News tagged with metal atoms

Researchers discover promising hydrogen storage material

(PhysOrg.com) -- If hydrogen is to ever to serve as an onboard energy carrier for the transportation industry, a material will be needed that can store large amounts of hydrogen at ambient temperature and ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Nov 01, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (14) | comments 22 | with audio podcast feature

Damaging graphene to create a band gap

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Graphene offers a lot of interesting potential applications for nanoelectronics," Florian Banhart tells PhysOrg.com, "but there is no band gap. This is a well-known problem. Without the band gap, switch ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Nov 22, 2010 | popularity 3.2 / 5 (9) | comments 2 | with audio podcast feature

In metallic glasses, researchers find a few new atomic structures

Drawing on powerful computational tools and a state-of-the-art scanning transmission electron microscope, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison and Iowa State University materials science and engineering researchers has ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created May 11, 2012 | popularity 3.4 / 5 (7) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Physicists show standard 'quasiparticle' theory breaks down at 'quantum critical point'

A new study this week finds that "quantum critical points" in exotic electronic materials can act much like polarizing "hot button issues" in an election. Reporting in Nature, researchers from Rice Univer ...

Physics / General Physics

created Apr 25, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 6 | with audio podcast

'Tunable' metal nanostructures for fuel cells, batteries and solar energy

(PhysOrg.com) -- For catalysts in fuel cells and electrodes in batteries, engineers would like to manufacture metal films that are porous, to make more surface area available for chemical reactions, and highly ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Apr 03, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Strong bonds between rare-earth metals and graphene

(PhysOrg.com) -- Transistors and information storage devices are getting smaller and smaller. But, to go as small as the nanoscale, scientists must understand how just a few atoms of metals behave when deposited ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Sep 28, 2011 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (6) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Research demonstrates method that allows inexpensive carbon materials to store hydrogen at room temperature

Hydrogen has long been considered a promising alternative to fossil fuels for powering cars, trucks and even homes. But one major obstacle has been finding lightweight, robust and inexpensive ways of storing the gas, whose ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Sep 19, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (14) | comments 16 | with audio podcast

Etch-a-sketch with superconductors

Reporting in Nature Materials this week, researchers from the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the Physics Department of Sapienza University of Rome have discovered a technique to 'draw' superconducting shapes ...

Physics / Superconductivity

created Aug 22, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

First ever single crystal metallic glass created under 25 gigapascals of pressure

Glass, by definition, is amorphous; its atoms lack order and are arranged every which way. But when scientists squeezed tiny samples of a metallic glass under high pressure, they got a surprise: The atoms ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Jun 16, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

Under pressure, sodium and hydrogen could undergo a metamorphosis, emerging as a superconductor

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the search for superconductors, finding ways to compress hydrogen into a metal has been a point of focus ever since scientists predicted many years ago that electricity would flow, uninhibited, through ...

Physics / Superconductivity

created Jun 13, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (11) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Milestone: A methane-metal marriage

(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Arizona scientists have inserted metal atoms into methane gas molecules and obtained a detailed structure of the resulting molecule. The discovery could be a key step in making ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Dec 20, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Layered footballs: First two-dimensional organic metal made of fullerenes

(PhysOrg.com) -- Since their discovery in the mid 1980s, fullerenes have caused a sensation. The tiny hollow spheres made of 60 carbon atoms, constructed out of pentagons and hexagons like miniature soccer ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Jun 09, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (19) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Shining Light on Graphene-Metal Interactions

(PhysOrg.com) -- By controlling the layered growth of graphene - a relatively "new" form of carbon that's just a single atom thick - researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered intriguing ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Apr 02, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (15) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Metallic Glass Yields Secrets Under Pressure

(PhysOrg.com) -- Metallic glasses are emerging as potentially useful materials at the frontier of materials science research. They combine the advantages and avoid many of the problems of normal metals and ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Mar 16, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (9) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Metal oxide 'can transform'

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team including Oxford University scientists has been investigating what happens to the top layer of atoms on the surface of a material that splits water and has potential uses in nanoelectronics.

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Feb 15, 2010 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (12) | comments 0 | with audio podcast