Rice-built reactor yields green ammonia and purified water

New reactor system could decarbonize ammonia production, treat nitrate-contaminated water

20-Aug-2024 - Ammonia plays a critical role in sustaining food production for the world’s growing population, but making it accounts for about 2%of global energy consumption and 1.4% of carbon dioxide emissions. Rice University engineers have developed a revolutionary reactor design that could decarbonize ...

Researchers develop innovative battery recycling method

30-Jul-2024 - A research team at Rice University led by James Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science and nanoengineering, is tackling the environmental issue of efficiently recycling lithium ion batteries amid their increasing use. The team has pioneered a new ...

Synthetic chemistry approach yields new compounds with potential biomedical applications

The study marks a significant advancement in chemical synthesis techniques, leveraging modern organic chemistry and engineered enzymes

10-May-2024 - Researchers at Rice University have successfully synthesized a group of natural compounds known as fusicoccanes. The molecules, found in various living organisms, exhibit diverse biological activities, including the ability to modulate protein-protein interactions within biological systems. The ...

‘Strange metal’ is strangely quiet in noise experiment

27-Nov-2023 - True to form, a “strange metal” quantum material proved strangely quiet in recent quantum noise experiments at Rice University. The measurements of quantum charge fluctuations known as “shot noise” provide the first direct evidence that electricity seems to flow through strange metals in an ...

Gold buckyballs, oft-used nanoparticle ‘seeds’ are one and the same

Rice lab discovers commonly used nanoparticles are cousins of original buckyballs

21-Aug-2023 - Rice University chemists have discovered that tiny gold “seed” particles, a key ingredient in one of the most common nanoparticle recipes, are one and the same as gold buckyballs, 32-atom spherical molecules that are cousins of the carbon buckyballs discovered at Rice in 1985. Carbon buckyballs ...

Nanoparticles make it easier to turn light into solvated electrons

Illuminating study advances ‘green’ reducing agents

20-Jan-2023 - There are many ways to initiate chemical reactions in liquids, but placing free electrons directly into water, ammonia and other liquid solutions is especially attractive for green chemistry becausesolvated electrons are inherently clean, leaving behind no side products after they react. In ...

Lab lights way to simple chemical synthesis

Photochemistry method eases manufacture of drug, chemical precursors

11-Jan-2023 - Inexpensive iron salts are a key to simplifying the manufacture of essential precursors for drugs and other chemicals, according to scientists at Rice University. They’ve refined the process of producing diazides, building-block molecules in the production of drugs and agricultural chemicals. ...

A crystal shape conundrum is finally solved

The method can predict shapes of crystals that lack symmetry

30-Nov-2022 - A crystal’s shape is determined by its inherent chemistry, a characteristic that ultimately determines its final form from the most basic of details. But sometimes the lack of symmetry in a crystal makes the surface energies of its facets unknowable, confounding any theoretical prediction of its ...

Inexpensive catalyst uses energy from light to turn ammonia into hydrogen fuel

Start-up Syzygy Plasmonics has licensed technology

28-Nov-2022 - Rice University researchers have engineered a key light-activated nanomaterial for the hydrogen economy. Using only inexpensive raw materials, a team from Rice’sLaboratory for Nanophotonics,Syzygy Plasmonics Inc.and Princeton University’sAndlinger Center for Energy and the Environmentcreated ...

Rice lab advances water-splitting catalysts

Engineers develop stable devices that don’t require expensive iridium

26-Oct-2022 - Creating ahydrogen economyis no small task, but Rice University engineers have discovered a method that could makeoxygen evolutioncatalysis in acids, one of the most challenging topics in water electrolysis forproducing clean hydrogen fuels, more economical and practical. The lab of chemical ...