Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

The novel topological insulator built in the Würzburg Institute of Physics: a controllable flow of hybrid optoelectronic particles (red) travels along its edges. (Picture: Karol Winkler)

For the first time, physicists have built a unique topological insulator in which optical and electronic excitations hybridize and flow together. Topological insulators are materials with very special properties. They conduct electricity or light particles on their surface or edges only but not on the inside. This unusual behaviour could eventually lead to technical innovations which is why topological insulators have been the subject of intense global research for several years.

Physicists of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, with colleagues from the Technion in Haifa, Is...

A single nanocluster of 22 gold atoms — Au22 — is only 1 nanometer in diameter, allowing it to easily slip through the bacterial cell wall.
Credit: Peidong Yang, UC Berkeley

Harvesting solar fuels through a bacterium’s unusual appetite for gold. Scientists have placed light-absorbing gold nanoclusters inside a bacterium, creating a biohybrid system that produces a higher yield of chemical products, such as biofuels, than previously demonstrated. The biohybrid captures sunlight and carbon dioxide to make chemicals useful not only on Earth but also in the exotic environment of space.

Moorella thermoacetica first made its debut as the first non-photosensitive bacterium to carry out artificial photosynthesis in a study led by Peidong Yang, a professor in UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry...

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed 3D printed assistive technology that can track and store their use — without using batteries or electronics. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington

Engineers have developed 3D printed devices that can track and store their own use – without using batteries or electronics. Instead, this system uses a method called backscatter, through which a device can share information by reflecting signals that have been transmitted to it with an antenna.

Cheap and easily customizable, 3D printed devices are perfect for assistive technology, like prosthetics or “smart” pill bottles that can help patients remember to take their daily medications...

Rice University researchers have enhanced micron-sized titanium dioxide particles to trap and destroy BPA, a water contaminant with health implications. Cyclodextrin molecules on the surface trap BPA, which is then degraded by reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by the light-activated particles. Illustration by Danning Zhang

Reusable water-treatment particles effectively eliminate BPA. Rice University scientists have developed something akin to the Venus’ flytrap of particles for water remediation. Micron-sized spheres created in the lab of Rice environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez are built to catch and destroy bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic chemical used to make plastics.

BPA is commonly used to coat the insides of food cans, bottle tops and water supply lines, and was once a componen...