Science

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Green Chemistry Methods Used in Iran to Produce Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles

Iranian researchers used a new method based on green chemistry to synthesize zinc oxide nanoparticles.

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U.S. Engineers Develop Ballistic Wallpaper

U.S. Troops often use abandoned masonry, brick or cinderblock structures for defensive purposes instead of building their own or digging foxholes.

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Buckle up for fast ionic conduction

ETH material engineers found that the performance of ion-conducting ceramic membranes that are so important in industry depends largely on their strain and buckling profiles. For the first time, scientists can now selectively manipulate the buckling profile, and thus the physical properties, allowing new technical applications of these membranes.

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ETH researchers engineered free-standing ceramic membranes for so-called micro energy converters. The strain patterns of these membranes control their properties.

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Nanoparticles naturally fall into left- and right-handed versions

A team of scientists from ITMO University and Trinity College Dublin published first experimental results showing that ordinary nanocrystals possess intrinsic chirality and can be produced under normal conditions as a half-and-half mixture of mirror images of each other. The discovery of this fundamental property in nanocrystals opens new horizons in nano- and bio-technology and medicine, for instance, for such applications as targeted drug delivery.

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These are levorotatory and dextrorotatory quantum dots with left and right chiral defects.

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A protective shield for sensitive catalysts: Hydrogels block harmful oxygen

An international research team has found a way of protecting sensitive catalysts from oxygen-caused damage. In the future, this could facilitate the creation of hydrogen fuel cells with molecular catalysts or with biomolecules such as the hydrogenase enzyme. To date, this could only be accomplished using the rare and expensive precious metal platinum. Together with their French colleagues, researchers from Bochum and Mülheim describe the way in which a hydrogel can serve as a "protective shield" for biomolecules.

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With a novel hydrogel, sensitive catalysts can be protected from oxygen molecules (red) which could irreversibly damage the catalysts. The hydrogel converts oxygen into water (red-white).

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World's thinnest lightbulb -- graphene gets bright! Columbia engineers and colleagues create bright, visible light emission from one-atom thick carbon

Led by Young Duck Kim, a postdoctoral research scientist in James Hone's group at Columbia Engineering, a team of scientists from Columbia, Seoul National University (SNU), and Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) reported today that they have demonstrated -- for the first time -- an on-chip visible light source using graphene, an atomically thin and perfectly crystalline form of carbon, as a filament. They attached small strips of graphene to metal electrodes, suspended the strips above the substrate, and passed a current through the filaments to cause them to heat up.

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Researchers grind nanotubes to get nanoribbons: Rice-led experiments demonstrate solid-state carbon nanotube 'templates'

A simple way to turn carbon nanotubes into valuable graphene nanoribbons may be to grind them, according to research led by Rice University.

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Researchers led by materials scientists at Rice University discovered that altering carbon nanotubes with carboxyl (COOH) and hydroxyl (OH) groups and grinding them together produces nanoribbons. The find could lead to novel nanostructured products with specific properties.

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Rosetta's lander Philae wakes up from hibernation

Rosetta's lander Philae has woken up after seven months in hibernation on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

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Sustainable transport essential to new global goals and low carbon economy – UN panel

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Bicycle-taxi in the streets of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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Argonne scientists announce first room-temperature magnetic skyrmion bubbles: New ideas are bubbling up for more efficient computer memory

Researchers at UCLA and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory announced a new method for creating magnetic skyrmion bubbles at room temperature. The bubbles, a physics phenomenon thought to be an option for more energy-efficient and compact electronics, can be created with simple equipment and common materials.

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