Feeding plants with electricity

Electrochemists develop sustainable alternative to conventional fertilizer

05-Mar-2024 - While all living beings need nitrogen in order to survive, it is not so easy to absorb it. Plants, for example, can absorb it as salts of ammonia, which makes these salts a key component of fertilizers. Up to now, ammonia has mainly been produced on the basis of fossil resources and non-renewable ...

Marine fungi could degrade plasticizers

“It's simply amazing”

24-Jan-2024 - It has been known only for a few years that marine fungi float freely throughout the oceans. So far, researchers know next to nothing about how these fungi interact with plastic. Oceanographer Federico Baltar assumes that certain marine microbes can metabolize plasticizers contained in plastic. ...

Catalytic converter with a green profile

18-Jun-2019 - With the support of the Austrian Science Fund FWF, the chemist Zita Csendes has defined and tested iron complexes as a sustainable, inexpensive and efficient alternative to precious-metal catalysts. The shift from catalyst solution to reusable pore coating required mastering many chemical ...

Instilling order and knowledge into the flood of data

09-Apr-2019 - In the context of a project funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, a research group from the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences has developed a versatile framework for data visualisation that permits easy integration of expert knowledge. Processing large amounts of data is one of the ...

The marine super glue

Mega-strong and very mobile

09-Aug-2016 - Barnacles exude an adhesive with exceptional bonding properties. In a project supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, biologists from Vienna have investigated this substance which has enormous medical and engineering potential and have thereby gained many new insights. It was a typical case ...

Stability of cheap solar cells improved

04-Aug-2016 - The stability of a very efficient and cheap material for solar cells has now been enhanced by up to two orders of magnitude. The material manipulations that enabled this enhancement were developed in a project supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. Lead-halide perovskites are the darling of ...

New insights concerning miracle material graphene

25-May-2016 - The interactions between graphene and its environment have a significant influence on the use of this promising material by the semiconductor industry. Thanks to the comprehensive findings of an international research project, these interactions are now better understood and can be controlled as ...

A ranking of environmental chemicals

05-May-2015 - How dangerous are environmental chemicals and what is their effect on human health? In a project funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, the pharmacist Daniela Schuster is currently developing a computer-based "early warning system" for potentially dangerous substances.In our daily lives we are ...

Silicon chip "replaces" rare earths

03-Mar-2011 - Rare earths are an expensive and necessary component of strong permanent magnets. However, their use for this purpose can be optimised and thereby reduced. This has been demonstrated in computer simulations by a Special Research Program funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. The results show ...

New Light On Electron Density

Measuring electron orbitals

18-Nov-2009 - For the first time, it has been possible to measure electron density in individual molecular states using what is known as the photoelectric effect. Now published in Science, this method represents a key building block in the development of organic semiconductor elements. Supported by the ...