Innovative coating against ice

Development leap achieved through the use of initiated chemical vapour deposition

29-Feb-2024 - The material delays the formation of ice crystals and reduces the adhesion of ice layers. Thanks to an innovative production method, the coating is very robust and adheres to numerous surfaces. Ice-repellent coatings have been around for some time, but until now they have been very sensitive and ...

Primordial Photoredox Catalyst

Nitrogen-Doped Graphite Catalyzes Reactions to Give Early Biomolecules

13-Jul-2023 - The sun as a source of energy, and catalysts to accelerate chemical reactions, were of critical importance in the emergence of the first biochemical molecules on Earth. A research team has now shown that a solid deposited from ammonia and methane plasma is capable of using light energy for ...

2D boundaries could create electricity

Rice lab leads effort to generate thickness-independent piezoelectricity in atom-thick materials

19-Aug-2022 - There’s stillplenty of room at the bottomto generatepiezoelectricity. 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 — acrossphase ...

Electronic skin: multisensory hybrid material

Even more sensitive than a human fingertip

18-May-2022 - The “smart skin” developed by Anna Maria Coclite is very similar to human skin. It senses pressure, humidity and temperature simultaneously and produces electronic signals. More sensitive robots or more intelligent prostheses are thus conceivable. The skin is the largest sensory organ and at the ...

Carbon molecular sieve integrated graphene sensor

New paradigm in atmospheric gas sensing and molecular identification

21-Mar-2022 - Graphene, an atomic-thick sheet of carbon has found immense applications in gas sensors due to its single-molecule sensitivity, low-noise levels, and high carrier density. However, graphene’s much-heralded sensitivity also means it is inherently non-selective to any gas. Hence, it easily gets ...

Novel two-step mechanism revealed in two-dimensional material formation

Novel monitoring and analysis method

10-Dec-2021 - Two-dimensional materials are incredibly thin. Typically only an atom thick, 2D materials exhibit highly desirable properties for advanced technologies, such as flexibility, superconductivity and more. Made from carefully transitioning individual components from gas or vapor to crystalline ...

Scientists grow carbon nanotube forest much longer than any other

Novel technique yields a carbon nanotube forest of record length, potentially revolutionizing the future of many industries

06-Nov-2020 - Today, a multitude of industries, including optics, electronics, water purification, and drug delivery, innovate at an unprecedented scale with nanometer-wide rolls of honeycomb-shaped graphite sheets called carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Features such as light weight, convenient structure, immense ...

Intelligent nanomaterials for photonics

Physicists and chemists engineer optical fibres with 2D materials

13-Oct-2020 - 2D materials – nanosheets with atomic thickness – have enormous potential for a wide variety of applications. For instance, combined with optical fibres, 2D materials can enable novel applications in the areas of sensors, non-linear optics, and quantum technologies. However, combining these two ...

Growing carbon nanotubes with the right twist

17-Dec-2019 - In a recently published paper in Science Advances, Feng Ding of the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials, within the Institute of Basic Science (IBS, South Korea) and colleagues, have achieved the creation of a specific type of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with a selectivity of 90%, and ...

Graphenes now go monolayer and single crystalline

05-Jul-2019 - Director Rodney Ruoff's research group from the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials (CMCM) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has reported a truly single layer (i.e., adlayer-free) large area graphene film on ...