The natural abilities of squid tissues and the creativity of chemists combine to take hydrogel research in new directions

23-Jan-2023

Researchers at Hokkaido University in Japan have combined natural squid tissues with synthetic polymers to develop a strong and versatile hydrogel that mimics many of the unique properties of biological tissues. Hydrogels are polymer networks containing large quantities of water, and are being ...

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Saved seconds add up to hours over multiple measurements

10-Jan-2023

How can the component elements of an unknown material, such as a meteorite, be determined? X-ray fluorescence analysis can be used to identify an abundance of elements, by irradiating samples with X-rays and analyzing the spectrum they emit and can detect many elements simultaneously. For this ...

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02-Jan-2023

“Materials informatics (MI), a new branch of materials research that combines materials data with data science, is gaining traction,” said co-corresponding author Yoshihiro Hayashi, assistant professor, Institute of Statistical Mathematics in the Research Organization of Information and Science ...

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Titanium oxides found to significantly increase efficiency and photoluminescence

23-Dec-2022

White LEDs may soon be dethroned as the world's go-to light source by an alternative with a much better sense of direction. As a next-generation optical control technology, aphotonic crystalornanoantennais a two-dimensional structure in which nano-sized particles are arranged periodically on ...

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Molecular crystal exhibits propagation of photochemical reaction

14-Dec-2022

Stimuli-responsive materials, whose physical properties change in response to external stimuli such as light and heat, are being widely studied as next-generation functional materials. Especially, photo-responsive materials are attracting much attention because their physicochemical properties ...

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Automated reaction path search method predicts accurate stereochemistry of pericyclic reactions using only target molecule structure

02-Dec-2022

Researchers at the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD) have demonstrated the expanded use of a computational method called the Artificial Force Induced Reaction (AFIR) method, predicting pericyclic reactions with accurate stereoselectivity based only on information ...

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28-Nov-2022

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were widely used in industrial and commercial products including plastics, paints, electronic equipment and insulating fluids. Their manufacture was extensively banned from the late 70s onwards due to their toxicity, however large amounts still remain in our ...

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The world’s first industrial model of a flow photo-on-demand synthesis system

25-Nov-2022

Various chemical products, such as polymers and pharmaceutical intermediates, are currently synthesized with phosgene as their precursor or raw material. However, phosgene is highly toxic and this usage poses safety risks. Thus, there is demand for the development of new methods and substitutes ...

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23-Nov-2022

Theory-guided development of an easier, more versatile process for synthesizing unsymmetric ligands provides new avenues of exploration in transitional metal catalysis. Researchers at the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD) have discovered the key to synthesizing a ...

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A flipping action in a porous material facilitates the passage of normal water to separate it out from heavy water

11-Nov-2022

A research group led by Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University’s Institute for Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), Japan and Cheng Gu of South China University of Technology, China have made a material that can effectively separate heavy water from normal water at room temperature. Until now, this ...

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