News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

To seamlessly integrate electronics with the natural world, materials are needed that are both stretchable and degradable -- for example, flexible medical devices that conform to the surfaces of internal organs, but that dissolve and disappear when no longer needed. However, introducing these properties to electronics has been challenging. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have developed stretchable, degradable semiconductors that could someday find applications in health and environmental monitoring.

New research in the journal Carbon reveals that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a coating can both repel and hold water in place, a useful property for applications like printing, spectroscopy, water transport, or harvesting surfaces. When water is dropped on a CNT forest, the CNTs repel the water, and it forms a sphere. However, when flipped over, the drop does not fall to the ground but rather clings to the surface.

Researchers from Nuremberg and Erlangen has set a new record for the power conversion efficiency of organic photovoltaic modules. The scientists from Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, the Bavarian Center for Applied Energy Research, and the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy, a branch of Forschungszentrum Jülich, in cooperation with the South China University of Technology, designed an OPV module with an efficiency of 12.6% over an area of 26 square centimeters.

Researchers at Linköping University and RISE, Campus Norrköping, have shown for the first time that it is possible to print complete integrated circuits with more than 100 organic electrochemical transistors. The result has been published in Nature Communications.

A group of scientists led by Artem Oganov, Professor at Skoltech and MIPT, and Dr. Ivan Troyan at the Institute of Crystallography of RAS have succeeded in synthesizing thorium decahydride (ThH10), a new superconducting material with a very high critical temperature (161 K). The results of their study supported by a Russian Science Foundation (RSF) grant were published in the journal Materials Today.

A group of scientists led by Artem Oganov of Skoltech and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and Ivan Troyan of the Institute of Crystallography of RAS has succeeded in synthesizing thorium decahydride (ThH10), a new superconducting material with the very high critical temperature of 161 kelvins.

Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering are searching for alternative materials to silicon with semiconducting properties that could form the basis for an alternative chip. Yuanyue Liu, an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at UT Austin believes 2D antimony could be that material.