Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

To fend off damage and heat from the sun’s harsh rays, scientists have developed a new, environmentally friendly paint out of glass that bounces sunlight off metal surfaces – keeping them cool and durable. “Most paints you use on your car or house are based on polymers, which degrade in the ultraviolet light rays of the sun,” says Jason J. Benkoski, Ph.D. “So over time you’ll have chalking and yellowing. Polymers also tend to give off volatile organic compounds, which can harm the environment. That’s why I wanted to move away from traditional polymer coatings to inorganic glass ones.”
Glass, which is made out of silica, would be an ideal coating. It’s hard, durable and has the right optical properties. But it’s very brittle.

Benkoski, at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, modif...

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Tungsten is exceptionally rare in biological systems. Thus, it came as a huge surprise to researchers when they discovered this novel enzyme in hot spring-inhabiting bacterium, Caldicellulosiruptor bescii. This tungstoenzyme plays a key role in C. bescii’s primary metabolism, and its ability to convert plant biomass to simple fermentable sugars which could lead to commercially viable conversion of cellulosic (woody) biomass to fuels and chemical feedstocks, which could substantially reduce greenhouse emissions.

Cellulosic biomass’ advantage as a feedstock for fuel and chemical production is that it need not compete with food production for land. Its big challenge is that cellulose is highly resistant to enzymatic degradation...

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When commercialized, this advance could help make polymer solar cells an economically attractive alternative to those made with much more expensive silicon-crystal wafers. In experiments, solar cells made with the tiny rake double the efficiency of cells made without it and are 18% better than cells made using a microscopic straightedge blade.

Polymer-based photovoltaic cells are much cheaper than silicon because they’re made of inexpensive materials that can be simply painted or printed in...

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Nanoparticles in the shape of cubes, octahedrons, and spheres coordinate with each other to build structures. The shapes are bound together by complementary DNA molecules on each type of particle. The structures of the resulting 3D crystals are determined by the spatial symmetry of the facets of the cubes and octahedrons, while their structural order depends on DNA-tuned interactions and the ratio of the nanoparticles’ sizes.

APPS: Directional binding for self-assembling materials made of different types of nanoparticles opens up opportunities to design unique materials that could benefit high-density energy storage devices and catalysis, among other applications.

The organization of spherical particles into lattices is typically driven by packing considerations...

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