan and Hanyu Zhu and their colleagues at Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering, the University of Southern California, the University of Houston,…

German-New Zealand project on water electrolysis. The production of “green hydrogen” by electrolysis from renewable electricity is a key technology in the energy transition. One unsolved problem so far has been the need for expensive, hard-to-find precious metals. This is where the “HighHy” project, launched on 1 August 2022, comes in, in which the University of Bayreuth collaborates with Fraunhofer IFAM and three universities in New Zealand. Together, the partners want to develop a cost-effective and resource-saving process for water…

During the COVID-19 pandemic last year, an incident occurred where vaccines exposed to room temperature had to be discarded. Biomedical substances, including vaccines, risk deterioration if not stored properly, so strict management is required during production and storage. In particular, exposure to light may reduce the vaccine’s efficacy, so it is important to check whether it has been damaged by light exposure. Recently, a POSTECH research team led by Professor Junsuk Rho (Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Chemical…

Rare earth metals, when linked, can act as a conduit for energy flow, and show promise for the development of novel materials. Scientists have connected two soft crystals and observed energy transfer between them—a finding that could lead to the development of sophisticated, responsive materials. The study, by scientists at Hokkaido University in Japan, was published in the journal Nature Communications. Soft crystals are flexible molecular solids with highly ordered structures. When they are subjected to external stimuli, such as…

Researchers use multicomponent alloys to make strong and ductile soft magnetic materials. Latest results now published in the journal Nature. Soft magnetic materials (SMMs) applied in electric engines transform energy from sustainable resources into electricity. Conventional SMMs, which are currently used in industry, are prone to damage under severe mechanical loads. Researchers from the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (MPIE), the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Central South University, China, have developed a new design strategy that increases the lifetime of…

Discovery by Brazilian researchers featured on cover of the journal Nanoscale is noteworthy because of possible applications in next-generation electronic devices. Certain materials at very low temperatures conduct electric current without resistance or losses. This property, known as superconductivity, was discovered in 1911 by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926), who won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research in the field. Even though more than a century has passed since its discovery, research on superconductivity is still…

Study debunks accepted assumptions of charging mechanism in rechargeable aqueous zinc-manganese battery cells. While scientists have hoped that rechargeable zinc-manganese dioxide batteries could be developed into a viable alternative for grid storage applications, engineers at the University of Illinois Chicago and their colleagues identified the reasons these zinc-based fuel systems fail. The scientists reached this conclusion after leveraging advanced electron microscopy, electrochemical experiments and theoretical calculations to look closer at how the zinc anode works with the manganese cathode in…

They will be useful in space, laser surgery, security systems. Researches of the Science Lab of Fiber Technology and Photonics at the Ural Federal University (UrFU) have developed and produced infrared optical fibers with unique properties. The fibers are nontoxic and, as studies have shown, retain their outstanding properties when treated with ionizing beta radiation by doses up to 1 MGy. The team of scientists published an article describing the research, properties and areas of application of the obtained fibers in the journal Optical…

QUT robotics researchers working with Ford Motor Company have found a way to tell an autonomous vehicle which cameras to use when navigating. Professor Michael Milford, Joint Director of the QUT Centre for Robotics and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and senior author, said the research comes from a project looking at how  cameras and LIDAR sensors, commonly used in autonomous vehicles, can better understand the world around them. “The key idea here is to learn which cameras to use…

A new self-healing coating material. Fast, localized, and low-energy-consumption self-healing material… Expected applications: automotive coating materials. [ACS Appl. Polym. Mater.] Published as supplementary cover of the May 2022 issue. A transparent protective coating material that can be self-healed in 30 minutes when exposed to sunlight has been developed. Excellent durability of automotive coatings is the most important issue in protecting a vehicle surface. In addition, protective coating materials should be colorless and transparent so that the original color of the…

Porous material from melamine efficiently captures CO2 from flue gases; could be scaled down. Using an inexpensive polymer called melamine — the main component of Formica — chemists have created a cheap, easy and energy-efficient way to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, a key goal for the United States and other nations as they seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The process for synthesizing the melamine material, published this week in the journal Science Advances, could potentially be scaled down…

Until now, noisy and power-guzzling building dryers have normally been the only way of repairing water damage to apartments from leaking pipes or following heavy rain and flooding. The “FastDry”® technology developed by Fraunhofer researchers requires significantly less energy and works at least as quickly as conventional systems. The idea that underpins the technology is incredibly simple. Damp walls are a massive problem. Moisture compromises the indoor climate of living spaces and encourages the growth of mold that is hazardous…

… that’s both ultrastrong and ductile. Components could have aerospace, medical, energy and automotive applications. A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Georgia Institute of Technology has 3D printed a dual-phase, nanostructured high-entropy alloy that exceeds the strength and ductility of other state-of-the-art additively manufactured materials, which could lead to higher-performance components for applications in aerospace, medicine, energy and transportation. The work, led by Wen Chen, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass,…

Scientists have created a novel technology that can help to tackle climate change and address the global energy crisis. Northumbria University’s Dr Shafeer Kalathil is among a team of esteemed academics behind the project, which uses a chemical process that converts sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into acetate and oxygen to produce high-value fuels and chemicals powered by renewable energy. As part of the process, bacteria are grown on a synthetic semiconductor device known as a photocatalyst sheet, which means…

Wafer bonding technology improves photovoltaics. Solar cell technologies have been improving incrementally over the decades, but energy conversion has remained less than optimal. Now, researchers at Kyoto University have developed a novel wafer bonding technology using an optical upconversion material that transforms sunlight to shorter-wavelengths. This new semiconductor process utilizes the interface’s optical function for bond formation. The team created a stacked structure consisting of a thin silicon film mimicking the upper subcell of a multi-junction solar cell and a…