Month: July 2020

Supported bimetallic catalysts are an important class of catalysts in heterogeneous catalysis. They can be applied in various fields, such as electrocatalysis, biomass conversion, and hydrogen production. However, traditional impregnation and immobilization methods for synthesizing supported bimetallic nanoparticles (BNPs) are often uncontrollable, thus creating BNPs with non-uniform particle size, low alloy degree and inhomogeneous distribution

IMAGE: Scientists at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis create new materials by spraying combinations of elements onto thin plates. view more  Credit: Image courtesy of Caltech The quest for renewable fuels harvested from the sun continues, as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced two new major awards focused on advancing artificial photosynthesis technologies

IMAGE: An artistic impression sharing a secret using structured light. view more  Credit: Wits University Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, have demonstrated a record setting quantum protocol for sharing a secret amongst many parties. The team created an 11-dimensional quantum state and used it to share a secret amongst 10

A team of scientists led by Kenichiro Itami, Professor and Director of the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (WPI-ITbM), has developed a new method for the synthesis of three-dimensional nanocarbons with the potential to advance materials science. Three-dimensional nanocarbons, next-generation materials with superior physical characteristics which are expected to find uses in fuel cells and organic

IMAGE: Hall-bar device on solid proton conductor used for measurements view more  Credit: FLEET A Chinese-Australian collaboration has demonstrated for the first time that interlayer coupling in a van der Waals (vdW) material can be largely modulated by a protonic gate, which inject protons to devices from an ionic solid. The discovery opens the way to

IMAGE: The new chip will remove the arduous task of manually testing swimming pools, avoids overuse of pool chemicals, and reduces the risk of infection from incorrect pool chemistry. view more  Credit: University of SA A new microchip that enables continuous monitoring of pH and chlorine levels in swimming pools will vastly improve water safety and

HARWELL, UK (30 July 2020) The Faraday Institution has selected its first six Industry Fellowships in an innovative new programme to strengthen ties between battery researchers working in industry and academia. Each fellowship will enable academics and industrialists to undertake a mutually beneficial, electrochemical energy storage research project that aims to solve a critical industrial

IMAGE: The graph illustrates the stepwise synthesis of Silver-Zinc Oxide core-shell clusters. view more  Credit: © IEP – TU Graz Whether in innovative high-tech materials, more powerful computer chips, pharmaceuticals or in the field of renewable energies, nanoparticles – smallest portions of bulk material – form the basis for a whole range of new technological developments.

IMAGE: The material (thick gray line in the center of the image) derived from e-waste remained intact when indented, and increased the hardness of the steel below it. view more  Credit: Adapted from ACS Omega 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.0c00485 A typical recycling process converts large quantities of items made of a single material into more of the

IMAGE: Katherine Hornbostel, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering view more  Credit: Ramon Cordero (Mainline Photography) As renewable power generation increases, conventional energy sources like natural gas, coal, and nuclear power will still be required to balance the nation’s energy portfolio. Traditional power plants will

IMAGE: This photo shows the fabrication procedure of a nondiffracting of a lightfield using a desired transversed caustic. view more  Credit: WWU – Alessandro Zannotti Modern applications as high resolution microsopy or micro- or nanoscale material processing require customized laser beams that do not change during propagation. This represents an immense challenge since light typically broadens

IMAGE: A newly developed fabric repels water and allows moisture to evaporate from the skin.  view more  Credit: American Chemical Society Air conditioning and other space cooling methods account for about 10% of all electricity consumption in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have

IMAGE: A single-crystalline perovskite thin film during the transfer process. view more  Credit: Yusheng Lei Nanoengineers at UC San Diego developed a new method to fabricate perovskites as single-crystal thin films, which are more efficient for use in solar cells and optical devices than the current state-of-the-art polycrystalline forms of the material. Their fabrication method–which uses

Skoltech researchers and their colleagues from Aalto University have discovered that electrochemical doping with ionic liquid can significantly enhance the optical and electrical properties of transparent conductors made of single-walled carbon nanotube films. The results were published in the journal Carbon. A single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) is a seamless rolled sheet of graphene, a list

IMAGE: Local-differential recording of neuronal activities (top) Fabricated coaxial needle-electrode (bottom) view more  Credit: COPYRIGHT (C) TOYOHASHI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Overview Associate Professor Takeshi Kawano, Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT) and the research team at the Electronics-Inspired Interdisciplinary Research Institute (EIIRIS) have developed a coaxial cable-inspired