Nanowerk December 10, 2022 Nanoscale structures can aid electronic manufacturing, make materials stronger yet lighter, or aid environmental clean-ups by binding to toxins. An international team of researchers (Australia, New Zealand) developed an extraction method achieved by applying a voltage to the liquid metal solution while vacuum filtrating. The resulting crystals can have intricate morphologies like snowflakes. They used the low-melting-temperature Ga as a “metallic solvent” to synthesize a range of flake-like Zn crystals. They extracted the metallic crystals from the liquid metal solvent by reducing its surface tension using a combination of electrocapillary modulation and vacuum filtration. The crystals […]
Tag Archives: Advanced manufacturing
Molecular shape-shifting: New theory on autonomous remodeling of structures
Phys.org December 13, 2022 The capability to self-organize, like living systems, can only be afforded in non-equilibrium conditions, as evident from the energy-consuming nature of dynamical processes. To achieve automated dynamical control of such self-assembled structures and transitions between them, it is necessary to identify the fundamental aspects of non-equilibrium dynamics that can enable such processes. An international team of researchers (Germany, UK) identified programmable non-reciprocal interactions as a tool to achieve such functionalities. The design rule was composed of reciprocal interactions that led to the equilibrium assembly of the different structures, through a process denoted as multifarious self-assembly, and […]
Revolutionary technique to generate hydrogen more efficiently from water
Phys.org October 27, 2022 Typically, electron transfer proceeds solely through either a metal redox chemistry or an oxygen redox chemistry without the concurrent occurrence of both metal and oxygen redox chemistries in the same electron transfer pathway. An international team of researchers (Singapore, USA – Brookhaven National Laboratory, China) has discovered an electron transfer mechanism that involves a switchable metal and oxygen redox chemistry in nickel-oxyhydroxide-based materials with light as the trigger. The proposed light-triggered coupled oxygen evolution mechanism requires the unit cell to undergo reversible geometric conversion between octahedron (NiO6) and square planar (NiO4) to achieve electronic states with […]
Tiny crystal vases
Nanowerk August 13, 2022 Skeletal or concave polyhedral crystals appear in a variety of synthetic processes and natural environments. However, their morphology, size, and orientation are difficult to control because of their highly kinetic growth character. Researchers in Japan have developed a new method to produce micrometer-scale single crystals in the form of hollow vessels. Upon drop-casting of a heated ethanol solution onto a quartz substrate, the molecules spontaneously assembled into standing vessel-shaped single crystals uniaxially and synchronously over the wide area of the substrate, with small size polydispersity. The crystal edge was active even after consumption of the molecules […]
Water can’t touch this sanded, powdered surface
Phys.org August 4, 2022 Water droplets must have large apparent contact angle (CA) (>150°) and small CA hysteresis (<10°) on hydrophobic surfaces. Previous research usually involved complex fabrication strategies to modify the surface wettability. Researchers at Rice University developed a simple technique that involves sandpaper and a selection of powders which are sanded into the surface. They applied the technique on a variety of surfaces (Teflon, polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, and polydimethylsiloxane) with a variety of powder additives. These included laser-induced graphene fiber, turbostratic flash graphene, molybdenum disulfide, Teflon, and boron nitride. A variety of aluminum oxide sandpapers were […]
Researchers 3D print high-performance nanostructured alloy that’s both ultrastrong and ductile
Science Daily August 3, 2022 The additive manufacture of metal alloys by laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) involves large temperature gradients and rapid cooling which enables microstructural refinement at the nanoscale to achieve high strength. However, high-strength nanostructured alloys produced by laser additive manufacturing often have limited ductility. A team of researchers in the US (UMass Amherst, Georgia Institute of Technology, Texas A&M, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rice University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCLA) used L-PBF to print dual-phase nanolamellar high-entropy alloys (HEAs) of AlCoCrFeNi that exhibit a combination of a high yield strength of about 1.3 gigapascals and a large […]
Clean doping strategy produces more responsive phototransistors
Phys.org June 7, 2022 An international team of researchers (China, USA – SUNY Buffalo) studied and demonstrated the implementation of neutron-transmutation doping (NTD) to manipulate electron transfer. NTD is a controllable in-situ substitutional doping method that utilizes the nuclear reactions of thermal neutrons with the nuclei of the atoms in semiconductors. It provides a new way to dope 2D materials intentionally without extra reagents and it can be introduced into any step during the fabrication of 2D-materials-based devices, or even used post-fabrication. They successfully narrowed the bandgap and increased the electron mobility of SN-doped layered InSe, reflecting a significant improvement. […]
Long-hypothesized ‘next generation wonder material’ created
Science Daily May 21, 2022 Scientists have long been interested in the construction of new or novel carbon allotropes. The most well-known carbon allotropes are graphite and diamonds, which are created out of sp2 carbon and sp3 carbon, respectively. However, the traditional methods don’t allow for the different types of carbon to be synthesized together in large capacity. Researchers at the University of Colorado used alkyne metathesis as well as thermodynamics and kinetic control to successfully create a material that could rival the conductivity of graphene but with control. Now the team is looking into the details of it, including […]
Exploring chemical logic systems that can respond to environmental conditions
Phys.org May 13, 2022 Even the simplest form of life (a single cell), can sense various chemical and physical stimuli and process this information through their intrinsic complex intracellular logic to perform complicated cellular functions such as cell division, cell motility, and cargo transport. Harnessing the complete potential of such systems, regarding their ability to process information from multiple external stimuli and perform programmable spatiotemporal functions remains unexplored. An international team of researchers (South Korea, India) has developed out-of-equilibrium chemical systems, which can sense multiple external stimuli ( light, sound, atmospheric oxygen) and process this information to execute programmable life-like […]
Synthesis of two-dimensional holey graphyne
Science Daily May 18, 2022 While it is possible to overcome limitations of graphene by doping or functionalizing there is also much interest in the search for new types of 2D carbon allotropes. Recently researchers found a top-down way to produce graphene oxides by creating many holes in its structure. An international team of researchers (South Korea, USA – University of Puerto Rico) has developed a bottom-up approach for creating “holey-graphyne” (HGY) constructing the topologically 2D carbon material atom by atom. It consists of alternately HYG linked between benzene rings and C≡C bonds, composed of a pattern of six-vertex and […]