Bane and boon of oxygen mediating the performance of nickel catalysts in dry reforming of methane

Fundamental insights into the processes occurring at the catalyst surface

22-Jan-2024 - Catalysis is one of the key technologies in the chemical industry and has a wide-reaching impact on various aspects of our daily lives, including plastics manufacturing, drug synthesis, and production of both fertilizers and fuels. It is estimated that over 90% of chemical products are nowadays ...

Researchers from Poland, France and Italy are honored for their work in cell biology, biomineralization and photonics

WITec Paper Award 2023 Recognizes Outstanding Publications

31-Jul-2023 - The WITec Paper Awards 2023 have been presented to scientists from Poland, France and Italy for their work in cell biology, biomineralization and the development of photonic devices, respectively. The competition recognizes three scientific publications per year that contain results acquired with ...

How an African bird might inspire a better water bottle

An extreme closeup of feathers from a bird with an uncanny ability to hold water while it flies could inspire the next generation of absorbent materials

18-Apr-2023 - With high resolution microscopes and 3D technology, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology captured an unprecedented view of feathers from the desert-dwelling sandgrouse, showcasing the singular architecture of their feathers and revealing for the first ...

Nanoplastics can move up the food chain from plants to insects and from insects to fish

Novel, metallic fingerprint-based technique to detect and measure nanoplastics in organisms

14-Sep-2022 - A new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows that lettuce can take up nanoplastics from the soil and transfer them into the food chain. The concern about plastic pollution has become widespread after it was realised that mismanaged plastics in the environment break down into smaller ...

'Tickling' an atom to investigate the behavior of materials

09-Mar-2020 - Scientists and engineers working at the frontier of nanotechnology face huge challenges. When the position of a single atom in a material may change the fundamental properties of that material, scientists need something in their toolbox to measure how that atom will behave. A research team led by ...

Machine learning technique speeds up crystal structure determination

04-Feb-2020 - Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a computer-based method that could make it less labor-intensive to determine the crystal structures of various materials and molecules, including alloys, proteins and pharmaceuticals. The method uses a machine learning ...

Quick and reliable 3-D imaging of curvilinear nanostructures

08-Sep-2017 - Physical and biological sciences increasingly require the ability to observe nano-sized objects. This can be accomplished with transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which is generally limited to 2D images. Using TEM to reconstruct 3D images instead usually requires tilting the sample through an ...

Microscopy Today Innovation Award for ZEISS microscope

07-Aug-2015 - ZEISS MultiSEM 505 has been selected by a team of judges from Microscopy Today magazine as a recipient of the 2015 Microscopy Today Innovation Award.As the first multiple-beam scanning electron microscope (SEM) in the world, the system uses 61 beams simultaneously, and offers a capture speed of ...

“Multi-spectra glasses” for scanning electron microscopy

30-Sep-2014 - The scanning electron microscope is not only used for precisely surveying the surface topology of samples, but also for determining their chemical compositions. This is done by exciting the atoms to fluoresce under irradiation by an electron beam while scanning the sample. This secondary emission ...

Scientists home in on lithium battery safety flaws

18-May-2010 - Scientists at Cambridge have developed a simple, accurate way of "seeing" chemistry in action inside a lithium-ion battery. By helping them understand how these batteries behave under different conditions the new method – which involves Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy – could help ...