‘Greener’ Aerogel Technology Holds Potential for Oil and Chemical Clean-up

Cleaning up oil spills and metal contaminates in a low-impact, sustainable and inexpensive manner remains a challenge for companies and governments globally.

But a group of researchers at UW–Madison is examining alternative materials that can be modified to absorb oil and chemicals. 

If further developed, the technology may offer a cheaper and “greener” method to absorb oil and heavy metals from water and other surfaces.

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A small sample of the aerogel is stirred into a container of water tainted with red-dyed diesel fuel.

Photos: Bryce Richter

Microparticles Show Molecules Their Way

A team of researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Michigan/USA has produced novel microparticles, whose surface consists of three chemically different segments. 

These segments can be provided with different (bio-) molecules. 

Thanks to the specific spatial orientation of the attached molecules, the microparticles are suited for innovative applications in medicine, biochemistry, and engineering. 

The researchers now report about their development in the journal “Angewandte Chemie“.

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The small, but highly complex particles contain chemically different segments. (Photo: Angewandte Chemie)

New, Inexpensive Production Materials Boost Promise of Hydrogen Fuel

Generating electricity is not the only way to turn sunlight into energy we can use on demand. The sun can also drive reactions to create chemical fuels, such as hydrogen, that can in turn power cars, trucks and trains.

The trouble with solar fuel production is the cost of producing the sun-capturing semiconductors and the catalysts to generate fuel. The most efficient materials are far too expensive to produce fuel at a price that can compete with gasoline.

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One of the limitations of using sunlight to create fuels like hydrogen has been the high cost of producing the semiconductors and catalysts needed. UW–Madison scientists are making progress on an answer. Photo: Bryce Richter

 

ORNL microscopy system delivers real-time view of battery electrochemistry | ornl.gov

Using a new microscopy method, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory can image and measure electrochemical processes in batteries in real time and at nanoscale resolution.

Scientists at ORNL used a miniature electrochemical liquid cell that is placed in a transmission electron microscope to study an enigmatic phenomenon in lithium-ion batteries called the solid electrolyte interphase, or SEI, as described in a study published in Chemical Communications.

Read more at ORNL Microscopy System Delivers Real-time View of Battery Electrochemistry | ornl.gov

A new in situ transmission electron microscopy technique enabled ORNL researchers to image the snowflake-like growth of the solid electrolyte interphase from a working battery electrode.

 

Artificial Cells and Salad Dressing

Researchers have made important discoveries regarding the behavior of a synthetic molecular oscillator, which could help create artificial cells.

A University of California, Riverside assistant professor of engineering is among a group of researchers that have made important discoveries regarding the behavior of a synthetic molecular oscillator, which could serve as a timekeeping device to control artificial cells.

For decades, scientists have been trying to figure out ways to make artificial, programmable oscillators with molecules. Artificial oscillators may help adjust timekeeping in cells and regulating artificial cells. They could also be used as components in molecular computers that could create a middle ground between computers and nature

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Micron-sized droplets of an emulsion form the reaction vessels for a complex, oscillating reaction.

Caps Not the Culprit in Nanotube Chirality

A single-walled carbon nanotube grows from the round cap down, so it’s logical to think the cap’s formation determines what follows. But according to researchers at Rice University, that’s not entirely so.

Theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his Rice colleagues found through exhaustive analysis that those who wish to control the chirality of nanotubes – the characteristic that determines their electrical properties – would be wise to look at other aspects of their growth.

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Carbon nanotube caps are forced into shape by six pentagons among the array of hexagons in the single-atom-thick tube. Rice University researchers took a census of thousands of possible caps and found the energies dedicated to their formation have no bearing on the tube’s ultimate chirality. (Credit: Evgeni Penev/Rice University) - 

Leeds Researchers Build World’s Most Powerful Terahertz Laser Chip

University of Leeds researchers have taken the lead in the race to build the world’s most powerful terahertz laser chip. 

 

A paper in the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) journal Electronics Letters reports that the Leeds team has exceeded a 1 Watt output power from a quantum cascade terahertz laser.

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Credit: University of Leeds

Synthesised Sponge Chemical Shows Promise for Cancer

A promising compound for cancer treatment has been synthesised in a laboratory by an RMIT University researcher during his PhD research.

Dr Dan Balan, from the School of Applied Sciences at RMIT, said 15-aza-Salicylihalamide A analogue had demonstrated potent activity against several leukaemia cell lines.

"Salicylihalamide A is an interesting natural marine product that has been isolated from a marine sponge of the genus Haliclona, collected from waters around Rottnest Island, 18 km off the coast of southern Western Australia," Dr Balan said.

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Putting the Power in Power-Dressing

Scientists in the UK developing wearable electronics have knitted a flexible fabric that delivers twice the power output of current energy harvesting textiles.

There is considerable interest and research into wearable piezoelectric energy harvesters that use waste energy from human movement or the ambient environment to power low-energy consuming wearable devices, such as wireless sensors and consumer electronics.

 

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The fabric is composed of two separate conducting, silver-coated polyamide textile faces joined together by a PVDF spacer yarn. Credit: Navneet Soin et al.

