Researchers discovered a way to significantly improve graphene's performance in detecting noxious gases. They peppered high-quality sheets with boron impurities.
If biochemists had access to a quantum computer, they could perfectly simulate the properties of new molecules to develop drugs in ways that would take today’s fastest computers decades. A new device takes us closer to providing such a computer.
Using resources at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, scientists tailored extremely small wires that carry light and electrons. These new structures could open up a potential path to smaller, lighter, or more efficient devices.
Researchers developed an alternative fatty acid synthase (FAS) system in which enzymes from other organisms work with the native FAS in E. coli to improve the microbe’s capacity for chemical production.
Plant cell walls resist deconstruction. Pretreatment can loosen the structural integrity of cell walls, reducing their recalcitrance. This study offers insights into how pretreatment induces such cell wall modifications in different types of biomass.
Ionic liquids (ILs) prepare plant matter to be broken into its component sugars, which can be used in creating biofuels. However, the availability and high cost of petroleum-derived ILs pose challenges. Synthesizing new ILs directly from biomass “wastes” could help.
Led by researchers from Wyoming, a team found that elevated carbon dioxide levels suppress the dominant plant species in a northern U.S. Great Plains mixed-grass prairie, creating a less diverse community.
The gene identified and characterized in this study will enhance the understanding of how woody perennial plants begin their growth cycle, enabling development of new approaches to population management.
Poplar trees and other woody plants are desirable starting points for producing transportation fuels. The challenge is that the wood-forming materials resist chemical breakdown. Scientists developed two new methods to understand the recalcitrance of woody material.
Isolating an E. coli mutant that tolerates a liquid salt used to break apart plant biomass into sugary polymers could streamline the biofuels production process.
Scientists discovered that removing the oxygen and water from biomass feedstock forms an impurity that decelerates and significantly disrupts the process.
Scientists at Miami University and DOE’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory found that adding a specific nutrient stimulates the bacteria to transform nearby iron that, in turn, reduces the chromium to a much less mobile material.
The U.S. bioethanol industry depends largely on turning a certain sugar into the simple two-carbon alcohol, the biofuel ethanol. Researchers engineered a heat-loving microbe to produce not only ethanol, but also a range of other alcohols.
A major component of wood, grain, and forage, xylan provides a strong, flexible molecular scaffolding; however, if xylan synthesis is disrupted, plants do not grow normally. Researchers identified two enzymes that synthesize xylan.
A single microbe dominated thawed permafrost sites, with its relative abundance strongly correlating with the magnitude and specific type of methane produced at any given site.
Researchers found a remarkable parallel evolution between two microbial species. The results suggest a trade-off between working together to thrive and maintaining the flexibility to survive alone.
New evidence shows that higher levels of iron oxides in ocean and coastal sediments speed the conversion of the more potent greenhouse gas methane into carbon dioxide even in the absence of oxygen.
Scientists found that melt on the surface of glaciers in the McMurdo Dry Valley is rare, but internal melting is extensive.
C. thermocellum uses a previously unknown mechanism to degrade cellulose, in addition to other known degradation mechanisms.
For the first time, scientists saw how black phosphorus nanoribbons conduct heat two times more in the zigzag direction than in another direction. Layered, crystalline black phosphorus could lead to microchips that let heat flow away and keeps electrons moving.
Scientists achieved seamless heterojunctions of graphene-boron nitride nanotubes without using conventional semiconductors.
Scientists used high-speed photography and digital image analysis to observe both the events that cause cracks and the speed with which the cracks travel.
This is the first instance where synthesis of a crystalline framework in which proteins as well as metal ions and organic molecules are vital building components. This fabrication route has potential applications such as hydrogen fuel storage and carbon capture.
Scientists developed a new probe to measure dynamic behavior of materials on ultrafast timescales.
