Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

A new material called ‘Digory’ has been developed, which can be processed in 3D printers and is extremely similar to ivory. It can be used to restore old ivory artefacts. For centuries, ivory was often used to make art objects. But to protect elephant populations, the ivory trade was banned internationally in 1989. To restore ivory parts of old art objects, one must therefore resort to substitute materials — such as bones, shells or plastic. However, there has not been a really satisfactory solution so far.

TU Wien (Vienna) and the 3D printing company Cubicure GmbH, created as a spin-off of TU Wien, have now developed a high-tech substitute in cooperation with the Archdiocese of Vienna’s Department for the Care of Art and Monu...

Scientists develop biofuel cells that can power wearable electronics purely by using human sweat. Wearable electronic devices and biosensors are great tools for health monitoring, but it has been difficult to find convenient power sources for them. Now, a group of scientists has successfully developed and tested a wearable biofuel cell array that generates electric power from the lactate in the wearer’s sweat, opening doors to electronic health monitoring powered by nothing but bodily fluids.

It cannot be denied that, over the past few decades, the miniaturization of electronic devices has taken huge strides...

The findings pave the way for development of more efficient, next-gen LEDs covering the entire visible spectrum. Researchers have developed a new multifaceted method that can directly observe compositional fluctuations in indium gallium nitride, a semiconductor material used in LEDs. The method can be adapted and applied in other materials science studies to investigate compositional fluctuations.

Researchers from the Low Energy Electronic Systems (LEES) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, togeth...

Researchers have been exploring the use of low-cost materials to create rechargeable batteries that will make energy storage more affordable. Now, they have shown that a new technique incorporating aluminum results in rechargeable batteries that offer up to 10,000 error-free cycles.

The cost of harvesting solar energy has dropped so much in recent years that it’s giving traditional energy sources a run for their money...