Building a broad regional coverage of lubricant distribution in Southeast and Southern Asia

10-Jul-2020

Brenntag has signed an agreement to acquire Oils ‘R Us Co., Ltd. headquartered in Thailand. The company has a diversified customer base as it distributes a wide range of lubricants for Automotive, Commercial Vehicle, Industrial and Marine applications. “Our acquisition in Thailand, which is the ...

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Kiel physics team observed extremely fast electronic changes in real time in a special material class

10-Jul-2020

In physics, they are currently the subject of intensive research; in electronics, they could enable completely new functions. So-called topological materials are characterised by special electronic properties, which are also very robust against external perturbations. This material group also ...

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Improved methods for coupling reactions with light by targeted control of the catalyst activity

09-Jul-2020

A team of researchers reports in the journal Nature Catalysis that sustainable carbon-nitrogen cross-couplings can be performed using simple nickel salts, carbon nitrides and light. The chemists study the use of cost-effective and reproducible semiconductors as photocatalysts in coupling ...

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Electrons in the fast lane

06-Jul-2020

Solar cells based on perovskite compounds could soon make electricity generation from sunlight even more efficient and cheaper. The laboratory efficiency of these perovskite solar cells already exceeds that of the well-known silicon solar cells. An international team led by Stefan Weber from the ...

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Environmentally friendly fuels for shipping: biogenic additives

06-Jul-2020

There is movement in the fuel market for ocean-going vessels. Targets to reduce ex-haust emissions require new sustainable ways of producing diesel and heavy fuel oil. What could these paths look like? What are the new raw materials? Researchers at Fraunhofer UMSICHT succeeded in mapping the ...

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The experiments pave the way towards to deeply understand and eventually control the chemical and the electronic properties of materials

03-Jul-2020

Microscopes of visible light allow us to see tiny objects such living cells and their interior. Yet, they cannot discern how electrons are distributed among atoms in solids. Now researchers around Prof. Eleftherios Goulielmakis of the Extreme Photonics Labs at the University of Rostock and the ...

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Discovery could lead to more environmental protection in the chemical industry

03-Jul-2020

Many substances that we use every day only work in the right 3D structure. Natural enzymes could produce these in an environmentally friendly way – if they didn’t need a co-substrate that is expensive to produce to date. A research team at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) has discovered exactly the ...

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Scientists analyse the deformation behaviour of silicon in nano/micro devices

02-Jul-2020

Mobile phones, data storage for laptops, solar cells, power electronics for renewable energy, or sensors in cars are applications where silicon is the first-choice material despite that its mechanical behaviour at elevated temperature is not yet fully understood. To design efficient and reliable ...

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Image of plastics appearing less negative

02-Jul-2020

Covid-19 is impacting the European plastics industry in various ways. More than three quarters of plastics companies reported lower sales this spring compared to April 2019, with around half facing a sales decrease of at least 20%. While the public backlash against plastics has been a worry for ...

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New process for zinc oxide layers that can be used for nitrogen oxide sensors as well as protection layer on plastic

02-Jul-2020

The application of zinc oxide layers in industry is manifold and ranges from the protection of degradable goods to the detection of toxic nitrogen oxide gas. Such layers can be deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) which employs typically chemical compounds, or simply precursors, which ...

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