News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Using thin films -- no more than a few pieces of notebook paper thick -- of a common explosive chemical, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories studied how small-scale explosions start and grow.

* Natural compound found in catnip is at least as effective as synthetic insect repellents such as DEET * Catnip can easily be grown in a home garden and made into oil or extract * New type of deterrent targets pain receptors in insects while maintaining no impact on humans

In a paper published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, researchers from the Kleij group present a new route to prepare biobased polyesters with tuneable properties. The researchers are building upon the multifunctional structure of the terpene β-elemene: three double bonds which have distinct reactivity, allowing to selectively transform these bonds and thus tweaking the functionalities in the backbone of the polymer.

Aqueous free-radical precipitation polymerization is one of the most useful methods to prepare the uniformly sized microgels, and an understanding of the polymerization mechanism is crucial to control the structure or physicochemical properties of microgels. However, the details of the mechanism of precipitation polymerization remain unclear. Researchers clarify the formation mechanism of microgels during precipitation polymerization by evaluating structural evolution and thermoresponsiveness of developing microgels during the polymerization and by visualization of polymerization directly.

Osaka University researchers virtually screened over 200,000 pairs of molecules for use in photovoltaic cells based on a machine learning algorithm, and synthesized a device predicted to have high efficiency. This work may lead to advances in the discovery of new functional materials.

Rutgers scientists for the first time have pinpointed the sizes of microplastics from a highly urbanized estuarine and coastal system with numerous sources of fresh water, including the Hudson River and Raritan River.