Latest science news in Physics & Chemistry
Solar hydrogen production: Splitting water with UV is now at almost 100% quantum efficiency
Scientists have successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen using light and meticulously designed catalysts, and they did so at the maximum efficiency meaning there was almost no loss and...
Etching the road to a hydrogen economy using plasma jets
Hydrogen is a clean energy source that can be produced by splitting water molecules with light. However, it is currently impossible to achieve this on a large scale. In a...
Blue Angels receive first Super Hornet ahead of aircraft transition
The U.S. Navy's Blue Angels flight demonstration team received its first F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter plane this week as it transition to new equipment.
Atomic blueprint of 'molecular machine' reveals role in membrane protein installation
Van Andel Institute scientists have revealed the first known atomic structure of a "molecular machine" responsible for installing critical signaling proteins into cellular membranes.
A new device can produce electricity using shadows
Someday, shadows and light could team up to provide power. A new device exploits the contrast between bright spots and shade to create a current that can power small electronics. “We can...
Boosting energy efficiency of 2-D material electronics using topological semimetal
Driven by the ever-increasing desires of the consumer market for smaller, lighter and smarter devices, the size of consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets and laptops, have been continually shrinking...
Stretchable variable color sheet that changes color with expansion and contraction
A Toyohashi University of Technology research team has succeeded in developing a variable color sheet with a film thickness of 400 nanometers that changes color when stretched and shrunk. The...
Graphene and 2-D materials could move electronics beyond 'Moore's law'
A team of researchers based in Manchester, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and the U.S. has published a new review on a field of computer device development known as spintronics,...
Super water-repellent materials are now durable enough for the real world
Superhydrophobic surfaces repel water like nothing else. This makes them extremely useful for antimicrobial coatings, as bacteria, viruses and other pathogens cannot cling to their surfaces. However, superhydrophobic surfaces have...
Scientists create smallest semiconductor laser that works in visible range at room temperature
An international team of researchers has announced the development of the world's most compact semiconductor laser that works in the visible range at room temperature. According to the authors of...
Stepping up action on plastic pellets
Plastic is an incredibly useful material upon which much of our day-to-day life depends. The COVID-19 pandemic puts the importance of plastic in stark relief—protective personal equipment, intravenous tubes and...
Physicists hunt for room-temperature superconductors that could revolutionize the world's energy system
Waste heat is all around you. On a small scale, if your phone or laptop feels warm, that's because some of the energy powering the device is being transformed into...
Longmire Days fan festival moves online for 2020
The 2020 edition of Longmire Days -- a Wyoming fan convention dedicated to the TV show "Longmire" and the novels on which it was based -- will take place online,...
Get excited by neural networks
Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo (UTokyo-IIS), used artificial intelligence to rapidly infer the excited state of electrons in materials. This work can help material...
The nature of glass-forming liquids clarified
Glass is such a common material that you probably don't think about it much. It may surprise you to learn that researchers today still don't understand how glass forms. Figuring...
Scientists clarify aspect of thin film solid-fluid interactions
Recent correspondence in Nature Materials by a team of campus researchers answers a long-time question that experimental physicist Narayanan Menon says is "one of those things you should be able...
Research powers longer lasting rechargeable batteries
With the continuous improvement of electronics, the development of high-energy power supplies has become a key link in the future development of science and technology. However, the shortage of lithium...
The broken mirror: Can parity violation in molecules finally be measured?
Scientists have long tried to experimentally demonstrate a certain symmetry property of the weak interaction—parity violation—in molecules. So far, this has not been possible. A new interdisciplinary effort led by...
Lighting the way to porous electronics and sensors
Many common household items and devices have a coating that improves performance. For example, the thin Teflon coating on cookware helps prevent food from sticking to the surface. However, it's...
Researchers develop a sustainable method for extracting vanillin from wood processing waste
Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany have developed a new sustainable method of extracting the flavoring agent vanillin from lignin, a component of wood. Large quantities of...
Solar cells, phone displays and lighting could be transformed by nanocrystal assembly method
Smart phones, tablets and laptop displays, camera lenses, biosensing devices, integrated chips and solar photovoltaic cells are among the applications that could stand to benefit from an innovative method of...
Pinpointing the effects of nanoconfinement on water
Researchers have spent decades studying the properties of water and how they change when there are disruptions to their normal behavior. Research on the topic has a wide range of...
A new strategy for the optimal electroreduction of CO2 to high-value products
A KAIST research team presented three novel approaches for modulating local carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in gas-diffusion electrode (GDE)-based flow electrolyzers. Their study also empirically demonstrated that providing a moderate...
New method predicts spin dynamics of materials for quantum computing
Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed a theoretical foundation and new computational tools for predicting a material's spin dynamics, a key property for building solid-state quantum computing platforms and...
Australian researchers set record for carbon dioxide capture
Researchers from Monash University and the CSIRO have set a record for carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) using technology that resembles a sponge filled with tiny magnets.
The best Nintendo Switch controllers for solo or party play
Switch it up. (Jippe Joosten via Unsplash/)While PlayStation and Xbox engage in their never ending battle for graphical supremacy, Nintendo confidently goes about its business innovating the way we play and unlocking the...
George Floyd: D.C. protesters push past 7 p.m. curfew
Demonstrators in Washington, D.C., continued protests sparked by the police-involved killing of George Floyd as a curfew set for 7 p.m. passed Tuesday.
Scientists engineer human cells with squid-like transparency
Scientists described how they drew inspiration from cephalopod skin to endow mammalian cells with tunable transparency and light-scattering characteristics.