Jul 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) MIT scientists have created the first completely digitally manufactured plasma sensors for orbiting spacecraft. These plasma sensors, also known as retarding potential analyzers (RPAs), are used by satellites to determine the chemical composition and ion energy distribution of the atmosphere. The 3D-printed and laser-cut hardware...
Artificial skin sweats on command
Jul 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Following the breakthrough with their first sweating artificial skin two years ago, Danqing Liu’s multidisciplinary team hasn’t been sitting still. Their goal: an artificial skin that sweats as naturally as possible. They have succeeded in this, as can be read in their article in Angewandte...
Iron as a potential key material in facilitating the large-scale storage and transport of carbon-free energy
Jul 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Iron has a great potential to contribute to the much needed energy transition. The metal and its oxides could be used in a circular system as carbon-neutral energy carrier to store renewable energy, from wind and solar power for example. How exactly this could work...
Scientists regulate pore size distribution to improve nanofiltration membrane
Jul 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A research group led by Prof. WAN Yinhua from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a novel antifouling nanofiltration membrane for various types of industrial liquid separation. The new membrane applies new knowledge about the role of...
Vaccinating against cancer? A new class of nanoparticle vaccines developed
Jul 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A vaccination as tumor therapy - with a vaccine individually created from a patient's tissue sample that " attaches" the body's own immune system to cancer cells: the basis for this long-term vision has now been achieved by a team of researchers from the MPI...
Towards high-quality manganese oxide catalysts with large surface areas
Jul 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The octahedral molecular sieve (OMS-1) is a very powerful manganese oxide-based catalyst, and researchers from Tokyo Tech have found a remarkably simple way to synthesize it. By using a low-crystallinity precursor and a straightforward solid-state transformation method, they managed to produce high-quality OMS-1 nanoparticles. Their...
Some don’t like it hot: Thermal conductivity-switching bottleneck resolved
Jul 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from Osaka University and collaborating partners used straightforward chemical synthesis to modulate the phase transition of a thermal conductivity-switching block copolymer. Reversible changes in the nanostructured anisotropy in the material corresponded to an approximately two-fold change in the thermal conductivity, over the 27°C to...
Space study offers clearest understanding yet of the life cycle of supermassive black holes
Jul 26, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Black holes with varying light signatures but that were thought to be the same objects being viewed from different angles are actually in different stages of the life cycle, according to a study led by Dartmouth researchers. The research on black holes known as “active...
How do nanoparticles grow? Atomic-scale movie upends 100-year-old theory
Jul 26, 2022 (Nanowerk News) For decades, a textbook process known as “Ostwald ripening,” named for the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, has guided the design of new materials including nanoparticles – tiny materials so small they are invisible to the naked eye. According to this theory, small particles dissolve...
Improving image sensors for machine vision
Jul 26, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Image sensors measure light intensity, but angle, spectrum, and other aspects of light must also be extracted to significantly advance machine vision. In Applied Physics Letters ("Multimodal light-sensing pixel arrays"), researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Washington University in St. Louis, and OmniVision Technologies highlight...