Chemistry Is Everywhere

Chemistry Is Everywhere

New Salt Compounds Challenge the Foundation of Chemistry

All good research breaks new ground, but rarely does the research unearth truths that challenge the foundation of a science. That’s what Artem R. Oganov has done, and the professor of theoretical crystallography in the Department of Geosciences will have his work published in the Dec. 20 issue of the journal Science.

The paper titled "Unexpected stable stoichiometries of sodium chlorides,” documents his predictions about, and experiments in, compressing sodium chloride—rock salt—to form new compounds. These compounds validate his methodology for predicting the properties of objects—a methodology now used worldwide for computational material discovery—and hold the promise of novel materials and applications. 

Read more

Electron localization function in the cubic NaCl3 structure. (Credit: Artem R. Oganov)

Graphene-Based Field-Effect Transistor With Semiconducting Nature Opens Up Practical Use in Electronics

UNIST announced a method for the mass production of boron/nitrogen co-doped graphene nanoplatelets, which led to the fabrication of a graphene-based field-effect transistor (FET) with semiconducting nature. This opens up opportunities for practical use in electronic devices. 

The Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) research team led by Prof. Jong-Beom Baek have discovered an efficient method for the mass production of boron/nitrogen co-doped graphene nanoplatelets (BCN-graphene) via a simple solvothermal reaction of BBr3/CCl4/N2 in the presence of potassium. This work was published in “Angewandte Chemie International Edition” as a VIP (“Very Important Paper”).

Read more

A schematic representation for the formation of BCN-graphene via solvothermal reaction between carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) boron tribromide (BBr3) and nitrogen (N2) in the presence of potassium (K). Photograph is of the autoclave after the reaction, showing the formation of BCN-graphene (black) and potassium halide (KCl and KBr, white).

 

Researchers Grow Liquid Crystal 'Flowers' That Can Be Used as Lenses

A team of material scientists, chemical engineers and physicists from the University of Pennsylvania has made another advance in their effort to use liquid crystals as a medium for assembling structures. 

In their earlier studies, the team produced patterns of “defects,” useful disruptions in the repeating patterns found in liquid crystals, in nanoscale grids and rings. 

The new study adds a more complex pattern out of an even simpler template: a three-dimensional array in the shape of a flower. And because the petals of this “flower” are made of transparent liquid crystal and radiate out in a circle from a central point, the ensemble resembles a compound eye and can thus be used as a lens. 

Read more

A liquid crystal "flower" under magnification. The black dot at center is the silica bead that generates the flower's pattern. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Pennsylvania)

Filling the Information Gap About Post-Ph.D. Careers | Science Careers

For years and years, reports and studies have called on universities to track the careers of Ph.D. alumni to give prospective students and postdocs some idea of the future that awaits them after they graduate. Institutions that are otherwise proud of their research prowess routinely fail to fulfill the conceptually simple task of finding out what jobs their doctoral graduates take. 

Read more in the below link...

Filling the Information Gap About Post-Ph.D. Careers | Science Careers

Targeted Synthesis of Natural Products With Light

Photoreactions are driven by light energy and are vital to the synthesis of many natural substances. Since many of these substances are also useful as active medical agents, chemists try to produce them synthetically. But in most cases only one of the possible products has the right spatial structure to make it effective. Researchers at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have now developed a methodology for one of these photoreactions that allows them to produce only the specific molecular variant desired.

 

The bulky Lewis acid (above) shields one side of the substrate (bottom) pushing the photoreaction in to the direction of the desired product. - Graphics: Richard Brimioulle / TUM

Read more >>

Cutting edge chemistry in 2013

What discoveries caused the biggest buzz in chemistry labs in 2013? With the help of an expert panel of journal editors Chemistry World reviews the ground breaking research and important trends in this year’s crop of chemical science papers.

 

Any array of 32 nucleotide DNA Lego blocks can be built into a whole range of different shapes © Yonggang Ke

New Drug Approach Could Lead to Cures for Wide Range of Diseases

A team led by a longtime Oregon Health & Science University researcher has demonstrated in mice what could be a revolutionary new technique to cure a wide range of human diseases — from cystic fibrosis to cataracts to Alzheimer's disease — that are caused by "misfolded" protein molecules.

