Feb 10, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile have found evidence of another planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System. This candidate planet is the third detected in the system and the lightest...
A new electrolyte for greener and safer batteries
Feb 10, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The future of battery technologies lies in sodium. More sustainable than lithium - which currently powers most of our devices and vehicles - sodium is also abundant on the earth’s surface. The only problem is that its ions do not move easily in the liquid...
Perovskite research advances offer new possibilities for devices such as solar cells
Feb 10, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Perovskite materials are low-cost, solution-processable semiconductors that can absorb and convert solar energy with extraordinarily high efficiencies, making them promising material for use in applications such as photovoltaic solar cells – if the material can be made stable and efficient. In research published in the...
Robots in nanoparticle production – reliable, fast and safe (w/video)
Feb 10, 2022 (Nanowerk News) What otherwise takes hours in the laboratory, involves annoying waiting times and many sources of error, can now be accomplished by a robot in less time, well digitally documented and with high reproducibility. Automation of synthesis processes for nanoparticles can be a milestone for the...
Tiny antenna enables portable biomedical, food-analysis, and other gadgets driven by integrated nano- and terahertz technologies
Feb 09, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A Skoltech professor and his colleagues from Germany have designed a very small and flat antenna for receiving and transmitting terahertz signals. THz waves are a band of electromagnetic radiation that holds much promise for applications as diverse as security checks and wireless communication, cancer...
The power of seeing magnetic fields
Feb 09, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Being able to ‘see’ magnetic fields all the way down to the atomic scale helps us better understand magnetic properties of materials. Such insight may help us design smaller and more efficient microelectronic devices that use magnetic properties. In a study published in Nature ("Real-space...
Lightweight, stable, and functional – 3D printing of a nanoparticle-based aerogel
Feb 09, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A research team from Universität Hamburg and DESY has developed a new method to 3D print colloidal nanomaterials in the form of a so-called aerogel. This class of material is characterized by exceptional high porosity and opens versatile applications in catalysis, energy storage or sensor...
Micrometer-sized particles encased in tailored polymer membranes
Feb 09, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Metal hydrides are considered a cutting-edge storage material for hydrogen. These hydrides function even better, if the micrometer-sized hydride particles are coated with a thin polymer film. Using a sophisticated microscopy technique, a team at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon can now successfully show in detail, how the...
Butterflies inspire 3D printed artificial colors
Feb 09, 2022 (Nanowerk News) ETH Zurich researchers have created artificial colours by 3D printing certain nanostructures inspired by those of a butterfly (Advanced Materials, "Replicating the Cynandra opis Butterfly's Structural Color for Bioinspired Bigrating Color Filters"). This principle can be used in the future to produce colour screens. The...
New soft robot morphs from a ground to air vehicle using liquid metal
Feb 09, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Imagine a small autonomous vehicle that could drive over land, stop, and flatten itself into a quadcopter. The rotors start spinning, and the vehicle flies away. Looking at it more closely, what do you think you would see? What mechanisms have caused it to morph...