Flexible solar panels would benefit from stretchable, damage-resistant, transparent metal electrodes. Researchers found that topology and the adhesion between a metal nanomesh and the underlying substrate played key roles in creating such materials.
Scientists showed that adding lithium to aluminum nanoparticles results in orders-of-magnitude faster water-splitting reactions and higher hydrogen production rates compared to pure aluminum nanoparticles.
For the first time, accurate first-principles theoretical calculations of the energy lost to heat in silicon, the primary component of solar cells, have been performed.
For the first time, a new class of magnetic materials, called topological magnon insulators, was revealed. This novel material can conduct magnetic waves along their edges, without conduction through the bulk material.
In a review article in Nature Materials, a team of scientists assessed the common design motifs of a range of natural structural materials and determined what it would take to design and fabricate structures that mimic nature.
A versatile two-step process allows for the controlled synthesis of new materials for energy technology.
Gels that help prevent oppositely charged nanoparticles from settling out of solution enable applications from ceramic synthesis to adsorption of water. Scientists mapped out a mechanistic understanding of the gel, revealing contributions from three district phenomena.
A simple process made an electrode that absorbs sunlight and produces oxygen on tiny cobalt islands on a silicon electrode.
A new tabletop system can accelerate materials characterization and further our understanding of magnetic and electronic properties that enable energy-efficient electronics and information storage.
Scientists know how a liquid metal technique selectively removes elements from a block of well-mixed metals and creates intricate structures.
Scientists discovered a pyrite-type compound, similar to fool’s gold, that is competitive with platinum for splitting water to produce hydrogen
In movies and television shows, audio tapes or other devices self-destruct after delivering the details of impossible missions. Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have taken it to a new level.
A new architecture takes very few processing steps to produce an affordable solar cell with efficiencies comparable to conventional silicon solar cells.
A new tool now rests in the 3D printing toolbox. The result is designer materials with desirable structures, such as microchips, or materials with unique properties.
Making faster, more powerful electronics requires smaller but still uniform connections between different materials. For the first time, researchers created extremely small, 5-nanometer-wide junctions, which were made in a specific pattern using two different flat semiconductors.
Molecules in liquid crystals form exotic phases in which arrays of defects are organized into striking patterns. Confining these defect structures within droplets offers fine control that points to strategies—not possible in bulk phases—for assembly of responsive, adaptable materials.
Movies of the nanoparticles in motion were obtained with world-leading electron microscopes. The results yielded insights into the structure and growth mechanisms of these materials.
Tiny ribbons of graphene could move electricity and dissipate heat more efficiently than silicon in electronic circuits; however, creating the ribbons on traditional supports wasn’t possible. Scientists have discovered how to synthesize the nanoribbons directly on a semiconductor wafer.
A new semiconducting material that is only three atomic-layers thick has emerged with more exotic, malleable electronic properties than those of traditional semiconductors.
With a new technique, scientists can detect a few large grains in a sea of small grains and study the fatigue-induced phenomena of large grain growth.
Researchers demonstrated that nanowires made from lead halide perovskite are the most efficient nanowire lasers known.
Even though conducting missing electrons and transparency were considered mutually exclusive, this new material both efficiently conducts missing electrons and retains most of its transparency to visual light.
Certain heavy barium nuclei have long been predicted to exhibit pear-like shapes. Scientists demonstrated the existence of this exotic shape by taking advantage of breakthroughs in the acceleration of radioactive beams and new detector technologies.
Scientists found that the electronic arrangement and the small molecular separation distances give bacterial pili an electrical conductivity comparable to that of copper, valuable insights for those interested in eventually constructing non-toxic, nanoscale sources of electricity.
Scientists devised a new type of imaging electron detector that records an image frame in 1/1000 of a second, and can detect from 1 to 1,000,000 electrons per pixel.
New data from collisions of protons indicate that gluons, glue-like particles that bind the inner building blocks of each proton, play a substantial role in determining the proton’s spin, or intrinsic angular momentum.
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