Circa 2016
By using heat and temperature to modify the orientation of atoms, scientists have created a spongy, ultrastrong material that is lighter than a zip-close bag.
Category: materials – Page 243
Scientists Create a Material That Makes Salty Water Safe to Drink in Minutes
Technology that can convert salty seawater or brackish water into safe, clean drinking water has the potential to transform millions of lives across the globe, which is why so many scientists are busy working on projects to do just that.
Now, a new innovation developed by scientists in Australia could be the most promising one yet, with researchers using metal-organic framework compounds (or MOFs) together with sunlight to purify water in just half an hour, using a process that’s more efficient than existing techniques.
It’s cheap, it’s stable, it’s reusable, and it produces water that meets the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for desalination. Around 139.5 litres (nearly 37 gallons) of clean water can be produced per day from a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of MOF material, based on early testing.
Hubble Finds Cause for Betelgeuse’s Mysterious Dimming – Is Aging Red Supergiant About to Supernova?
Hubble Finds That Betelgeuse’s Mysterious Dimming Is Due to a Traumatic Outburst
Observations by NASA ’s Hubble Space Telescope are showing that the unexpected dimming of the supergiant star Betelgeuse was most likely caused by an immense amount of hot material ejected into space, forming a dust cloud that blocked starlight coming from Betelgeuse’s surface.
Hubble researchers suggest that the dust cloud formed when superhot plasma unleashed from an upwelling of a large convection cell on the star’s surface passed through the hot atmosphere to the colder outer layers, where it cooled and formed dust grains. The resulting dust cloud blocked light from about a quarter of the star’s surface, beginning in late 2019. By April 2020, the star returned to normal brightness.
A highly light-absorbent and tunable material
Novel two-dimensional materials are currently a hot research topic around the world. Of special interest are van der Waals heterostructures, which are made up of individual layers of different materials held together by van der Waals forces. The interactions between the different layers can give the resulting material entirely new properties.
Double layer unlocks crucial properties
There are already van der Waals heterostructures that absorb up to 100 percent of light. Single-layers of molybdenum disulfide offer absorption capacities in this range. When light is absorbed, an electron vacates its original position in the valence band, leaving behind a positively charged hole. The electron moves to a higher energy level, known as the conduction band, where it can move freely.
Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung volcano erupts twice in three days
MEDAN, Indonesia — Indonesia’s rumbling Mount Sinabung erupted Monday, sending a column of volcanic materials as high as 16,400 feet into the sky and depositing ash on villages.
It is the second eruption since Saturday after the volcano sat dormant for more than a year.
Falling grit and ash accumulated up to 2 inches in already abandoned villages on the volcano’s slopes, said Armen Putra, an official at the Sinabung monitoring post on Sumatra Island.
Storing energy in red bricks
Imagine plugging in to your brick house.
Red bricks—some of the world’s cheapest and most familiar building materials—can be converted into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, like a battery, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.
Brick has been used in walls and buildings for thousands of years, but rarely has been found fit for any other use. Now, chemists in Arts & Sciences have developed a method to make or modify “smart bricks” that can store energy until required for powering devices. A proof-of-concept published Aug. 11 in Nature Communications shows a brick directly powering a green LED light.
Physicists accelerate the hunt for revolutionary artificial atomic materials
Scientists at the University of Bath have taken an important step towards understanding the interaction between layers of atomically thin materials arranged in stacks. They hope their research will speed up the discovery of new, artificial materials, leading to the design of electronic components that are far tinier and more efficient than anything known today.
Smaller is always better in the world of electronic circuitry, but there’s a limit to how far you can shrink a silicon component without it overheating and falling apart, and we’re close to reaching it. The researchers are investigating a group of atomically thin materials that can be assembled into stacks. The properties of any final material depend both on the choice of raw materials and on the angle at which one layer is arranged on top of another.
Dr. Marcin Mucha-Kruczynski who led the research from the Department of Physics, said: “We’ve found a way to determine how strongly atoms in different layers of a stack are coupled to each other, and we’ve demonstrated the application of our idea to a structure made of graphene layers.”
Discovery of massless electrons in phase-change materials provides next step for future electronics
Researchers have found electrons that behave as if they have no mass, called Dirac electrons, in a compound used in rewritable discs, such as CDs and DVDs. The discovery of ‘massless’ electrons in this phase-change material could lead to faster electronic devices.
The international team published their results on July 6 in ACS Nano, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
The compound, GeSb2Te4, is a phase-change material, meaning its atomic structure shifts from amorphous to crystalline under heat. Each structure has individual properties and is reversible, making the compound an ideal material to use in electronic devices where information can be written and rewritten several times.
Unusual Sound Waves Induced Using Laser Pulses – 140 Years After Alexander Graham Bell Reported That Light Can Be Converted Into Sound Waves
Ultrashort laser pulses induce unusual sound waves via a structural instability in a material.
RIKEN physicists have initiated unusual sound waves in a flake using ultrashort pulses of laser light and then created videos of their movement using electron microscopy. This advance should help engineers to achieve higher precision control of heat flow and sound in nanodevices using light.
