Aug 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Efficient adsorbents for industrial wastewater treatment are important to minimize potential environmental damage. In particular, organic dyes, as a significant group of industrial pollutants, are usually highly water soluble, non-degradable and many are toxic to carcinogenic. Changxia Li and Freddy Kleitz from the Faculty of...
Explosive neutron star merger captured for the first time in millimeter light
Aug 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)— an international observatory co-operated by the US National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)— have for the first time recorded millimeter-wavelength light from a fiery explosion caused by the merger of a neutron star with another...
Researchers 3D print high-performance nanostructured alloy that’s both ultrastrong and ductile
Aug 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Georgia Institute of Technology have 3D printed a dual-phase, nanostructured high-entropy alloy that exceeds the strength and ductility of other state-of-the-art additively manufactured materials, which could lead to higher-performance components for applications in aerospace, medicine, energy...
2D materials with diversely behaving layers in a single bulk material
Aug 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Scientists from The University of Manchester have developed a novel yet simple method for producing vertical stacks of alternating superconductor and insulator layers of tantalum disulphide (TaS2). The findings, from a team led by Professor Rahul Nair, could speed up the process of manufacturing such...
Researchers studying materials whose traits resemble those of the human brain
Aug 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) In its heyday, UIUC’s Blue Waters was one of the world’s top supercomputers. Anyone who was curious could drop by its 30,000-square-foot machine room for a tour, and spend half an hour strolling among the 288 huge black cabinets, supported by a 24-megawatt power supply,...
Enhancing solar efficiency with upconversion
Aug 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Solar cell technologies have been improving incrementally over the decades, but energy conversion has remained less than optimal. Now, researchers at Kyoto University have developed a novel wafer bonding technology using an optical upconversion material that transforms sunlight to shorter-wavelengths. This new semiconductor process utilizes...
Ditching the toothbrush for hydrogels to get whiter teeth, fewer cavities (w/video)
Aug 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The first thing people notice when they meet you is your smile. To be more confident when giving wide-mouthed, eye-crinkling smiles, people want healthy, pearly white teeth. But toothpastes only remove surface stains, and whitening treatments can harm enamel, leading to cavities and discoloration. Now,...
Smart lighting system based on quantum dots more accurately reproduces daylight
Aug 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers have designed smart, colour-controllable white light devices from quantum dots, which are more efficient and have better colour saturation than standard LEDs, and can dynamically reproduce daylight conditions in a single light. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, designed the next-generation smart lighting...
Understanding a critical defect affecting silicon wafers in many solar cells
Aug 03, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A University of New South Wales (UNSW) solar PV research team has demonstrated for the first time that this detrimental “boron oxygen complex” in silicon wafers arises from two distinct and directly measured “traps” (H375 and H400 traps) (IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, "Electronic Properties of...
Researchers improve cement with shrimp shell nanoparticles
Aug 02, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Putting nanoparticles from shrimp shells into cement paste made the material significantly stronger — an innovation that could lead to reduced seafood waste and lower carbon emissions from concrete production. Reporting in the journal Cement and Concrete Composites ("Insights into setting time, rheological and mechanical...