Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

The blue perforated slab is the upper membrane, with the photonic crystal cavity in the middle. This captures the light of a specific near infrarad frequency and generates a current that is measured (A). If the distance to the red, lower slab is changed, the captured frequency changes. Credit: Eindhoven University of Technology

Use your smartphone to check how clean the air is, whether food is fresh or a lump is malignant. This has all come a step closer thanks to a new spectrometer that is so small it can be incorporated easily and cheaply in a mobile phone. The little sensor developed at TU Eindhoven is just as precise as the normal tabletop models used in scientific labs. The researchers present their invention on 20 December in the journal Nature Communications.

Spectrometry, the analy...

Illumination of a book (‘Paradise Lost,’ by John Milton) with the nanobionic light-emitting plants (two 3.5-week-old watercress plants). The book and the light-emitting watercress plants were placed in front of a reflective paper to increase the influence from the light emitting plants to the book pages. Credit: Seon-Yeong Kwak

Illumination from nanobionic plants might one day replace some electrical lighting. By embedding nanoparticles into the leaves of watercress, engineers have induced the plant to give off dim light for nearly 4 hours. They believe engineered plants will one day be bright enough to act as desk lamps or street lights. “The vision is to make a plant that will function as a desk lamp – a lamp that you don’t have to plug in...

Electricity, eel-style. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Michigan

Inspired by the electric eel, a flexible, transparent electrical device could lead to body-friendly power sources for implanted health monitors and medication dispensers, augmented-reality contact lenses and countless other applications. The soft cells are made of hydrogel and salt, and they form the first potentially biocompatible artificial electric organ that generates more than 100 volts. It produces a steady buzz of electricity at high voltage but low current, a bit like an extremely low-volume but high-pressure jet of water. It’s perhaps enough to power a small medical device like a pacemaker.

While the technology is preliminary, Michael Mayer, a professor of biophysics at the Adolphe Merkle Institute of the Uni...

Stability test of the novel MA(1-x)GuaxPbI3 perovskite material under continuous light illumination compared with the state-of-the-art MAPbI3. A schematic of the device architecture and the simulated crystalline structure is also provided.
Credit: M.K. Nazeeruddin/EPFL

Incorporating guanidinium into perovskite solar cells stabilizes their efficiency at 19% for 1,000 hours under full-sunlight testing conditions. With the power-conversion efficiency of silicon solar cells plateauing around 25%, perovskites are now ideally placed to become the market’s next generation of photovoltaics...