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Category: chemistry – Page 2

Ultra-low power, fully biodegradable artificial synapse offers record-breaking memory

In Nature Communications, a research team affiliated with UNIST present a fully biodegradable, robust, and energy-efficient artificial synapse that holds great promise for sustainable neuromorphic technologies. Made entirely from eco-friendly materials sourced from nature—such as shells, beans, and plant fibers—this innovation could help address the growing problems of electronic waste and high energy use.

Traditional artificial synapses often struggle with high power consumption and limited lifespan. Led by Professor Hyunhyub Ko from the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, the team aimed to address these issues by designing a device that mimics the brain’s synapses while being environmentally friendly.

This Simple Chemistry Fix Could Revolutionize Flow Batteries

A new twist on bromine-based flow batteries could make large-scale energy storage cheaper, safer, and far longer-lasting. Bromine-based flow batteries store and release energy through a chemical reaction involving bromide ions and elemental bromine. This approach offers several advantages, includ

Molecules as switches for sustainable light-driven technologies

Metal nanostructures can concentrate light so strongly that they can trigger chemical reactions. The key players in this process are plasmons—collective oscillations of free electrons in the metal that confine energy to extremely small volumes. A new study published in Science Advances now shows how crucial adsorbed molecules are in determining how quickly these plasmons lose their energy.

The team led by LMU nanophysicists Dr. Andrei Stefancu and Prof. Emiliano Cortés identified two fundamentally different mechanisms of so-called chemical interface damping (CID), the plasmon damping caused by adsorbed molecules. Which mechanism dominates depends on how the electronic states of the molecule align with those of the metal surface, gold in this case—and this alignment is even reflected in the material’s electrical resistance.

Advancing Physical Understanding with Interpretable Machine Learning

A new artificial neural-network architecture opens a window into the workings of a tool previously regarded as a black box.

Thanks to the extremely large datasets and computing power that have become available in recent years, a new paradigm in scientific discovery has emerged. This new approach is purely data driven, using large amounts of data to train machine-learning models―typically neural networks―to predict the behavior of the natural world [1]. The most prominent achievement of this new methodology has arguably been the AlphaFold model for predicting protein folding (see Research News: Chemistry Nobel Awarded for an AI System That Predicts Protein Structures) [2]. But despite such successes, these data-driven approaches suffer a major drawback in that they are generally “black boxes” that offer no human-accessible understanding of how they make their predictions. This shortcoming also extends to the models’ inputs: It is often desirable to build known domain knowledge into these models, but the data-driven approach excludes that option.

Research reinvents MXene synthesis at a fraction of the cost

MXenes (pronounced like the name “Maxine”) are a class of two-dimensional materials, first identified just 14 years ago, with remarkable potential for energy storage, catalysts, ultrastrong lightweight composites, and a variety of other purposes ranging from electromagnetic shielding to ink that can carry a current.

But manufacturing MXenes has been expensive, difficult and crude.

“MXenes have been made by a very elaborate, multi-step process that involved days of high-temperature work, followed by using dangerous chemicals like hydrofluoric acid and creating a lot of waste,” said Prof. Dmitri Talapin of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and Department of Chemistry. “That may have been okay for early-stage research and lab exploration, but became a big roadblock for taking the next step to large-scale applications.”

Archimedean screw inspires new way to encode chirality into magnetic materials

In physics and materials science, the term “spin chirality” refers to an asymmetry in the arrangement of spins (i.e., the intrinsic angular momentum of particles) in magnetic materials. This asymmetry can give rise to unique electronic and magnetic behaviors that are desirable for the development of spintronics, devices that leverage the spin of electrons and electric charge to process or store information.

The creation of materials that exhibit desired spin chirality and associated physical effects on a large scale has so far proved challenging. In a recent paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids and other institutes introduced a new approach to encode chirality directly into materials by engineering their geometry at a nanoscale.

“Dirk and myself were initially inspired by the elegance of the Archimedean screw and began wondering whether we could build a magnonic analog, something that could ‘pump’ magnons (i.e., collective electron spin excitations) in a similarly directional way,” Dr. Mingran Xu, first author of the paper, told Tech Xplore.

Physicists bring unruly molecules to the quantum party

Scientists have made leaps and bounds in bending atoms to their will, making them into everything from ultraprecise clocks to bits of quantum data. Translating these quantum technologies from obedient atoms to unruly molecules could offer greater possibilities. Molecules can rotate and vibrate. That makes molecules more sensitive to certain changes in the environment, like temperature.

“If you’re sensitive to something, it can be a curse, because you would like to not be sensitive, or it can be a blessing,” said NIST physicist Dietrich Leibfried. “You can use that sensitivity to your advantage.”

But that same sensitivity has made molecules difficult to control. Recently, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) achieved new levels of control over molecules. In a study published in Physical Review Letters, they were able to manipulate a calcium hydride molecular ion—made up of one atom of hydrogen and one atom of calcium, with one electron removed to make it a charged molecule—with almost perfect success. And this control opens possibilities for quantum technology, chemical research and exploring new physics.

Silicon atom processor links 11 qubits with more than 99% fidelity

In order to scale quantum computers, more qubits must be added and interconnected. However, prior attempts to do this have resulted in a loss of connection quality, or fidelity. But, a new study published in Nature details the design of a new kind of processor that overcomes this problem. The processor, developed by the company Silicon Quantum Computing, uses silicon—the main material used in classical computers—along with phosphorus atoms to link 11 qubits.

The new design uses precision-placed phosphorus atoms in isotopically purified silicon-28, which are arranged into two multi-nuclear spin registers. One register contains four phosphorus atoms, while the other contains five, and each register shares an electron spin. The two registers are linked by electron exchange interaction, allowing for non-local connectivity across the registers and 11 linked qubits.

Because of the placement of silicon and phosphorus in the periodic table, the design is referred to as the “14|15 platform.” This 11-qubit atom processor in silicon is the largest of its kind to date, marking a major accomplishment for quantum computing.

Light-printed electrodes turn skin and clothing into sensors

Researchers in Sweden have unveiled a way to create high-performance electronic electrodes using nothing more than visible light and specially designed water-soluble monomers. This gentle, chemical-free approach lets conductive plastics form directly on surfaces ranging from glass to textiles to living skin, enabling surprisingly versatile electronic and medical applications.

A vision of chromosome organization

The DNA of eukaryotic organisms is packaged by histone proteins into chromatin. The structural organization of chromatin is tied to its function. Loosely packed, more transcriptionally active regions of chromatin are known as euchromatin, whereas highly condensed, less transcriptionally active regions are known as heterochromatin.

Despite advances in the study of chromatin structure over the past 100 years, a biochemical understanding of how basic structural motifs beget higher-order chromatin organization remains lacking.

In a new Science study, researchers present an approach that enables imaging and analysis of the structure of chromatin condensates in situ, which moves the field much closer toward defining the structural chromatin motifs that underpin its nuclear functions.

Learn more in a new Science Perspective.

Cryogenic electron tomography of condensed chromatin enables multiscale analysis of its structure.

Kaite Zhang and Vijay Ramani Authors Info & Affiliations

Continue reading “A vision of chromosome organization” | >

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