Misfolded protein molecules, caused by gene mutation, are capable of maintaining their function but are misrouted within the cell and can’t work normally, thus causing disease. The OHSU team discovered a way to use small molecules that enter cells, fix the misfolded proteins and allow the proteins to move to the correct place and function normally again.

Credit: http://www.ohsu.edu

Solar Cell Degradation Observed Directly for the First Time

With the help of DESY’s X-ray light source PETRA III, researchers of Technische Universität München have, for the first time, watched organic solar cells degrade in real time. This work could open new approaches to increasing the stability of this highly promising type of solar cell. The team headed by Prof. Peter Müller-Buschbaum from the Technische Universität München (Technical University of Munich) present their observations in this week's issue of the scientific journal Advanced Materials (Nr. 46, 10 December).

 Read more...

Schematic representation of the internal structure of the active layer of the polymer solar cell: The orange areas represent the active domains, where light is absorbed and charge carriers are released. (Credit: Illustration: TU München)

 

 

Metamaterials offer route to room-temperature superconductivity

Metamaterials offer route to room-temperature superconductivity

A new way of making high-temperature superconductors that is based on metamaterials has been proposed by physicists in the US. Their plan involves combining a low-temperature superconductor with a dielectric material to create a metamaterial that is a superconductor at much higher temperatures than its constituent materials. The team is now looking at testing its proposal in the lab and is hopeful that its work could offer a route to creating a superconductor that operates at room temperature.

Metamaterial superconductors at liquid nitrogen temperatures?

Scientists Discover Quick Recipe for Producing Hydrogen

Scientists in Lyon, a French city famed for its cuisine, have discovered a quick-cook recipe for copious volumes of hydrogen (H2).

The breakthrough suggests a better way of producing the hydrogen that propels rockets and energizes battery-like fuel cells. In a few decades, it could even help the world meet key energy needs — without carbon emissions contributing to the greenhouse effect and climate change.

It also has profound implications for the abundance and distribution of life, helping to explain the astonishingly widespread microbial communities that dine on hydrogen deep beneath the continents and seafloor. 

Read more

Nature produces hydrogen through "serpentinization." When water meets the ubiquitous mineral olivine under pressure, the rock absorbs mostly oxygen (O) atoms from H2O, transforming olivine into another mineral, serpentine -- characterized by a scaly, green-brown surface appearance like snakeskin. The complex network of fracturing and created by serpentinization also creates habitat for subsurface microbial communities. Image from Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, Canada. (Credit: Matt Schrenk, Michigan State University)

How Water Dissolves Stone, Molecule by Molecule

International team uses computers, experiments to better predict chemical dissolution 

Scientists from Rice University and the University of Bremen’s Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) in Germany have combined cutting-edge experimental techniques and computer simulations to find a new way of predicting how water dissolves crystalline structures like those found in natural stone and cement. 

Read more

The dissolution process of a crystalline structure in water is shown: two bonded SiO4 -- molecules dissolve (top left), a quartz crystal (top right) and the computer-simulated surface of a dissolving crystalline structure (below). (Credit: MARUM & Rice University)

Credit: http://news.rice.edu

New Solar Cell Material Acts as a Laser As Well | Science/AAAS | News

New Solar Cell Material Acts as a Laser As Well | Science/AAAS | News

The hottest new material in solar cell research has another trick up its sleeve. At the Materials Research Society meeting here, two groups reported yesterday that these new electricity-generating materials can produce laser light. Because the materials—called perovskites—are cheap and easy to produce, they could help engineers create a wide variety of cheap lasers that shine a variety of colors for use in speeding data flows in the telecommunications industry.

Garvin Grullón/Science

New shine. Known for their prowess as solar cell materials, perovskites make lasers as well.

 

Intense Two-Color Double X-Ray Laser Pulses: Powerful Tool to Study Ultrafast Processes

SACLA is one of only two facilities in the world to offer XFEL as light source to investigate matter, with various applications in biology, chemistry, physics and materials science. XFELs have the capacity to deliver radiation ten billion times brighter and with pulses one thousand times shorter than existing synchrotron X-ray radiation sources. Until now, XFELs have normally emitted one radiation pulse at a single wavelength like conventional visible lasers. 

