Covestro sells business unit in North America

26-Mar-2018 - Plaskolite announced that it is acquiring the North American polycarbonate sheet manufacturing business of Covestro. The acquisition transforms the North American sheet industry by combining the leader in acrylic manufacturing and the leader in polycarbonate manufacturing. As a part of the ...

Wood pellets: Renewable, but not carbon neutral

26-Mar-2018 - A return to firewood is bad for forests and the climate. So reports William Schlesinger, President Emeritus of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in an Insights article published today in the journal Science. In the race to meet clean energy standards, biomass energy is often touted as ...

For graphite pellets, just add elbow grease

26-Mar-2018 - It's easy and economical to make shiny pellets of graphite from functionalized graphene, according to scientists at Rice University. A report shows how chemically altered graphene powder can be pressed into a lightweight, semiporous solid that retains many of the strong and conductive qualities ...

Mat baits, hooks and destroys pollutants in water

23-Mar-2018 - A polymer mat developed at Rice University has the ability to fish biologically harmful contaminants from water through a strategy known as "bait, hook and destroy." Tests with wastewater showed the mat can efficiently remove targeted pollutants, in this case a pair of biologically harmful ...

Nanomaterials hold promise for producing hydrogen from water

23-Mar-2018 - Hydrogen holds promise as an inexpensive form of clean energy, but finding an efficient and affordable way to produce the fuel from water - a technique known as water-splitting - remains a key scientific challenge. A researcher from the University of Houston is working with a colleague in Taiwan ...

Two better than one

Chemists advance sustainable battery technology

20-Mar-2018 - Utah State University chemists' efforts to develop alternative battery technology solutions are advancing. Tianbiao Liu, assistant professor in USU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and his team reported a new molecular design for aqueous organic redox flow batteries, known as ...

Unexpected effect could lead to lower-power memory, computing devices

20-Mar-2018 - An unexpected phenomenon known as zero field switching (ZFS) could lead to smaller, lower-power memory and computing devices than presently possible. The image shows a layering of platinum (Pt), tungsten (W), and a cobalt-iron-boron magnet (CoFeB) sandwiched at the ends by gold (Au) electrodes on ...

Piezomagnetic material changes magnetic properties when stretched

20-Mar-2018 - Piezoelectric materials, which generate an electric current when compressed or stretched, are familiar and widely used: think of lighters that spark when you press a switch, but also microphones, sensors, motors and all kinds of other devices. Now a group of physicists has found a material with a ...

Graphene finds new application as non-toxic, anti-static hair dye

New formula works as well as commercial permanent dyes without chemically altering hairs

19-Mar-2018 - It's an issue that has plagued the beauty industry for more than a century: Dying hair too often can irreparably damage your silky strands. Now a Northwestern University team has used materials science to solve this age-old problem. The team has leveraged super material graphene to develop a new ...

Flat gallium joins roster of new 2-D materials

Scientists introduce gallenene

14-Mar-2018 - Scientists at Rice University and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, have discovered a method to make atomically flat gallium that shows promise for nanoscale electronics. The Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan and colleagues in India created two-dimensional gallenene, a ...