The sea can sequestrate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and some rocks can help to enhance this phenomenon! But which ones? and how?
Category: Materials
Charges that challenge scientists!
Rub a ruler with a wool and hold it towards paper bits, then you’d find the ruler attracts papers. This may sound a common sense to you – the two surfaces have opposite charges.
But now, researchers find that not all materials behave the same and the reason is still a mystery.
Let’s take a look at the charges that challenges scientists!
Making surfaces oil repelling with a coating of tannic acid!
Making surfaces that oil can’t stick to is important for cleaning up oil spills and other pollution. Let’s find out about a new way to coat surfaces that makes them repel oil!
Controlling Adhesives with Light!
Let’s learn about a new material that can be made sticky or not sticky with just light!
GRID SCALE ENERGY STORAGE: A NEW MANGANESE-HYDROGEN BATTERY
For solar and wind to be viable technologies, large scale and cost effective batteries are sorely needed. Now, researchers have made a totally new type of battery, based on cheap manganese sulfate, that fits this bill. Their large proof-of-concept proptoype battery reached ~97% and powered a blue LED for hours!
Mood Lighting: Colorful Coatings for Smart Windows
Feeling blue? The chemistry of new “smart windows” could help – with a coating that adjusts to the outside temperature and a color filter that you can switch at will, they could be the perfect mood lighting for your energy-efficient home.
Controlling Crystallinity and Porosity of Covalent Organic Frameworks with Hydrogen Bonding
This work reports a solvent-free solid-to-solid synthesis method for covalent organic frameworks (COFs), which is very promising from a greener and cleaner chemistry standpoint. The researchers found that hydrogen bonding within the starting material plays a key role on the porosity and crystallinity of the final COF.
Using lasers to make graphene on the surface of food!
Graphene is a wonder-material that is nearly indestructible, conducts electricity, and flexible enough to be worn. Let’s learn how to make it with lasers on the surface of carbon-based materials!
Double Perovskite Nanocrystals: New Synthesis and Structures for Solar Energy
Lead based perovskite is an exciting new material for solar energy, but it’s based on lead. These researchers found a way around that, making new double perovskite materials based on silver and bismuth. This new synthesis has exciting future in making perovskite solar panels into a environmentally friendly technology.
Making computers from molecules – Molecular Turing Machines
In this article, explore the tiny molecules that could be used for computational work in future of smartphones! Inspired by your own body, machines made from molecules could be the next generation of computers!
Intricate Balance of Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Adsorption for Catalysis
With metal catalysts, we can extract electricity from CO2 – reducing carbon emissions and creating renewable energy tech at the same time! There’s just one little problem, and it’s name is hydrogen…
Freedom from Wires: Solar-Charging Perovskite Batteries
Ever had your phone die out of nowhere? Wonder how you’re going to charge your Tesla on your next road trip? Researchers from the University of Cambridge have got your back – they’ve developed a single material that doubles as a battery and a solar cell.
Turn on the lights and get your 3D printouts!
Printing is cool, but 3D printing is cooler! Instead of words on a page, you can print spoons and forks and even houses! And today, you’ll see the coolest 3D printing – printing chains of molecules, simply with light!
Targeting Cancer Cells with Different Drugs…in the Same Pill!
Tailoring treatment for a specific patient is the future of medicine. Let’s learn about making tiny pills that are “smart” enough to know where to dissolve in the body!
The Thousand Wonders of Graphene: from 2D to 3D Photodrugs!
The authors of this paper can make a photodrug from a special type of graphene.
How to Prevent Cannibalism in Catalysts
This work describes an approach to prevent self assimilation of catalysts to increase their lifetime. It also finds a Hammett correlation between different substituents present on the catalysts and the rate of catalysis in both homogeneous and heterogeneous phase.
Energy Flow in Quantum Dot – Organic semiconductors
Quantum dots are fascinating super small solids. Highly conjugated tetracene is an electronically active organic molecule. When these two are mixed, electrons bounce around in amazing ways and these researchers found out how.
Flexible iPhones and Wearable Touch Screens: Transparent Conductors with Silver Nanowires
Flexible touch screens and see-through electronics could be closer than you think! Let’s learn about a new way to make transparent conductors with silver nanowires!
Nanoparticles and Mirrors: A “Bright” Future for Nanocrystal Blinking
You probably look in a mirror every morning: fix your hair, maybe even take a selfie. But the idea of using mirrors to look at molecules – that just sounds crazy, right? Maybe not – but you’ll have to read this Chembite to find out!
Always Use Protection: Preventing Catalyst Degradation with Coatings
Catalysts are critical components of many industrial processes. Unfortunately, many promising catalysts degrade over time. Here, researchers show that some catalysts can be protected by coating them with another material.
Green 3D printing: from cellulose to plastic objects!
3D-printing at its greenest!
A resistant material for 3D-printing is synthesized from plant components!
Structure-Function Relationship in a Highly Efficient CO2 Reducing MOF
A structure-function relationship has been established for a cobalt containing Metal Organic Framework (MOF) that catalyzes carbon dioxide reduction very efficiently. It has been established that the hydroxyl groups coordinated to the metal co-operates to enhance the catalysis by forming H-bond network with CO2. Let’s learn how the authors performed a systematic and thorough investigation on these MOFs.
Designing and Understanding New Semiconductor Crystals
Solar panels are expensive because of the high-purity silicon present in them. A new material called perovskite rivals the solar conversion efficiency of silicon, but at a fraction of the cost. There is however still a lot of fundamental understanding to be done on perovskites, which these researchers do by studying analogous structures.
Looking inside your TV
Ever wondered how the images on your TV or computer screen are formed? Today let’s look inside your TV and learn about the nanoparticles forming the high definition display! (Obviously without slicing it open!)
Popcorn supercapacitors – future batteries for electric cars?
Most people prefer their popcorn popped to perfection, but scientist Jianhua Hou prefers his burnt. How could the smell of burnt popcorn possibly be a good thing? Chembites investigates!