Chemistry
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Mar 15 | News
Silks are among the toughest materials known, stronger and less brittle, pound for pound, than steel. Now scientists at MIT have unraveled some of their deepest secrets in research that could lead the way to the creation of synthetic materials that duplicate, or even exceed, the extraordinary properties of natural silk.
Mar 15 | News
Scientists from IBM and Stanford University have recent detailed polymer discoveries that could lead to the development of new types of biodegradable, biocompatible plastics. The result of a multi-year research effort, the breakthrough is based on organocatalysis, specifically oxide-based catalysts that show activities rivaling the most active metal-based catalysts. Harnessing this activity could enable us to significantly increase the ability to recycle and reuse PET.
Mar 2 | News
Rice Univ. researchers have found a way to stitch graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) into a two-dimensional quilt that offers new paths of exploration for materials scientists.
Feb 17 | News
A new nanotech catalyst developed by McGill Univ. chemists offers industry an opportunity to reduce the use of expensive and toxic heavy metals. Although chemists have long been aware of the ecological and economic impact of traditional chemical catalysts and do attempt to reuse their materials, it is generally difficult to separate the catalyzing chemicals from the finished product. The team's discovery does away with this chemical process altogether.
Feb 16 | News
A collaboration between researchers at Northwestern Univ.'s Center for Catalysis and scientists at Oxford University has produced a new approach for understanding surfaces, particularly metal oxide surfaces, widely used in industry as supports for catalysts.
Feb 5 | News
An ultra-lightweight sponge made of clay and a bit of high-grade plastic draws oil out of contaminated water but leaves the water behind.
Feb 3 | News
Materials scientists at the Univ. of Washington have built a three-dimensional scaffold out of a natural material that mimics the binding sites for stem cells, allowing the cells to reproduce on a clean, biodegradable structure. Results show that human embryonic stem cells grow and multiply readily on the structure.
Feb 2 | News
Neutron scattering experiments performed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory give strong evidence that, if superconductivity is related to a material's magnetic properties, the same mechanisms are behind both copper-based high-temperature superconductors and the newly discovered iron-based superconductors.
Jan 27 | News
Not every object is food to a Venus flytrap. Like the carnivorous plant, a new material developed at Northwestern Univ. permanently traps only its desired prey, the radioactive ion cesium, and not other harmless ions like sodium.
Jan 26 | News
Physicists have long wondered whether hydrogen could be transformed into a metal and possibly even a superconductor. High-pressure researchers have now modeled three hydrogen-dense metal alloys and found there are pressure and temperature trends associated with the superconducting state—a huge boost in the understanding of how this abundant material could be harnessed.