News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Researchers at Berkeley Lab have 3D-printed an all-liquid "lab on a chip" that, with the click of a button, can be repeatedly reconfigured on demand to serve a wide range of applications - from making battery materials to screening drug candidates.

The human eye is particularly sensitive to green, but less sensitive to blue and red. Chemists led by Hubert Huppertz at the University of Innsbruck have now developed a new red phosphor whose light is well perceived by the eye. This increases the light yield of white LEDs by around one-sixth, which can significantly improve the energy efficiency of lighting systems.

Polymers that change their appearance in response to mechanical forces can warn of damage developing in a material before the stress causes structural failure. Researchers now report in ACS Central Science that they've developed a first-of-its-kind elastic polymer blend that displays white fluorescence when deformed and then goes dark after relaxing back to its original shape.

Researchers at the University of Fribourg's Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI) and Hokkaido University in Japan have developed a method to tailor the properties of stress-indicating molecules that can be integrated into polymers and signal damages or excessive mechanical loads with an optical signal.

An international team of scientists from the National University of Science and Technology 'MISIS' (NUST MISIS), Tianjin University (China), as well as from Japan and the United States has developed new energy-efficient iron-based alloys which combine high mechanical and magnetic properties with low cost and open up new opportunities for industry. The research results are published in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds.

An MIT research team that has already conquered the problem of getting ketchup out of its bottle has now tackled a new category of consumer and manufacturing woe: how to get much thicker materials to slide without sticking or deforming.

Superinjection, the effect used in lasers and LEDs creation can work in 'pure' semiconductors, which was previously considered impossible. This opens up new prospects for designing highly efficient blue, violet, ultraviolet, and white LEDs, as well as light sources for optical wireless communication (Li-Fi), new types of lasers, transmitters for the quantum internet, and optical devices for early disease diagnostics.