Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

MIT chemists have designed a polymer that can reversibly switch from a large structure (orange spheres) to the smaller blue shapes, in response to light.
Image: Demin Liu/Molgraphics

New material reversibly changes its structure in response to different wavelengths of light. MIT researchers have designed a polymer material that can change its structure in response to light, converting from a rigid substance to a softer one that can heal itself when damaged.

“You can switch the material states back and forth, and in each of those states, the material acts as though it were a completely different material, even though it’s made of all the same components,” says Jeremiah Johnson, an associate professor of chemistry at MIT, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and th...

Sodium-potassium alloy is a room-temperature liquid metal that could unlock a high-voltage flow battery. (Image credit: Antonio Baclig)

A new type of flow battery that involves a liquid metal more than doubled the maximum voltage of conventional flow batteries and could lead to affordable storage of renewable power. A new combination of materials developed by Stanford researchers may aid in developing a rechargeable battery able to store the large amounts of renewable power created through wind or solar sources. With further development, the new technology could deliver energy to the electric grid quickly, cost effectively and at normal ambient temperatures.

The technology – a type of battery known as a flow battery – has long been considered as a likely candidate for storing intermittent ...

A newly identified insulating material using the symmetry principles behind wallpaper patterns may provide a basis for quantum computing, according to an international team of researchers. This strontium-lead sample (Sr2Pb3) has a fourfold Dirac cone surface state, a set of four, two-dimensional electronic surface states that go away from a point in momentum space in straight lines. Credit: Image courtesy of Benjamin Wieder, Princeton University Department of Physics

An international team of scientists has discovered a new, exotic form of insulating material with a metallic surface that could enable more efficient electronics or even quantum computing...

When exposed to sunlight, star-shaped gold nanoparticles coated with a semiconductor allow efficient production of hydrogen from water. Credit: Ashley Pennington/Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Rutgers study opens door to broader use of sunlight and advanced materials to combat climate change. Star-shaped gold nanoparticles, coated with a semiconductor, can produce hydrogen from water over 4X more efficiently than other methods – opening the door to improved storage of solar energy and other advances that could boost renewable energy use and combat climate change, according to Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers.

“Instead of using ultraviolet light, which is the standard practice, we leveraged the energy of visible and infrared light to excite electrons in gold nanoparticles,” sa...