Aug 13, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) have developed a new enzyme engineering platform to improve plastic degrading enzymes through directed evolution. To illustrate the utility of their platform, they have engineered an enzyme that can successfully degrade poly(ethylene) terephthalate (PET), the plastic commonly...
Researchers fabricate cobalt copper catalysts for methane on metal-organic framework
Aug 13, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The world is highly dependent on fossil fuels to power its industry and transportation. These fossil fuels lead to excessive carbon dioxide emission, which contributes to global warming and ocean acidification. One way to reduce this excessive carbon dioxide emission that is harmful to the...
Tiny crystal vases
Aug 13, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Scientists from the Department of Materials Science at the University of Tsukuba developed a new method to produce micrometer-scale single crystals in the form of hollow vessels (Science, "Synchronous assembly of chiral skeletal single-crystalline microvessels"). By drop-casting an ethanol solution onto a quartz substrate, the...
A simple way of sculpting matter into complex shapes with ‘twisted’ light
Aug 13, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A new method for shaping matter into complex shapes, with the use of ‘twisted’ light, has been demonstrated in research at the University of Strathclyde. When atoms are cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero (-273 degrees C), they stop behaving like particles and start...
Perovskite material with superlattice structure might surpass efficiency of a ‘perfect’ solar cell
Aug 13, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A perovskite solar cell developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego brings researchers closer to breaking the ceiling on solar cell efficiency, suggests a study published in Nature ("Perovskite superlattices with efficient carrier dynamics"). The new solar cell is a lead-free low-dimensional...
Exploring the manipulation of Majorana zero modes in iron-based nanowires
Aug 13, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Recently, National Science Review ("Controllable Majorana vortex states in iron-based superconducting nanowires") has published collaborative research results of Prof. Xin Liu's research team at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Prof. Dong Liu at Tsinghua University, and Prof. Fu-Chun Zhang at the Kavli Institute for...
A new method boosts wind farms’ energy output, without new equipment
Aug 13, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Virtually all wind turbines, which produce more than 5 percent of the world’s electricity, are controlled as if they were individual, free-standing units. In fact, the vast majority are part of larger wind farm installations involving dozens or even hundreds of turbines, whose wakes can...