Lifeboat Foundation

New electrocatalysis electrodes have been created that are simpler and cheaper than conventional ones, and can substantially increase the efficiency of water splitting. Decorated with chiral molecules like helicenes, these devices double the activity of the oxygen evolution reaction, the bottleneck of the process, and improve its selectivity.

‘With electrocatalysis, we [can] use electrons from renewable sources [like solar and wind] to produce clean chemicals and fuels,’ explains Magalí Lingenfelder from the Max Planck–EPFL laboratory for molecular nanoscience and technology, in Switzerland, who led the study. In this work, her team focused on the oxygen evolution reaction. ‘It’s the bottleneck of water splitting,’ she says. ‘We wanted to increase its performance with cheap, simple solutions.’

It’s a basic rule of chemistry and physics: when you heat things up, they get bigger. While there are exceptions (like water and ice), it’s difficult to find a material with zero thermal expansion.

But new research from the University of New South Wales and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation has found a compound that doesn’t thermally expand – at least, not between −269°C and 1126°C.

The researchers examined a substance made from scandium, aluminium, tungsten and oxygen (Sc_1.5 Al_0.5 W₃ O₁₂), bonded together in a crystalline structure.

Circa 2021 force field this can also shield the earth or cities.

The computational design of functional materials relies heavily on large-scale atomistic simulations. Such simulations are often problematic for conventional classical force fields, which require tedious and time-consuming parameterization of interaction parameters. The problem can be solved using a quantum mechanically derived force field (QMDFF)—a system-specific force field derived directly from the first-principles calculations. We present a computational approach for atomistic simulations of complex molecular systems, which include the treatment of chemical reactions with the empirical valence bond approach. The accuracy of the QMDFF is verified by comparison with the experimental properties of liquid solvents.

In a new paper in PNAS, “Triplet-Pair Spin Signatures From Macroscopically Aligned Heteroacenes in an Oriented Single Crystal,” National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers Brandon Rugg, Brian Fluegel, Christopher Chang, and Justin Johnson tackle one of the fundamental problems in quantum information science: how to produce pure elements of quantum information—that is, those that start and remain in a well-defined “spin state”—at practical temperatures.

Quantum information science has the potential to revolutionize computation, sensing, and communications. But many of these applications are still beyond reach because of the challenges of producing units of quantum information, or qubits, without relying on extremely low temperatures to maintain their purity. Current approaches to identifying suitable quantum materials tend to rely on trial and error.

“The field of developing new molecules and materials [for quantum information science] sometimes progresses through ad hoc methods and serendipity. ‘This material just so happens to work better than the other one’—we saw a lot of that happening, and decided ultimately that it was not going to suffice for a project where the goal was to limit the set of possible options,” said Justin Johnson, a researcher in NREL’s Chemistry and Nanoscience Center. “We wanted to have the theory provide us with firm guidelines about what should happen.”

Australian scientists say they’ve made a “eureka moment” breakthrough in gas separation and storage that could radically reduce energy use in the petrochemical industry, while making hydrogen much easier and safer to store and transport in a powder.

Nanotechnology researchers, based at Deakin University’s Institute for Frontier Materials, claim to have found a super-efficient way to mechanochemically trap and hold gases in powders, with potentially enormous and wide-ranging industrial implications.

Mechanochemistry is a relatively recently coined term, referring to chemical reactions that are triggered by mechanical forces as opposed to heat, light, or electric potential differences. In this case, the mechanical force is supplied by ball milling – a low-energy grinding process in which a cylinder containing steel balls is rotated such that the balls roll up the side, then drop back down again, crushing and rolling over the material inside.

A recent study from the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and published in Wa | Chemistry And Physics.

This study is intriguing since one of the results of climate change is increasing water temperatures, so removing phosphorus from such waters will prove invaluable in the future, with this study appropriately being referred to as a “future-proof” method.

Continue reading “New ‘future-proof’ method could remove phosphorus from wastewater using bacteria” »

Scientists have tested a natural chemical that could heal wounds twice as fast.

So precise.

If chemists built cars, they’d fill a factory with car parts, set it on fire, and sift from the ashes pieces that now looked vaguely car-like.

When you’re dealing with car-parts the size of atoms, this is a perfectly reasonable process. Yet chemists yearn for ways to reduce the waste and make reactions far more precise.

Continue reading “Chemists Just Rearranged Atomic Bonds in a Single Molecule For The First Time” »