Producing fertiliser without carbon emissions

Fighting climate change and food security

28-Dec-2022 - Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Carnegie Institution for Science have shown how nitrogen fertiliser could be produced more sustainably. This is necessary not only to protect the climate, but also to reduce dependence on imported natural gas and to increase food security. Intensive agriculture ...

An easier way to create "flexible diamonds"

Original technique predicts and guides the ordered creation of strong, yet flexible, diamond nanothreads

09-Mar-2022 - As hard as diamond and as flexible as plastic, highly sought-after diamond nanothreads would be poised to revolutionize our world—if they weren’t so difficult to make. Recently, a team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Samuel Dunning and Timothy Strobel developed an original technique that predicts ...

Intense conditions turn nitrogen metallic

11-Jul-2018 - New work from a team led by Carnegie's Alexander Goncharov confirms that nitrogen, the dominant gas in Earth's atmosphere, becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep inside the Earth and other planets. Nitrogen is one of the most-common ...

Molecular prison forces diatomic inmates to cell floor

29-Mar-2018 - Washington, DC--A team of scientists including Carnegie's Tim Strobel and Venkata Bhadram now report unexpected quantum behavior of hydrogen molecules, H2 , trapped within tiny cages made of organic molecules, demonstrating that the structure of the cage influences the behavior of the molecule ...

Prediction of titanic nitride proved unsinkable

26-Jan-2018 - A team of experimental and computational scientists led by Carnegie's Tim Strobel and Venkata Bhadram have synthesized a long sought-after form of titanium nitride, Ti3N4, which has promising mechanical and optoelectronic properties. Standard titanium nitride (TiN), with a one-to-one ratio of ...

New form of carbon that's hard as a rock, yet elastic, like rubber

13-Jun-2017 - A team including several Carnegie scientists has developed a form of ultrastrong, lightweight carbon that is also elastic and electrically conductive. A material with such a unique combination of properties could serve a wide variety of applications from aerospace engineering to military ...

Argon is not the 'dope' for metallic hydrogen

27-Mar-2017 - Hydrogen is both the simplest and the most-abundant element in the universe, so studying it can teach scientists about the essence of matter. And yet there are still many hydrogen secrets to unlock, including how best to force it into a superconductive, metallic state with no electrical ...

Solid metal has 'structural memory' of its liquid state

15-Mar-2017 - New work from a team including Carnegie's Guoyin Shen and Yoshio Kono used high pressure and temperature to reveal a kind of "structural memory" in samples of the metal bismuth, a discovery with great electrical engineering potential. Bismuth is a historically interesting element for scientists, ...

Melting solid below the freezing point

24-Jan-2017 - Phase transitions surround us--for instance, liquid water changes to ice when frozen and to steam when boiled. Now, researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science have discovered a new phenomenon of so-called metastability in a liquid phase. A metastable liquid is not quite stable. This ...

Germanium's semiconducting and optical properties probed under pressure

04-Jan-2017 - Germanium may not be a household name like silicon, its group-mate on the periodic table, but it has great potential for use in next-generation electronics and energy technology. Of particular interest are forms of germanium that can be synthesized in the lab under extreme pressure conditions. ...