Images above] Credit: NIST
ENERGY
Researchers improve water splitting reaction for green hydrogen gas production
Researchers from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology designed an electrode with a Schottky junction formed at the interface of metallic Ni-W5N4 and semiconducting NiFeOOH. The proposed electrode shows excellent catalytic activity and can facilitate industrial seawater splitting continuously for 10 days.
Preventing hydrogen vehicle aging during sudden stops
Researchers at Pohang University of Science & Technology enhanced hydrogen fuel cell durability using a tungsten oxide coating. Under normal operational circumstances, the coating maintains electrical conductivity, but it selectively obstructs current flow exclusively during start-up/shut-down conditions.
Shedding light on unique conduction mechanisms in a new type of perovskite oxide
Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology unveiled the unique ion-transport mechanisms in hexagonal perovskite-related oxide Ba7Nb3.8Mo1.2O20.1. This finding will hopefully pave the way for better dual-ion conductors, which could play an essential role in tomorrow’s clean energy technologies.
BIOMATERIALS
Antibacterial coating for internal medical devices
Researchers at Colorado State University and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland developed an effective and flexible antimicrobial material that could be used to coat medical devices placed inside the body. The work combines previous research from both universities into metal-organic frameworks.
Nanoparticles for optimized cancer therapy
Researchers from Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, the University Medical Center Göttingen, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology developed a method based on nanoparticles to treat pancreatic carcinomas with more accuracy and with fewer side effects than current cancer therapies.
ENVIRONMENT
State-of-the-art nanomaterial enabling ecofriendly removal of fine dust precursors
Researchers at Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology developed a ceramic nanocomposite composed of sodium-manganese oxides that chemically absorbs SOx and NOx while immediately mineralizing them into sulfate ions and nitrite ions.
OTHER STORIES
Photo-induced superconductivity on a chip
Researchers at Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter showed that a previously demonstrated ability to turn on superconductivity with a laser beam can be integrated on a chip.
Atomic dance gives rise to a magnet
Rice University researchers found that when the atomic lattice in a rare earth crystal becomes animated with a corkscrew-shaped vibration known as a chiral phonon, the crystal is transformed into a magnet.
New laser setup probes metamaterial structures with ultrafast pulses
Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers developed a new analysis technique that probes metamaterials with a system of two lasers. One laser quickly zaps a structure and the other measures the ways in which the structure vibrates in response.
A ‘gold standard’ for computational materials science codes
Paul Scherrer Institute researchers carried out the most comprehensive verification effort so far on solid-state density functional theory codes, providing their colleagues with the tools and a set of guidelines for assessing and improving existing and future codes.
Accelerating the phase identification of multiphase mixtures with deep learning
Researchers proposed a new machine learning “binary classifier” model that can identify the presence of icosahedral quasicrystal (i-QC) phases from multiphase powder X-ray diffraction patterns. i-QC phases are a kind of long-range ordered solids that have self-similarity in their diffraction patterns.
Study finds bigger datasets might not always be better for AI models
A new study by University of Toronto researchers suggests that one of the fundamental assumptions of deep learning models—that they require enormous amounts of training data—may not be as solid as once thought.