Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

A bubble-wrapped, sponge-like device that soaks up natural sunlight and heats water to boiling temperatures, generating steam through its pores. Credit: George Ni at MIT

The solar thermal energy conversion system can easily generate steam from sunlight. It can help make technologies that rely on steam, like seawater desalination, wastewater treatment, residential water heating, medical tool sterilization and power generation, more efficient and affordable. The new device floats on water, converting 20% of incoming solar energy into steam at 100 degrees Celsius without expensive optical concentration devices and is made of cheap, commercially available materials, including bubble wrap and a polystyrene (plastic) foam.

“The system we have developed enables us to generate steam with solar ene...

The UW–Madison engineers use a solution process to deposit aligned arrays of carbon nanotubes onto 1 inch by 1 inch substrates. The researchers used their scalable and rapid deposition process to coat the entire surface of this substrate with aligned carbon nanotubes in less than 5 minutes. The team’s breakthrough could pave the way for carbon nanotube transistors to replace silicon transistors, and is particularly promising for wireless communications technologies. STEPHANIE PRECOURT

For decades, scientists have tried to harness the unique properties of carbon nanotubes to create high-performance electronics that are faster or consume less power – resulting in longer battery life, faster wireless communication and faster processing speeds for devices like smartphones and laptops...

A focused ion beam microscope image shows 3-D graphene layers welded together in a block. The material is biocompatible and its material properties meet the standards necessary for consideration as a bone implant, according to researchers at Rice University. Click the image for a larger version. Courtesy of the Ajayan Group

Scientists weld nanoscale sheets to form tough, porous material. Graphene flakes welded together into solid materials may be suitable for bone implants, according to a study led by Rice University scientists...

This is a conceptual illustration of pattern recognition process performed by hybrid gel oscillator system. Credit: Yan Fang

The potential to develop “materials that compute” has taken another leap at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, where researchers for the first time have demonstrated that the material can be designed to recognize simple patterns. This responsive, hybrid material, powered by its own chemical reactions, could one day be integrated into clothing and used to monitor the human body, or developed as a skin for “squishy” robots.

The computations were modeled utilizing Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) gels, a substance that oscillates in the absence of external stimuli, with an overlaying piezoelectric (PZ) cantilever. These BZ-PZ units combine Dr...