Feb 21, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Solar-thermal technology is a promising environmentally friendly energy harvesting method with a potential role to play in solving the fossil fuel energy crisis. The technology transforms sunlight into thermal energy, but it’s challenging to suppress energy dissipation while maintaining high absorption. Existing solar energy harvesters...
Is there life on Mars? Our rovers might not be able to tell
Feb 21, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Scientific instruments currently deployed on Mars may lack the sensitivity to identify possible traces of life in this environment, suggests a Nature Communications paper ("Dark microbiome and extremely low organics in Atacama fossil delta unveil Mars life detection limits"). Since the Viking missions in the...
Chiral detection of biomolecules based on reinforcement learning
Feb 21, 2023 (Nanowerk News) As one of basic physical properties, chirality plays an important role in many fields. Especially in bio-medical chemistry, the discrimination of enantiomers is a very important research subject. Most biomolecules exhibit weak chirality in the ultraviolet band, so direct optical chiral detection is very difficult....
Reactive fabrics respond to changes in temperature (w/video)
Feb 21, 2023 (Nanowerk News) New textiles developed at Aalto University change shape when they heat up, giving designers a wide range of new options. In addition to offering adjustable aesthetics, responsive smart fabrics could also help monitor people’s health, improve thermal insulation, and provide new tools for managing room...
Solid-state thermal transistor demonstrated
Feb 21, 2023 (Nanowerk News) In modern electronics, a large amount of heat is produced as waste during usage—this is why devices such as laptops and mobile phones become warm during use, and require cooling solutions. In the last decade, the concept of managing this heat using electricity has been...
Health risk of graphene residues investigated
Feb 21, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Empa researchers have studied residues from the incineration of graphene-containing plastics. Conclusion of the study (NanoImpact, "Airborne emissions from combustion of graphene nanoplatelet/epoxy composites and their cytotoxicity on lung cells via air-liquid interface cell exposure in vitro"): Burned composite materials containing graphene nanoparticles can be...
The switch – analogous to a transistor
Feb 21, 2023 (Nanowerk News) For the first time, an international team of researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Solid State Physics, has demonstrated a switch, analogous to a transistor, made from a single molecule called fullerene (Physical Review Letters, "Light-induced subnanometric modulation of a single-molecule...
Turning food and plastic waste into valuable nanomaterials for energy applications
Feb 21, 2023 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Our society generates staggering amounts of waste in all areas of economic activities. Foremost among them, apart from energy waste, are the food and plastic sectors. Data gathered by the FAO (pdf), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, estimates that around 931...