http://phys.org/chemistry-news/materials-science/ en-us Phys.Org provides the latest news on chemistry and materials science (Phys.org) —Waterproof fabrics that whisk away sweat could be the latest application of microfluidic technology developed by bioengineers at the University of California, Davis. http://phys.org/news288284578.html Chemistry - Materials Science Mon, 20 May 2013 16:20:06 EST news288284578 Metal complexes are becoming increasingly important as the photochemical building blocks of functional molecular systems such as sensors and photoelectrochemical cells. Of particular interest are metal complexes that involve gold atoms in the +1 valence state, due to their ability to self-assemble into larger units. The assembly process, known as aurophilic interaction, is enhanced by photoexcitation—an effect recently exploited by chemists to link individual gold(I)–dicyanide complexes into phosphorescent oligomer chains through careful control of complex concentrations and light exposure. However, the fundamental structural details of this reaction have yet to be understood. http://phys.org/news288001383.html Chemistry - Materials Science Fri, 17 May 2013 09:24:01 EST news288001383 By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, materials scientists at Harvard have found that they can control the growth behavior of crystals to create precisely tailored structures—such as delicate, micron-scale flowers. http://phys.org/news287931436.html Chemistry - Materials Science Thu, 16 May 2013 14:00:09 EST news287931436 (Phys.org) —Using a powerful combination of microanalytic techniques that simultaneously image photoelectric current and chemical reaction rates across a surface on a micrometer scale, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have shed new light on what may become a cost-effective way to generate hydrogen gas directly from water and sunlight. http://phys.org/news287827698.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 15 May 2013 09:08:25 EST news287827698 (Phys.org) —Engineers combine layers of flexible materials into pressure sensors to create a wearable heart monitor thinner than a dollar bill. The skin-like device could one day provide doctors with a safer way to check the condition of a patient's heart. http://phys.org/news287827126.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 15 May 2013 08:58:55 EST news287827126 Purple bacteria are among Earth's oldest organisms, and among its most efficient in turning sunlight into usable chemical energy. Now, a key to their light-harvesting prowess has been explained through a detailed structural analysis by scientists at MIT. http://phys.org/news287822654.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 15 May 2013 07:44:24 EST news287822654 (Phys.org) —Paper is becoming a high-tech material. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam-Golm have created targeted conductive structures on paper using a method that is quite simple: with a conventional inkjet printer, they printed a catalyst on a sheet of paper and then heated it. The printed areas on the paper were thereby converted into conductive graphite. Being an inexpensive, light and flexible raw material, paper is therefore highly suitable for electronic components in everyday objects. http://phys.org/news287821826.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 15 May 2013 07:30:38 EST news287821826 (Phys.org) —A new process for generating nanometer-scale oil droplets in water has been reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie by Japanese researchers, who have developed a technique they named MAGIQ (monodisperse nanodroplet generation in quenched hydrothermal solution). Under standard conditions, hydrocarbons and water do not mix; however, at high temperatures and high pressures near the critical point of water, they freely mix. Quenching homogeneous solutions of dodecane and water under these conditions in the presence of a detergent produces nanoemulsions in just ten seconds. http://phys.org/news287821647.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 15 May 2013 07:27:36 EST news287821647 Northwestern University scientists have struck gold in the laboratory. They have discovered an inexpensive and environmentally benign method that uses simple cornstarch—instead of cyanide—to isolate gold from raw materials in a selective manner. http://phys.org/news287688981.html Chemistry - Materials Science Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:04 EST news287688981 (Phys.org) —Ripening fruit, vegetables, and flowers release ethylene, which works as a plant hormone. Ethylene accelerates ripening, so other unripened fruit also begins to ripen—fruit and vegetables quickly spoil and flowers wilt. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Japanese researchers have now introduced a new catalytic system for the fast and complete degradation of ethylene. This system could keep the air in warehouses ethylene-free, keeping perishable products fresh longer. http://phys.org/news287648547.html Chemistry - Materials Science Mon, 13 May 2013 07:23:02 EST news287648547 (Phys.org) —Researchers at the University of Bristol have led a new enquiry into how extremely small particles of silica (sand) can be used to design and construct artificial protocells in the laboratory. The work is described in an article published in Nature Chemistry. http://phys.org/news287389386.html Chemistry - Materials Science Fri, 10 May 2013 07:23:30 EST news287389386 (Phys.org) —Advanced biofuels – liquid fuels synthesized from the sugars in cellulosic biomass – offer a clean, green and renewable alternative to gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. Bringing the costs of producing these advanced biofuels down to competitive levels with petrofuels, however, is a major challenge. