Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

The MOF used in this study consists of organic molecules (in grey and black) and metal ions (zirconium, in purple). Between these molecules are little holes that can absorb the phosphanates (in yellow). © KU Leuven – Centre for Surface Chemistry & Catalysis

The best-known electronic nose is the breathalyser. As drivers breathe into the device, a chemical sensor measures the amount of alcohol in their breath. This chemical reaction is then converted into an electronic signal, allowing the police officer to read off the result. Alcohol is easy to detect, because the chemical reaction is specific and the concentration of the measured gas is fairly high. But many other gases are complex mixtures of molecules in very low concentrations.

Researchers from KU Leuven have now built a very sensitiv...

Doughnut-shaped zones

Uni of Amsterdam students have designed a new catalyst that can render important chemical processes more sustainable. Their catalyst can create selective peroxide-like reagents literally from thin air and uses those to oxidise alcohols to carbonyl compounds in a dual-action mechanism.

Thierry Slot, a master student at the Research Priority Area Sustainable Chemistry, has succeeded in solving a thorny problem in organic chemistry: the selective catalytic oxidation of activated alcohols with molecular oxygen (air). Working with 2nd-year bachelor students Peter Jungbacker and Dylan van Noordenne, Slot designed and synthesised a dual-action solid catalyst that facilitates a cascade of oxygen activation followed by alcohol dehydrogenation.

The new catalyst is made mostly o...

This diagram depicts the way a mid-infrared laser (red cylinder, left) can send a beam through the atmosphere that generates filaments of ionized air molecules (multicolored beam, center, shown with magnified view). These filaments, which can be kilometers long, help to keep the beam concentrated enough to generate mid-infrared light in air (blue cloud, right) that can reveal detailed chemical composition through spectral analysis (chart at right) of the light picked up by a mid-infrared detector (bottom). Credit: Diagram courtesy of the researchers

Researchers have found a new way of using mid-infrared lasers to turn regions of molecules in the open air into glowing filaments of electrically charged gas, or plasma...

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are using a locust’s sense of smell to develop new biorobotic sensing devices.

Washington Uni engineers in St. Louis are looking to capitalize on the sense of smell in locusts to create new biorobotic sensing systems that could be used in homeland security applications. A/Prof B. Raman et al are using the sensitive locust olfactory system to develop a bio-hybrid nose. Biological sensing systems are far more complex than their engineered counterparts, including the chemical sensing system responsible for our sense of smell. Although the sense of smell is a primitive sense, it is conserved across many vertebrate and invertebrate species.

For several years and with prior funding from ONR, Raman has been studying how sensory signals are receive...