News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Researchers at Purdue University and the University of Virginia have developed a new fabrication method that makes tiny, thin-film electronic circuits peelable from a surface. The technique not only eliminates several manufacturing steps and the associated costs, but also allows any object to sense its environment or be controlled through the application of a high-tech sticker.

Defects are often observed when making borophene, the single-atom form of boron, but unlike in other two-dimensional materials, these mismatched lattices can assemble into ordered structures that preserve the material's metallic nature and electronic properties. Labs at Rice and Northwestern universities made the first detailed analysis of borophene defects.

Researchers led by a University of California San Diego team have published work in the journal Nature Energy that explains what's causing the performance-reducing 'voltage fade' that currently plagues a promising class of cathode materials called Lithium-rich NMC (nickel magnesium cobalt) layered oxides.

ASU professor Hao Yan and his colleagues have designed a range of nanostructures resembling marine diatoms -- tiny unicellular creatures. To achieve this, they borrow techniques used by naturally-occurring diatoms to deposit layers of silica -- the primary constituent in glass -- in order to grow their intricate shells. Using a technique known as DNA origami, the group designed nanoscale platforms of various shapes to which particles of silica, drawn by electrical charge, could stick.

Dr. LI Jiafang, from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has recently formed an international team to apply kirigami techniques to advanced 3D nanofabrication.

Researchers at the US Army Research Laboratory and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University developed a new technique to quickly teach robots novel traversal behaviors with minimal human oversight.

Researchers have shown that clusters of boron and lanthanide atoms form interesting 'inverse sandwich' structures that could be useful as molecular magnets.

For decades, Texas A&M University chemist Dr. John A. Gladysz has been mixing metals and carbon to create novel molecules, from the world's longest molecular wires to microscopic gyroscopes controllable by cage size, molecular access and even progress toward unidirectional rotation via external electrical field manipulation.

Osaka University-centered researchers created extremely dense, random SWNT/POM network molecular neuromorphic devices, generating spontaneous spikes similar to nerve impulses of neurons. They conducted simulation calculations of the random molecular network model complexed with POM molecules, which are able to store electric charges, replicating spikes generated from the random molecular network. They also demonstrated that this molecular model would very likely become a component of reservoir computing devices. Reservoir computing is anticipated as next-generation artificial intelligence.