Record-breaking chemical reactivity with nanometer-scale sponge

Catalysts are often solid materials whose surface comes into contact with gases or liquids, thereby enabling certain chemical reactions. However, this means that any atoms of the catalyst that are not on the surface serve ...

2D material in three dimensions

The carbon material graphene has no well-defined thickness; it merely consists of one single layer of atoms. It is therefore often referred to as a "two-dimensional material." Trying to make a three-dimensional structure ...

Studying the big bang with artificial intelligence

It could hardly be more complicated: tiny particles whir around wildly with extremely high energy, countless interactions occur in the tangled mess of quantum particles, and this results in a state of matter known as "quark-gluon ...

Science fiction revisited: Ramjet propulsion

In science fiction stories about contact with extraterrestrial civilisations, there is a problem: What kind of propulsion system could make it possible to bridge the enormous distances between the stars? It cannot be done ...

Daylight causes road damage

The durability of asphalt depends crucially on bitumen—the black binder that holds the small stones in the asphalt together. As the bitumen ages, it can change its properties and become brittle, eventually causing the asphalt ...

Researchers develop nanometer-scale adaptive transistor

Normally, computer chips consist of electronic components that always do the same thing. In the future, however, more flexibility will be possible: New types of adaptive transistors can be switched in a flash, so that they ...

Catalyst material exhibits baffling surface state

Sometimes chemical reactions in the lab work the way you imagine them to, and sometimes they don't. Neither is unusual. What is highly unusual, however, is what a research team at TU Wien has now observed when studying hydrogen ...

Why teapots always drip

The "teapot effect" has been threatening spotless white tablecloths for ages: if a liquid is poured out of a teapot too slowly, then the flow of liquid sometimes does not detach itself from the teapot, finding its way into ...

Tuneable catalysis: Solving the particle size puzzle

Chemical reactions can be studied at different levels: At the level of individual atoms and molecules, new compounds can be designed. At the level of tiny particles on the nano and micrometer scale, one can understand how ...

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