Replicating the structure of bird feathers

The new material could be used in batteries or filtration

04-Dec-2023 - Modelled on nature: researchers have developed a new material that replicates the structure responsible for the blue feathers of the North American song bird, among many other birds. It also has other striking advantages. The eastern bluebird is a special bird. The blue of its feathers is unique. ...

New aspects of surface wetting revealed

Findings may thus enable developing new strategies for surface processing

16-Nov-2022 - When a surface is getting wet, also the composition of the liquid plays a role in the wetting process. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) found that phase separation within the wetting liquid directly affects the dynamics of spreading. Their ...

In the beginning was the phase separation

Was a simple mechanism decisive for the origin of life?

25-May-2018 - The question of the origin of life remains one of the oldest unanswered scientific questions. A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now shown for the first time that phase separation is an extremely efficient way of controlling the selection of chemical building blocks and ...

Mimicking a sweet solution to mop up pollution

14-May-2018 - A fast and safe method to prepare a 3D porous material that mimics the shape of a honeycomb could have broad applications from catalysis to drug delivery or for filtering air to remove pollutants or viruses. Both the lattice of a honeycomb and the symmetry of a diatom are complex living ...

Prediction of nonmetallic half-metallicity

19-Sep-2017 - A team of researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and the Institute for Theoretical and Applied Electrodynamics (ITAE) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), in collaboration with a colleague from RIKEN (Institute for Physical and Chemical Research in Japan), has ...

Smart tomographic sensors control industrial processes of tomorrow

HZDR coordinates European Doctoral Training Network TOMOCON

01-Sep-2017 - Modern parallel computer architectures are capable of processing huge amounts of data at high speed. This allows for the increasing use of imaging techniques as sensors to control machines and process plants. In the new European collaborative project TOMOCON twelve research institutions and 15 ...