Bane and boon of oxygen mediating the performance of nickel catalysts in dry reforming of methane

Fundamental insights into the processes occurring at the catalyst surface

22-Jan-2024 - Catalysis is one of the key technologies in the chemical industry and has a wide-reaching impact on various aspects of our daily lives, including plastics manufacturing, drug synthesis, and production of both fertilizers and fuels. It is estimated that over 90% of chemical products are nowadays ...

How an African bird might inspire a better water bottle

An extreme closeup of feathers from a bird with an uncanny ability to hold water while it flies could inspire the next generation of absorbent materials

18-Apr-2023 - With high resolution microscopes and 3D technology, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology captured an unprecedented view of feathers from the desert-dwelling sandgrouse, showcasing the singular architecture of their feathers and revealing for the first ...

Nanoplastics can move up the food chain from plants to insects and from insects to fish

Novel, metallic fingerprint-based technique to detect and measure nanoplastics in organisms

14-Sep-2022 - A new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows that lettuce can take up nanoplastics from the soil and transfer them into the food chain. The concern about plastic pollution has become widespread after it was realised that mismanaged plastics in the environment break down into smaller ...

'Tickling' an atom to investigate the behavior of materials

09-Mar-2020 - Scientists and engineers working at the frontier of nanotechnology face huge challenges. When the position of a single atom in a material may change the fundamental properties of that material, scientists need something in their toolbox to measure how that atom will behave. A research team led by ...

Machine learning technique speeds up crystal structure determination

04-Feb-2020 - Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a computer-based method that could make it less labor-intensive to determine the crystal structures of various materials and molecules, including alloys, proteins and pharmaceuticals. The method uses a machine learning ...

Nanocrystalline diamonds used to study materials under extreme conditions

07-Feb-2018 - Using a nanocrystalline diamond built by plasma vapor deposition, Yogesh Vohra, Ph.D., has already produced a pressure nearly two times greater than that found at the center of the Earth. Now he reports that the manufacturing process of these novel, nanocrystalline-diamond micro-anvils has proved ...

Quick and reliable 3-D imaging of curvilinear nanostructures

08-Sep-2017 - Physical and biological sciences increasingly require the ability to observe nano-sized objects. This can be accomplished with transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which is generally limited to 2D images. Using TEM to reconstruct 3D images instead usually requires tilting the sample through an ...

A semiconductor that can beat the heat

02-Aug-2017 - A newly discovered collective rattling effect in a type of crystalline semiconductor blocks most heat transfer while preserving high electrical conductivity - a rare pairing that scientists say could reduce heat buildup in electronic devices and turbine engines, among other possible ...

Unprecedented view of the diffusion and rotation of fullerene molecules by graphene encapsulation

13-Jun-2017 - Carbon is one of the most versatile elements: it forms the basis for an enormous number of chemical compounds, it has several allotropes of different dimensionality, and it exhibits many different bonding geometries. For this reason, carbon materials have had a special place in materials research ...

Light can improve perovskite solar cell performance

02-May-2017 - EPFL scientists show how light affects perovskite film formation in solar cells, which is a critical factor in using them for cost-effective and energy-efficient photovoltaics. Perovskites are materials of immense interest in solar energy technology lately, as they promise to bring down the cost ...