A material designed by MIT chemical engineers can react with carbon dioxide from the air, to grow, strengthen, and even repair itself. The polymer, which might someday be used as construction or repair material or for protective coatings, continuously...
It is now possible to create complex, custom-designed transmembrane proteins from scratch, scientists report this week. The advance, led by molecular engineers at the University of Washington Institute for Protein Design, will enable researchers to create transmembrane proteins not...
In considering materials that could become the fabrics of the future, scientists have largely dismissed one widely available option: polyethylene.
The stuff of plastic wrap and grocery bags, polyethylene is thin and lightweight, and could keep you cooler than most...
Scientists have created the first completely artificial protein switch that can work inside living cells to modify—or even commandeer—the cell's complex internal circuitry.
The switch is dubbed LOCKR, short for Latching, Orthogonal Cage/Key pRotein.
Companion papers published July 24 in the...
Northwestern University researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind technique for creating entirely new classes of optical materials and devices that could lead to light bending and cloaking devices -- news to make the ears of Star Trek's Spock perk up.
Using...
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have new experimental evidence and a predictive theory that solves a long-standing materials science mystery: why certain crystalline materials shrink when heated. Their work, just published in Science Advances, could...
Chinese scientists have turned copper–iodine cluster molecules into aggregated, highly luminescent nanostructures for use in light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The solid-state assemblies made of complexes of the copper–iodine cluster with phosphor–organic compounds as ligands are easily prepared, cheap, and can...
A new technique created by Brian Shao, Alex Bagdasarian, Stasik Popov and Hosea Nelson (from left) allows complex molecules to be assembled in fewer steps than previously possible.
Credit: Penny Jennings
When scientists develop the chemical formulas for new products such...
Credit: NanoPhotonics Cambridge/Bart deNijs
For centuries, scientists believed that light, like all waves, couldn't be focused down smaller than its wavelength, just under a millionth of a metre. Now, researchers led by the University of Cambridge have created the world's...
Researchers have developed a powerful, low-cost method for recycling used cooking oil and agricultural waste into biodiesel, and turning food scraps and plastic rubbish into high-value products.
The method harnesses a new type of ultra-efficient catalyst that can make low-carbon biodiesel...
University of Birmingham scientists are paving the way to swap the lithium in lithium-ion batteries with sodium, according to research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Lithium-ion batteries (LIB) are rechargeable and are widely used in laptops,...
