07-05-2013

Photochemical HX splitting reactions (X = halogen) provide a route for solar-to-fuel energy conversion and halogen photoelimination is a critical step in the process. Scientists in the US have investigated the photoreduction mechanism of a pair of valence-isomeric dirhodium phosphazane ...

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07-05-2013

Scientists in the US have developed a new lithium/polysulfide (Li/PS) semi-liquid battery for large-scale energy storage, with lithium polysulfide (Li2S8) in ether solvent as a catholyte and metallic lithium as an anode. As the catholyte is designed to cycle only in the range between sulfur ...

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10-04-2013

Using excitation and emission matrix (EEM) fluorescence and parallel factorial analysis (PARAFAC) modelling techniques to monitor crude oil components, scientists from the US were able to attribute an investigated plume in the water column in the Gulf of Mexico to the dispersed crude oil from ...

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10-04-2013

Collaborators in the US and China have demonstrated that by changing the diameter of cellulose fibres in nanopaper they can tailor its optical properties for use in optoelectronics. Cheap flexible plastic is used in all electronic devices due to its flexibility and low weight but it does have ...

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10-04-2013

Scientists in the US have designed an ingestible electronic device that is composed entirely of edible materials and produces its own electric current. The ingestible current source consists of flexible polymer electrodes and a sodium ion electrochemical cell. Having flexible polymer ...

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04-04-2013

Scientists looking at the controversial topic of how very small droplets freeze have presented new evidence. By observing nanodroplets of the hydrocarbons n-octane and n-nonane with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, the researchers have established that such droplets freeze in a ...

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27-03-2013

Scientists have investigated how the flow of block co-polymer inks from the tip of an AFM probe is affected by the ink’s viscosity. The size of the ink features was found to increase with dwell time and decrease with ink viscosity. The technique, known as dip-pen nanolithography, was ...

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27-03-2013

In a search for the next generation of filtration materials, for use in devices such as gas masks, a group of US scientists has synthesised a series of porous organic polymers (POPs) bearing metal-catecholate groups. By changing the molecular building blocks the researchers were able to ...

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21-03-2013

Scientists studying how thermoelectric power generators can be used to ‘scavenge’ electricity from waste industrial heat have discovered that the devices work more efficiently when they are pulsed with periodic waves of heat, rather than subjected to a constant heat source. Thermoelectric ...

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21-03-2013

Nitrogen doping of carbon-supported electrocatalysts is known to lead to a performance boost, although the reason why has not been clearly understood. Using principal component analysis (PCA) of electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) data, scientists from the Colorado School of Mines, ...

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