Dec 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A group of researchers has created a simple and inexpensive means to visualize the atomic state of hydrogen. Details of their breakthrough were published in the journal Acta Materialia ("In situ visualization of misorientation-dependent hydrogen diffusion at grain boundaries of pure polycrystalline Ni using a...
A fast, low-cost, scalable method to make covalent organic frameworks (COFs)
Dec 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Rice University materials scientists developed a fast, low-cost, scalable method to make covalent organic frameworks (COFs), a class of crystalline polymers whose tunable molecular structure, large surface area and porosity could be useful in energy applications, semiconductor devices, sensors, filtration systems and drug delivery. “What...
Harnessing nanotechnology to understand tumor behavior
Dec 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A study conducted by pre-PhD researcher Pablo S. Valera and recently published in PNAS ("SERS analysis of cancer cell-secreted purines reveals a unique paracrine crosstalk in MTAP-deficient tumors") demonstrates the potential of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to explore metabolites secreted by cancer cells in cancer...
First observation of how water molecules move near a metal electrode
Dec 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) A collaborative team of experimental and computational physical chemists from South Korea and the United States have made an important discovery in the field of electrochemistry, shedding light on the movement of water molecules near metal electrodes. This research holds profound implications for the advancement...
Tactile touchscreens buttons pop up on demand
Dec 18, 2023 (Nanowerk Spotlight) In many of our electronic devices, touchscreens have been replacing physical buttons and knobs as our primary means of interfacing with electronics. But touchscreens suffer a major downside: they rely entirely on vision and provide no tactile feedback. We lose the ability to find controls...
Using AI-related technologies can significantly enhance human cognition
Dec 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The project focused on Interlingual Respeaking (IRSP), a new practice where live subtitles in another language are created through the collaboration of human and speech recognition software. IRSP is a cognitively demanding, real-time process where a language professional simultaneously translates incoming spoken language whilst also...
Atomic glimpses orient defect engineering
Dec 17, 2023 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Scientists have sought to leverage atomic defects to enhance electrocatalytic performance for clean energy applications. However, the inability to precisely study defects' atomic-scale electric field polarization hindered understanding of the structure-property relationships underlying observed catalytic improvements. Now, new microscopy advances enable direct imaging of electric...
Overcoming a fundamental challenge to enable scattering-free optical transparency
Dec 16, 2023 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Ever since the first observations of light scattering by particles in the 19th century, achieving ideal optical transparency has posed an enduring grand challenge. Natural solid things like rocks or crystals tend to make light zigzag or spread out in different directions. This happens because...
Ultrafast lasers map electrons ‘going ballistic’ in graphene with implications for next-gen electronic devices
Dec 15, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Research appearing in ACS Nano ("Spatiotemporal Observation of Quasi-Ballistic Transport of Electrons in Graphene"), reveals the ballistic movement of electrons in graphene in real time. The observations, made at the University of Kansas’ Ultrafast Laser Lab, could lead to breakthroughs in governing electrons in semiconductors,...
Electronic pathways may enhance collective atomic vibrations’ magnetism
Dec 16, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Materials with enhanced thermal conductivity are critical for the development of advanced devices to support applications in communications, clean energy and aerospace. But in order to engineer materials with this property, scientists need to understand how phonons, or quantum units of the vibration of atoms,...