The in-vacuum variable-gap undulators (about 130 m long) at SACLA

Credit: http://www.riken.jp/

A Particle Accelerator in the Radiation Belts

One of the most intriguing problems of astrophysics is the existence in a variety of environments of anomalously high-energy particles, for example, extragalactic cosmic rays up to 1020 electron volts (eV). Closer to home, the Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, discovered at the dawn of the space age, contain some electrons and ions with energies of millions of eV. In spite of a wealth of observations and many proposed models, clarifying the various acceleration mechanisms represents a long-standing challenge.

The acceleration of relativistic electrons in the Earth’s radiation belts can be described as a two-step process: first, electrons are accelerated to about a hundred keV by the potential drop due to streams of double layers (here represented as a stairway). Once they have enough energy, they can interact resonantly with whistler waves and be quickly accelerated to MeV energies. In a sense, double-layer streams represent a stairway to whistlers.

Read more

PNNL: News - Scientists capture 'redox moments' in living cells

PNNL: News - Scientists capture 'redox moments' in living cells

Scientists have charted a significant signaling network in a tiny organism that's big in the world of biofuels research. The findings about how a remarkably fast-growing organism conducts its metabolic business bolster scientists' ability to create biofuels using the hardy microbe Synechococcus, which turns sunlight into useful energy.

Green fluorescence shows redox reactions in living Synechococcus cells.

 

A Link Between Wormholes and Quantum Entanglement | Science/AAAS | News

A Link Between Wormholes and Quantum Entanglement | Science/AAAS | News

This advance is so meta. Theoretical physicists have forged a connection between the concept of entanglement—itself a mysterious quantum mechanical connection between two widely separated particles—and that of a wormhole—a hypothetical connection between black holes that serves as a shortcut through space. The insight could help physicists reconcile quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity, perhaps the grandest goal in theoretical physics. But some experts argue that the connection is merely a mathematical analogy.

 

Process Holds Promise for Production of Synthetic Gasoline from Carbon Dioxide

A chemical system developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago can efficiently perform the first step in the process of creating syngas, gasoline and other energy-rich products out of carbon dioxide.

A novel “co-catalyst” system using inexpensive, easy to fabricate carbon-based nanofiber materials efficiently converts carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide, a useful starting-material for synthesizing fuels. The findings have been published online in advance of print in the journal Nature Communications.

See more here...

UIC researchers Amin Salehi-Khojin (seated), Bijandra Kumar and Mohammad Asadi. Photo: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin/UIC Photo Services

Discrepancy in Neutron Lifetime Still Unresolved

Discrepancy in Neutron Lifetime Still Unresolved

Outside of the nucleus, the proton remains stable for at least 1034 years, but an isolated neutron survives just 15 minutes before it decays into a proton, electron, and an antineutrino. Astrophysicists rely on a precise value of the free neutron lifetime to calculate the rate of nucleosynthesis during the big bang, while particle physicists use it to constrain fundamental parameters of the standard model. Yet measured lifetimes have varied by about a percent, depending on the experimental technique. As reported in Physical Review Letters, the latest refinement of the neutron lifetime in one type of experiment has left this discrepancy unresolved.

 

How Losing Information Can Benefit Quantum Computing

Suggesting that quantum computers might benefit from losing some data, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have entangled—linked the quantum properties of—two ions by leaking judiciously chosen information to the environment.

 

Researchers usually strive to perfectly shield ions (charged atoms) in quantum computing experiments from the outside world. Any "noise" or interference, including heat generated by the experiment and measurements that cause fragile quantum states to collapse, can ruin data and prevent reliable logic operations, the conventional approach to quantum information processing.

Read more here...

This is an artist's conception of a NIST experiment showing how quantum computing might benefit from lost information. Two beryllium ions (red), used as quantum bits or qubits to store information, were "entangled" so that their properties were linked -- a useful feature for quantum computing. Two partner magnesium ions (green) released heat to the environment. Any unwanted information in the qubits was coupled to the outgoing heat, leaving the qubits in the desired entangled state (suggested by the hourglass). Credit: Bertram/Motion Forge for NIST

 

Credit: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)