16-Dec-2019

Strong and tough yet as light as a feather – materials with this exceptional combination of properties are urgently needed in many industrial sectors and in medicine, as well as being of great interest for scientific research. A research team from the University of Bayreuth has now developed ...

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16-Dec-2019

Chemists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have discovered a method that could turn plastic waste into valuable chemicals by using sunlight. In lab experiments, the research team mixed plastics with their catalyst in a solvent, which allows the solution to harness ...

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16-Dec-2019

In a joint research study from Sweden, scientists from Chalmers University of Technology and Stockholm University have developed a new material for capturing carbon dioxide. The new material offers many benefits - it is sustainable, has a high capture rate, and has low operating costs. Carbon ...

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Electroreduction of carbon monoxide for the highly selective production of ethylene

13-Dec-2019

Ethylene, or ethene, is a primary feedstock for the chemical industry, including as a starting material for the production of a wide variety of plastics. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, scientists have now introduced a new electrochemical technique for selective and energy-efficient production ...

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Innovative approach could deepen insight into the mysterious handedness of life

13-Dec-2019

Many of the molecular building blocks of life have two versions that are mirror images of one another, known as enantiomers. Although seemingly identical, the two enantiomers can have completely different chemical behaviour – a fact that has major implications in our day-to-day lives. For ...

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12-Dec-2019

Most synthetic materials, including those in battery electrodes, polymer membranes, and catalysts, degrade over time because they don't have internal repair mechanisms. If you could distribute autonomous microrobots within these materials, then you could use the microrobots to continuously make ...

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Experiment comes up with important steps towards optimizing water electrolysis

11-Dec-2019

Laboratory experiments and a parabolic flight campaign have enabled an international team of researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) to gain new insights into water electrolysis, in which hydrogen is obtained from water by applying electric energy. Water electrolysis ...

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Elusive molecule predicted in the 1970s synthesized

11-Dec-2019

Graphene, a two-dimensional structure made of carbon, is a material with excellent mechani-cal, electronic and optical properties. However, it did not seem suitable for magnetic applica-tions. Together with international partners, Empa researchers have now succeeded in synthesiz-ing a unique ...

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Discovery may inspire development of better industrial catalysts

11-Dec-2019

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a new function in a plant enzyme that could have implications for the design of new chemical catalysts. The enzyme catalyzes, or initiates, one of the cornerstone chemical reactions needed to synthesize a ...

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Scientists Simulate Photosynthesis

10-Dec-2019

The conversion of sunlight into chemical energy is essential for life. In one of the largest simulations of a biosystem worldwide, scientists have mimicked his complex process for a component of a bacterium - on the computer, atom by atom. The work, which has now been published in the journal ...

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