Triple Bond Formed Between Boron and Carbon for the First Time

Researchers are opening up new horizons in chemistry: They present the world's first triple bond between the atoms boron and carbon

06-Mar-2025 - Boron, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen: these four elements can form chemical triple bonds with each other due to their similar electronic properties. Examples of this are the gas carbon monoxide, which consists of one carbon and one oxygen atom, or the nitrogen gas in the earth's atmosphere with its ...

Sustainable Chemistry Based on Wood

Producing materials for solar cells, light-emitting diodes and other organic electronics applications as sustainably as possible

17-Feb-2022 - Some hikers carry a small solar power plant with them: a foil is attached to their backpack that converts sunlight into electricity. This allows them to charge their mobile phone while on the move. Flexible, thin and lightweight solar panels can also be attached to outdoor clothing or glued to ...

A new electrolyte for greener and safer batteries

New material improves the performance of solid-state sodium batteries - a less dangerous and more durable alternative to lithium

14-Feb-2022 - The future of battery technologies lies in sodium. More sustainable than lithium - which currently powers most of our devices and vehicles - sodium is also abundant on the earth’s surface. The only problem is that its ions do not move easily in the liquid electrolyte of conventional batteries, ...

Engineers create double layer of borophene for first time

New material maintains borophene’s electronic properties, offers new advantages

30-Aug-2021 - For the first time, Northwestern University engineers have created a double layer of atomically flat borophene, a feat that defies the natural tendency of boron to form non-planar clusters beyond the single-atomic-layer limit. Although known for its promising electronic properties, borophene — a ...

New insight into “training” highly reactive chemical compounds

Are targeted attacks possible?

28-Jun-2021 - Highly reactive molecules cannot survive for long in nature. If researchers want to study them more closely, they therefore have to be produced under very specific laboratory conditions. Compared to “normal” molecules, many of these tiny particles have a distinguishing feature: they simply bind ...

Now Available with a Negative Charge too

Stabilization of the borafluorene anion with carbenes

07-May-2021 - The incorporation of boron into polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon systems leads to interesting chromophoric and fluorescing materials for optoelectronics, including organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDS) and field-effect transistors, as well as polymer-based sensors. In the journal Angewandte ...

Synthesis of Large-Area 2D Material

Atomic Layer Pushes Surface Steps Away

28-Apr-2021 - Elbow mentality in a two-dimensional material: This has recently been discovered by an international team led by the Center for Nanointegration (CENIDE) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE): The physicists succeeded in creating boron layers with a height of a single atom. While growing, the ...

Less than a nanometer thick, stronger and more versatile than steel

09-Apr-2021 - Scientists create stable nanosheets containing boron and hydrogen atoms with potential applications in nanoelectronics and quantum information technology. What's thinner than thin? One answer is two-dimensional materials -- exotic materials of science with length and width but only one or two ...

Scientists stabilize atomically thin boron for practical use

Borophane is stable outside a vacuum, opening possibilities for real-world applications

15-Mar-2021 - Northwestern University researchers have, for the first time, created borophane -- atomically thin boron that is stable at standard temperatures and air pressures. Researchers have long been excited by the promise of borophene -- a single-atom-thick sheet of boron -- because of its strength, ...

Reducing Nitrogen with Boron and Beer

Chemists have achieved the conversion of nitrogen to ammonium at room temperature and low pressure using only light elements

16-Sep-2020 - The industrial conversion of nitrogen to ammonium provides fertiliser for agriculture. Würzburg chemists have now achieved this conversion at room temperature and low pressure using only light elements. Humankind is reliant on the ammonium in synthetic fertiliser for food. However, producing ...