Towards Eco-friendly Industrial-Scale Hydrogen Production
Scientists showed that adding lithium to aluminum nanoparticles results in orders-of-magnitude faster water-splitting reactions and higher hydrogen production rates compared to pure aluminum nanoparticles.
Taking on the Heat in Solar Cells: New Calculations Show Atomic Vibrations Hurt Efficiency
For the first time, accurate first-principles theoretical calculations of the energy lost to heat in silicon, the primary component of solar cells, have been performed.
Surf's Up: Magnetic Waves on the Edge
For the first time, a new class of magnetic materials, called topological magnon insulators, was revealed. This novel material can conduct magnetic waves along their edges, without conduction through the bulk material.
Can We Beat Mother Nature at Materials Design?
In a review article in Nature Materials, a team of scientists assessed the common design motifs of a range of natural structural materials and determined what it would take to design and fabricate structures that mimic nature.
New Approach to Room-Temperature Materials Synthesis: Low Cost, Simple, and Controlled Composition
A versatile two-step process allows for the controlled synthesis of new materials for energy technology.
Understanding the Properties of High Tech Gels Used in 3-D Printing
Gels that help prevent oppositely charged nanoparticles from settling out of solution enable applications from ceramic synthesis to adsorption of water. Scientists mapped out a mechanistic understanding of the gel, revealing contributions from three district phenomena.
Simple Preparation for Affordable Solar Energy Storage
A simple process made an electrode that absorbs sunlight and produces oxygen on tiny cobalt islands on a silicon electrode.
Bridge to Coveted Electronic Properties
A new tabletop system can accelerate materials characterization and further our understanding of magnetic and electronic properties that enable energy-efficient electronics and information storage.
Nano-Sculptures for Longer-Lasting Battery Electrodes
Scientists know how a liquid metal technique selectively removes elements from a block of well-mixed metals and creates intricate structures.
Hydrogen Production From a Relative of Fool's Gold
Scientists discovered a pyrite-type compound, similar to fool's gold, that is competitive with platinum for splitting water to produce hydrogen
This Message Will Self-Destruct
In movies and television shows, audio tapes or other devices self-destruct after delivering the details of impossible missions. Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have taken it to a new level.
Keep It Simple: Low-Cost Solar Power
A new architecture takes very few processing steps to produce an affordable solar cell with efficiencies comparable to conventional silicon solar cells.
Atomic Sculpting with a Microscope
A new tool now rests in the 3D printing toolbox. The result is designer materials with desirable structures, such as microchips, or materials with unique properties.
Patterning Smaller Junctions for Ultrathin Devices
Making faster, more powerful electronics requires smaller but still uniform connections between different materials. For the first time, researchers created extremely small, 5-nanometer-wide junctions, which were made in a specific pattern using two different flat semiconductors.
Tiny Droplets... Lead to Exotic Properties
Molecules in liquid crystals form exotic phases in which arrays of defects are organized into striking patterns. Confining these defect structures within droplets offers fine control that points to strategies--not possible in bulk phases--for assembly of responsive, adaptable materials.
Saturday Night at the Movies: 3D Sneak Preview of Dancing Platinum Particles at Atomic Resolution
Movies of the nanoparticles in motion were obtained with world-leading electron microscopes. The results yielded insights into the structure and growth mechanisms of these materials.
Growing Graphene Ribbons in One Direction
Tiny ribbons of graphene could move electricity and dissipate heat more efficiently than silicon in electronic circuits; however, creating the ribbons on traditional supports wasn't possible. Scientists have discovered how to synthesize the nanoribbons directly on a semiconductor wafer.
Laser Manipulates Electronic Properties
A new semiconducting material that is only three atomic-layers thick has emerged with more exotic, malleable electronic properties than those of traditional semiconductors.
Finding a Needle in a Crystalline Haystack
With a new technique, scientists can detect a few large grains in a sea of small grains and study the fatigue-induced phenomena of large grain growth.
World's Most Efficient Nanowire Lasers
Researchers demonstrated that nanowires made from lead halide perovskite are the most efficient nanowire lasers known.
New See-Through Material for Electronics
Even though conducting missing electrons and transparency were considered mutually exclusive, this new material both efficiently conducts missing electrons and retains most of its transparency to visual light.
Confirmed: Heavy Barium Nuclei Prefer a Pear Shape
Certain heavy barium nuclei have long been predicted to exhibit pear-like shapes. Scientists demonstrated the existence of this exotic shape by taking advantage of breakthroughs in the acceleration of radioactive beams and new detector technologies.
Bacteria Hairs Make Excellent Electrical Wires
Scientists found that the electronic arrangement and the small molecular separation distances give bacterial pili an electrical conductivity comparable to that of copper, valuable insights for those interested in eventually constructing non-toxic, nanoscale sources of electricity.
New High-Capability Solid-State Electron Microscope Detector Enables Novel Studies of Materials
Scientists devised a new type of imaging electron detector that records an image frame in 1/1000 of a second, and can detect from 1 to 1,000,000 electrons per pixel.
Zooming in on Gluons' Contribution to Proton Spin
New data from collisions of protons indicate that gluons, glue-like particles that bind the inner building blocks of each proton, play a substantial role in determining the proton's spin, or intrinsic angular momentum.