Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

A carbon nanobelt, represented as a ball-and stick model and space-filing model. Carbon atoms are colored in orange and gray and hydrogen atoms are colored in white.
Credit: ITbM, Nagoya University

Synthesis of a carbon nanobelt with potential applications in nanotechnology. Chemists have tried to synthesize carbon nanobelts for more than 60 years, but none have succeeded until now. A Nagoya University team reported the first organic synthesis of a carbon nanobelt in Science. Carbon nanobelts are expected to serve as a useful template for building carbon nanotubes and open a new field of nanocarbon science.

The new nanobelt, measuring 0...

Screenshot of video (https://youtu.be/GCT0KwFw-pM) showing 3D printing of stretchable electronic sensory devices that could give robots the ability to feel their environment and is a major step forward in printing electronics on real human skin. Credit: Shuang-Zhuang Guo and Michael McAlpine, University of Minnesota

Uni of Minnesota engineering researchers have developed a revolutionary process for 3D printing stretchable electronic sensory devices that could give robots the ability to feel their environment. The discovery is also a major step forward in printing electronics on real human skin. “This stretchable electronic fabric we developed has many practical uses,” said A/Prof. Michael McAlpine...

PSI researcher Claire Villevieille, head of the Battery Materials Group, at the instrument for X-ray diffraction. Credit: Paul Scherrer Institute/Markus Fischer

PSI, Switzerland and Université Grenoble Alpes (France) researchers have developed a method that could enable a breakthrough for the lithium-sulphur battery. In theory, these batteries can deliver considerably more energy than today’s conventional lithium-ion batteries, but current prototypes show a distinct loss of capacity after just a few charging cycles. So they are not yet fit for widespread use, for instance in electric vehicles. With their new method, the researchers were able to gain crucial insights into how the rapid capacity loss occurs...

Konstantinos Giapis has shown how molecular oxygen may be produced on the surface of comets using lab experiments. He and his postdoctoral scholar Yunxi Yao fired high-speed water molecules (left) at oxidized silicon and iron surfaces, observing the production of a plume that included molecular oxygen. Oxygen atoms are red, and hydrogen, blue. Giapis says similar conditions exist on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, where the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission detected molecular oxygen.
Credit: Caltech

A Caltech chemical engineer has figured out how to explain a nagging mystery in space – why comets expel oxygen gas. The discovery that comets produce O2 – was announced in 2015 by researchers studying the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with the Rosetta spacecraft...