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a bioenergy research center led by Berkeley Lab, have taken another step towards meeting this challenge with the development of a new technique for pre-treating cellulosic biomass with ionic liquids - salts that are liquids rather than crystals at room temperature. This new technique requires none of the expensive enzymes used in previous ionic liquid pretreatments, and makes it easier to recover fuel sugars and recycle the ionic liquid. http://phys.org/news287334247.html Chemistry - Materials Science Thu, 09 May 2013 16:04:16 EST news287334247 (Phys.org) —Given two catalysts for the job of turning intermittent wind or solar energy into chemical fuels, scientists chose the material that gets the job done quickly and uses the least energy. A catalyst that quickly produces fuel but uses far more energy than it stores won't get the job. Scientists could measure the wasted energy, also known as overpotential, in water but not in other liquids, until researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory devised a quick, elegant technique. http://phys.org/news287301368.html Chemistry - Materials Science Thu, 09 May 2013 06:57:22 EST news287301368 Anyone who has seen pictures of the giant, red-hot cauldrons in which steel is made—fed by vast amounts of carbon, and belching flame and smoke—would not be surprised to learn that steelmaking is one of the world's leading industrial sources of greenhouse gases. But remarkably, a new process developed by MIT researchers could change all that. http://phys.org/news287237532.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 08 May 2013 13:12:20 EST news287237532 (Phys.org) —Carbon dioxide is the most common source of carbon in nature and an inexpensive building block that is useful for the chemical industry. However, because of its high stability, it is not easy to induce CO2 to react. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, German scientists have now reported a universally applicable method for the catalytic methylation of amines with CO2. http://phys.org/news287220163.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 08 May 2013 08:23:01 EST news287220163 (Phys.org) —Fact or fiction? Stained glass found in medieval cathedrals becomes thicker at the bottom because glass moves over time. For years researchers have had their doubts, now a team at Texas Tech University has further evidence that the glass is not going anywhere. http://phys.org/news287164832.html Chemistry - Materials Science Tue, 07 May 2013 17:01:11 EST news287164832 (Phys.org) —The search for cleaner, low temperature nuclear fuels has produced a shock result for a team of experts at The University of Nottingham. http://phys.org/news287148089.html Chemistry - Materials Science Tue, 07 May 2013 12:22:58 EST news287148089 (Phys.org) —North Carolina State University researchers have identified a new mechanism to convert natural gas into energy up to 70 times faster, while effectively capturing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). http://phys.org/news287142696.html Chemistry - Materials Science Tue, 07 May 2013 10:51:47 EST news287142696 (Phys.org) —How does one separate a mixture of components with very similar properties? In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Croatian researchers have introduced a new approach to the separation of organic compounds. In their process, a "host compound" recognizes the desired "guest molecules", not only in solution, but also when the host and mixtures of competitive guest are milled together in the solid state. For the separation of maleic acid, this recognition through mechanochemistry delivers selectivity equal to that achieved by crystallization from a solution. http://phys.org/news286791137.html Chemistry - Materials Science Fri, 03 May 2013 09:13:37 EST news286791137 (Phys.org) —Los Alamos scientists published an article in the scientific journal Nature Chemistry that could offer a big step on the path to renewable energy. http://phys.org/news286624396.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 01 May 2013 10:53:27 EST news286624396 (Phys.org) —The tail of a seahorse can be compressed to about half its size before permanent damage occurs, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. The tail's exceptional flexibility is due to its structure, made up of bony, armored plates, which slide past each other. Researchers are hoping to use a similar structure to create a flexible robotic arm equipped with muscles made out of polymer, which could be used in medical devices, underwater exploration and unmanned bomb detection and detonation. UC San Diego engineers, led by materials science professors Joanna McKittrick and Marc Meyers, detailed their findings in the March 2013 issue of the journal Acta Biomaterialia. http://phys.org/news286616705.