Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Mineral samples collected from the Ryugu asteroid by the Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft are helping UCLA space scientists and colleagues better understand the chemical composition of our solar system as it existed in its infancy, more than 4.5 billion years ago. In research recently published in...
Improving perovskite solar cell resistance to degradation
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Perovskite solar cells have drawn a significant amount of research attention as a promising alternative to conventional silicon-based solar cells, due to their efficiency in converting sunlight into electricity. Perovskite solar cells are a hybrid of organic and inorganic materials and consist of a light-harvesting...
Massive fuel hungry black holes feed off intergalactic gas
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Research led by the University of Southampton has revealed how supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are feeding off gas clouds which reach them by travelling hundreds of thousands of light years from one galaxy to another. An international team of scientists has shown there is a...
Correlated rattling atomic chains reduce thermal conductivity of materials
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Controlling a material’s thermal conductivity can help insulate our homes, improve the performance of electronic devices, conserve power consumption in cars, and generate greater power efficiency. Now, a group of researchers has unveiled a novel mechanism that leads to further suppression of thermal conductivity in...
New grasshopper-like material can leap 200 times its own thickness
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Engineers at CU Boulder have designed a new, rubber-like film that can leap high into the air like a grasshopper – all on its own and without needing outside intervention. Just heat it up and watch it jump! The researchers describe their achievement in the...
Complex flows of cold gas are shedding light on stellar nurseries
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Flows of cold gas falling onto two of three protostars in a stellar nursery about 450 light years away have been spotted by RIKEN astronomers (Astronomy and Astrophysics, "A cold accretion flow onto one component of a multiple protostellar system"). This discovery provides valuable insights...
Billions of celestial objects revealed in gargantuan survey of the Milky Way
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The Milky Way Galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, glimmering star-forming regions, and towering dark clouds of dust and gas. Imaging and cataloging these objects for study is a herculean task, but a newly released astronomical dataset known as the second data release of...
Microelectronics give researchers a remote control for biological robots (w/video)
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) First, they walked. Then, they saw the light. Now, miniature biological robots have gained a new trick: remote control. The hybrid “eBiobots” are the first to combine soft materials, living muscle and microelectronics, said researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and collaborating...
New method for designing nanoscale 3D materials could make fuel cells more efficient
Jan 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Scientists from UNSW Sydney have demonstrated a novel technique for creating tiny 3D materials that could eventually make fuel cells like hydrogen batteries cheaper and more sustainable. In the study published in Science Advances ("Synthesis of hierarchical metal nanostructures with high electrocatalytic surface areas"), researchers...
Blast chiller for the quantum world
Jan 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The quantum nature of objects visible to the naked eye is currently a much-discussed research question. A team led by Innsbruck physicist Gerhard Kirchmair has now demonstrated a new method in the laboratory that could make the quantum properties of macroscopic objects more accessible than...