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    Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    The Salt of the Comet

    January 22, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    A plume of dust from Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, seen by the OSIRIS Wide Angle Camera on ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft on 3 July 2016. The shadow of the plume is cast across the basin, which is in the Imhotep region. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

    More than 30 years ago, the European comet mission Giotto flew past Halley’s comet. The Bernese ion mass spectrometer IMS, led by Prof. em. Hans Balsiger, was on board. A key finding from the measurements taken by this instrument was that there appeared to be a lack of nitrogen in Halley’s coma – the nebulous covering of comets which forms when a comet passes close to the sun...

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    Well-designed Substrates make Large Single Crystal Bi-/Tri-Layer Graphene Possible

    January 22, 2020, Categories  Technology/Electronics, Chemistry/Nanotechnology, Physics

    Figure 1. Preparation and characterization of Cu/Ni(111) foils.
    Preparation and characterization of Cu/Ni(111) foils. (a) Schematic of the preparation of the Cu/Ni(111) foils shows that Ni films are electroplated on both sides of a Cu(111) foil, which is followed by heating in a chemical vapor deposition chamber at 1050 oC for 5-7 hours to obtain the Cu/Ni(111) foil. By controlling the concentration of nickel (Ni), IBS researchers could obtain bilayer and trilayer graphene with the desired stacking order and large area. (b) A photograph of a piece of Cu/Ni(111) alloy foil (3 cm × 5 cm in size). (c) X-ray pattern taken from different regions across the whole sample (3 cm × 5 cm). (d) Electron backscatter diffraction map indicating the uniform (111) orientation of the prepared Cu foils.

    IBS researchers fabricate single crystal copper nickel alloy...

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    Photoelectrochemical Water-Splitting Efficiency hits 4.5%

    January 22, 2020, Categories  Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    Cu2O photocathodes with Band-tail States Assisited Hole Transport for Standalone Solar Water Splitting. Nature Communications 16 January 2020. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13987-5

    Solar-to-fuel conversion offers a promising technology to solve energy problems, yet device performance could be limited by undesired sunlight absorption. Researchers show copper thiocyanate can assist hole transport in oxide photoelectrodes and enable a 4.55% solar-to-hydrogen efficiency in tandem devices.

    Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting for hydrogen fuel generation has been considered the Holy Grail of electrochemistry. But to achieve it, many scientists believe the materials have to be abundant and low cost.

    The most promising oxide photocathodes are cuprous oxide (Cu2O) photoelectrodes...

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    ESA opens Oxygen Plant, making Air Out of Moondust

    January 22, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    Oxygen and metal from lunar regolith
    Oxygen and metal from lunar regolith

    ESA’s technical heart has begun to produce oxygen out of simulated moondust. A prototype oxygen plant has been set up in the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, based in Noordwijk in the Netherlands.

    “Having our own facility allows us to focus on oxygen production, measuring it with a mass spectrometer as it is extracted from the regolith simulant,” comments Beth Lomax of the University of Glasgow, whose Ph.D. work is being supported through ESA’s Networking and Partnering Initiative, harnessing advanced academic research for space applications.

    “Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both...

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