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 01 May 2013 08:45:29 EST news286616705 New research at MIT could dramatically improve the efficiency of fuel cells, which are considered a promising alternative to batteries for powering everything from electronic devices to cars and homes. http://phys.org/news286565397.html Chemistry - Materials Science Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:30:08 EST news286565397 (Phys.org) —In 2012, more than 3 million people had stents inserted in their coronary arteries. These tiny mesh tubes prop open blood vessels healing from procedures like a balloon angioplasty, which widens arteries blocked by clots or plaque deposits. After about six months, most damaged arteries are healed and stay open on their own. The stent, however, is there for a lifetime. http://phys.org/news286560078.html Chemistry - Materials Science Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:01:26 EST news286560078 A team of bioengineers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is the first to report creating artificial heart tissue that closely mimics the functions of natural heart tissue through the use of human-based materials. Their work will advance how clinicians treat the damaging effects caused by heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. http://phys.org/news286460508.html Chemistry - Materials Science Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:21:57 EST news286460508 (Phys.org) —A new catalyst is faster when it and its surrounding acid have the same proton affinity or pKa, according to scientists at the Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis, an Energy Frontier Research Center, at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The catalyst drives turning electrons and protons into a bond between two hydrogen atoms, storing the energy. Making the catalyst faster is vital to designing technologies that can store electrons created by wind turbines. The team's experimental and computational studies focused on the acid that supplies the reaction's protons. When the acid and the catalyst had the same pKa, the speed jumped from 2,400 and 27,000 hydrogen molecules a second to 4,100 to 96,000. http://phys.org/news286182284.html Chemistry - Materials Science Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:05:00 EST news286182284 Researchers at Wake Forest University's Organic Electronics group have come up with a novel solution to one of the biggest technological barriers facing the organic semiconductor industry today. Oana Jurchescu, an assistant professor of physics, and a team of researchers developed a high performance organic semiconductor 'spray paint' that can be applied to large surface areas without losing electric conductivity. This is a potentially game changing technology for a number of reasons. http://phys.org/news286104634.html Chemistry - Materials Science Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:30:43 EST news286104634 Many natural composite materials have evolved to wrinkle in response to certain stimuli: The eye of the squid is lined with wavy layers of silvery reflectors that give it a silvery sheen. In the cell walls of many plants, wrinkles allow expansion without strain. Finally, the inner lining of arteries contain wrinkled lamellae that can be indicators of coronary heart disease, and can serve as markers for the condition. http://phys.org/news286096102.html Chemistry - Materials Science Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:30:01 EST news286096102 (Phys.org) —A team of researchers led by Artem R. Oganov, a professor of theoretical crystallography in the Department of Geosciences, has made a startling prediction that challenges existing chemical models and current understanding of planetary interiors—magnesium oxide, a major material in the formation of planets, can exist in several different compositions. The team's findings, "Novel stable compounds in the Mg-O system under high pressure," are published in the online edition of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. The existence of these compounds—which are radically different from traditionally known or expected materials—could have important implications. http://phys.org/news286093637.html Chemistry - Materials Science Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:27:42 EST news286093637 (Phys.org) —Like the Roman god Janus, methane presents Earth's atmosphere with two situational faces. As the main component of natural gas, methane when burned as a fuel produces less carbon dioxide than the burning of oil or coal, which makes it a plus for global climate change. However, pure methane released into the atmosphere via leaks from unconventional oil and gas extraction, coal mining or from the melting of Arctic ice is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, contributing an estimated 30-percent of current net climate warming. To exploit the good and blunt the bad, effective ways of separating and capturing methane must be found. This presents a huge challenge, however, as methane, unlike carbon, interacts poorly with most other materials, making it difficult to physically capture. http://phys.org/news286034825.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:08:45 EST news286034825 (Phys.org) —In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Energy & Environmental Science (now available online), researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory describe details of a low-cost, stable, effective catalyst that could replace costly platinum in the production of hydrogen. The catalyst, made from renewable soybeans and abundant molybdenum metal, produces hydrogen in an environmentally friendly, cost-effective manner, potentially increasing the use of this clean energy source. http://phys.org/news286020695.html Chemistry - Materials Science Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:12:48 EST news286020695