Graphene’s Love Affair with Water

Graphene has proven itself as a wonder material with a vast range of unique properties. Among the least-known marvels of graphene is its strange love affair with water.

Graphene is hydrophobic – it repels water – but narrow capillaries made from graphene vigorously suck in water allowing its rapid permeation, if the water layer is only one atom thick – that is, as thin as graphene itself.

This bizarre property has attracted intense academic and industrial interest with intent to develop new water filtration and desalination technologies.

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Credit: Dr Rahul Nair and Prof Andre Geim, The University of Manchester

Superconductivity in Orbit: Scientists Find New Path to Loss-Free Electricity

Armed with just the right atomic arrangements, superconductors allow electricity to flow without loss and radically enhance energy generation, delivery, and storage. 

Scientists tweak these superconductor recipes by swapping out elements or manipulating the valence electrons in an atom's outermost orbital shell to strike the perfect conductive balance. 

Most high-temperature superconductors contain atoms with only one orbital impacting performance—but what about mixing those elements with more complex configurations?

Now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have combined atoms with multiple orbitals and precisely pinned down their electron distributions. 

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These images show the distribution of the valence electrons in the samples explored by the Brookhaven Lab collaboration—both feature a central iron layer sandwiched between arsenic atoms. The tiny red clouds (more electrons) in the undoped sample on the left (BaFe2As2) reveal the weak charge quadrupole of the iron atom, while the blue clouds (fewer electrons) around the outer arsenic ions show weak polarization. The superconducting sample on the right (doped with cobalt atoms), however, exhibits a strong quadrupole in the center and the pronounced polarization of the arsenic atoms, as evidenced by the large, red balloons. Credit: Brookhaven Lab scientists and study coauthors Lijun Wu, Yimei Zhu, Chris Homes, and Weiguo Yin

Diamond Film Possible Without the Pressure

Perfect sheets of diamond a few atoms thick appear to be possible even without the big squeeze that makes natural gems.

Scientists have speculated about it and a few labs have even seen signs of what they call diamane, an extremely thin film of diamond that has all of diamond’s superior semiconducting and thermal properties.

Now researchers at Rice University and in Russia have calculated a “phase diagram” for the creation of diamane. The diagram is a road map. It lays out the conditions – temperature, pressure and other factors – that would be necessary to turn stacked sheets of graphene into a flawless diamond lattice.

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The phase diagram developed by scientists at Rice University and in Moscow describes the conditions necessary for the chemical creation of thin films of diamond from stacks of single-atomic-layer graphene. (Credit: Pavel Sorokin/Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials)

Rice’s Carbon Nanotube Fibers Outperform Copper

On a pound-per-pound basis, carbon nanotube-based fibers invented at Rice University have greater capacity to carry electrical current than copper cables of the same mass, according to new research.

While individual nanotubes are capable of transmitting nearly 1,000 times more current than copper, the same tubes coalesced into a fiber using other technologies fail long before reaching that capacity.

But a series of tests at Rice showed the wet-spun carbon nanotube fiber still handily beat copper, carrying up to four times as much current as a copper wire of the same mass.

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Scanning electron microscope images show typical carbon nanotube fibers created at Rice University and broken into two by high-current-induced Joule heating. Rice researchers broke the fibers in different conditions – air, argon, nitrogen and a vacuum – to see how well they handled high current. The fibers proved overall to be better at carrying electrical current than copper cables of the same mass. (Credit: Kono Lab/Rice University

New Understanding Could Result in More Efficient Organic Solar Cells

The goal of making cheap organic solar cells may have gotten a little more approachable with a new understanding of the basic science of charge separation presented in a paper published online today, February 3, in Nature Communications. 

Co-authored by Penn State electrical engineer Noel Giebink with lead author Bethany Bernardo, an undergraduate in his group, and colleagues at IMEC in Belgium, Argonne National Lab, Northwestern, and Princeton, the paper suggests design rules for making more efficient solar cells in the future.

Organic solar cells currently have a top efficiency of approximately 10 percent in the laboratory, much less than inorganic single crystal silicon. 

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An electron wave function, indicated by orange shading, spreads across several nanocrystalline fullerene molecules in this representation of an organic solar cell heterojunction. Image Credit: Giebink, Penn State

 

Molecular Traffic Jam Makes Water Move Faster through Nanochannels

Seth Lichter

Cars inch forward slowly in traffic jams, but molecules, when jammed up, can move extremely fast.

New research by Northwestern University researchers finds that water molecules traveling through tiny carbon nanotube pipes do not flow continuously but rather intermittently, like stop-and-go traffic, with unexpected results.

“Previous molecular dynamics simulations suggested that water molecules coursing through carbon nanotubes are evenly spaced and move in lockstep with one another,” said Seth Lichter, professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

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Gold and Silica Nanostars Imitate the Two Faces of the God Janus

Researchers from the Basque centre CIC biomaGUNE and the University of Antwerp (Belgium) have designed nanoparticles with one half formed of gold branches and the other of silicon oxide. 

They are a kind of Janus particle, so-called in honour of the Roman god with two faces, which could be used in phototherapy in the future to treat tumours.

In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of gates, doors, beginnings and transitions between the past and the future. In fact, the first month of the year, January (from the Latin, ianuarĭus), bears his name. 

This deity was characterised by his profile of two faces, something which has inspired scientists, when naming their chemical designs with two clearly distinct components.

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Two examples of nanostars with one silicon oxide face (bluish) and another with golden branches (yellow). / Credit: Liz-Marzán et al.

Cementing Radioactive Waste

Cement would make a useful material for locking away radioactive waste except for the fact that conventional cement is susceptible to weathering. When water infiltrates its pores, it freezes and when it thaws, the resulting cracks can fracture the cement blocks. Moreover, adding foreign materials to the standard cement slows the hydration process required for the mix to harden leading to greater porosity and an increased risk of radioactive elements leaching out through long-term wear and tear.

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Credit: http://www.iucr.org

Molecular Collisions Now Imaged Better Than Ever

Molecular physicists from Radboud University Nijmegen have produced images of the changes in direction of colliding nitrogen monoxide molecules (NO) with unprecedented sharpness. 

By combining a Stark decelerator with advanced imaging techniques, they were able to obtain very high resolution images of the collision processes. 

The results were published in Nature Chemistry on 9 February. 

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Visualisation of the collisions between NO and helium (left) and NO and neon (right). The top images show the research results of Van de Meerakker and his colleagues; the bottom images show the visualised theoretical predictions of the collisions. Red indicates a high probability of change of direction; blue indicates a low probability. The small peaks show the diffraction oscillations (Credits: Image Courtesy of Nature Chemistry).

Researchers Build Nonflammable Lithium Ion Battery

In studying a material that prevents marine life from sticking to the bottom of ships, researchers led by chemist Joseph DeSimone at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have identified a surprising replacement for the only inherently flammable component of today’s lithium-ion batteries: the electrolyte.

The work, published in the Feb. 10 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paves the way for developing a new generation lithium-ion battery that doesn’t spontaneously combust at high temperatures. 

The discovery also has the potential to renew consumer confidence in a technology that has attracted significant concern—namely, after recent lithium battery fires in Boeing 787 Dreamliners and Tesla Model S vehicles.

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Credit: http://www.unc.edu

Diamond Defect Boosts Quantum Technology

New research shows that a remarkable defect in synthetic diamond produced by chemical vapor deposition allows researchers to measure, witness, and potentially manipulate electrons in a manner that could lead to new “quantum technology” for information processing. The study is published in the January 31, 2014, issue of Physical Review Letters.

 

Normal computers process bits, the fundamental ones and zeros, one at a time. But in quantum computing, a “qubit” can be a one or a zero at the same time.

This duplicitous state can allow multitasking at an astounding rate, which could exponentially increase the computing capacity of a tiny, tiny machine.

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Credit: carnegiescience.edu

New study shows click chemistry could provide total chemical DNA synthesis

An interdisciplinary study led by Dr Ali Tavassoli, a Reader in chemical biology at the University of Southampton, has shown for the first time that 'click chemistry' can be used to assemble DNA that is functional in human cells, which paves the way for a purely chemical method for gene synthesis.

Writing in Angewandte Chemie International Edition Dr Tavassoli's team and his collaborators, Dr Jeremy Blaydes and Professor Tom Brown, show that human cells can still read through strands of DNA correctly despite being stitched together using a linker not found in nature.

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Credit: University of Southampton

Graphene-like material made of boron a possibility, experiments suggest

Graphene has been heralded as a wonder material. Made of a single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb arrangement, graphene is stronger pound-for-pound than steel and conducts electricity better than copper. 

Since the discovery of graphene, scientists have wondered if boron, carbon’s neighbor on the periodic table, could also be arranged in single-atom sheets. 

Theoretical work suggested it was possible, but the atoms would need to be in a very particular arrangement.

Boron has one fewer electron than carbon and as a result can’t form the honeycomb lattice that makes up graphene. 

For boron to form a single-atom layer, theorists suggested that the atoms must be arranged in a triangular lattice with hexagonal vacancies — holes — in the lattice.

 

Unlocking the secrets of the B₃₆ cluster A 36-atom cluster of boron, left, arranged as a flat disc with a hexagonal hole in the middle, fits the theoretical requirements for making a one-atom-thick boron sheet, right, a theoretical nanomaterial dubbed “borophene.” Credit: Wang lab/Brown University

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Put a plastic bag in your tank: Converting polyethylene waste into liquid fuel

Researchers in India have developed a relatively low-temperature process to convert certain kinds of plastic waste into liquid fuel as a way to re-use discarded plastic bags and other products. 

They report full details next month in the International Journal of Environment and Waste Management.

Many pundits describe the present time as the "plastic age" for good reason and as such we generate a lot plastic waste. 

Among that waste is the common polymer, low-density polyethylene (LDPE), which is used to make many types of container, medical and laboratory equipment, computer components and, of course, plastic bags. Recycling initiatives are in place in many parts of the world, but much of the polyethylene waste ends up in landfill, dispersed in the environment or in the sea.

credit:www.pslc.ws

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