In the past few years, monolayer and multilayer silicenes have been successfully grown on various metal substrates. Unfortunately, silicene on metal substrate generally exhibits metallic or semi-metallic character without a bandgap, and thus cannot be used as adsorption layer of photovoltaic materials. A new comprehensive investigation of multilayer silicene by means of ab initio swarm-intelligence structure-searching method...
Oct 15, 2018
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A new study on worldwide graphene production shows unequivocally that the quality of the graphene produced in the world today is rather poor, not optimal for most applications, and most companies are producing graphite microplatelets. This is possibly the main reason for the slow development of graphene applications, which usually require a customized solution in terms of graphene properties. A conclusion that sounds even...
Oct 09, 2018
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For the most part, advances in energy storage will rely on the continuing development of materials science, pushing the limits of performance of existing battery materials and developing entirely new battery structures and compositions. The battery industry is already working to reduce the cost of lithium-ion batteries, including by removing expensive cobalt from their positive electrodes. Researchers also are looking at the...
Oct 04, 2018
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Researchers have developed a new type of optical manipulation method to achieve versatile manipulation of objects with different sizes and types using optical heating. In this new technique, nanoparticles get trapped at temperature hot spots instead of electrical hot spots, which demonstrates a different working mechanism and approach from the traditional optical manipulation techniques. Due to this unique working principle,...
Oct 03, 2018
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Investigating the potential of DNA to form self-assembled injectable hydrogels via physical crosslinking with silicate nanodisks, researchers have utilized DNA as a high molecular weight polymeric chain in order to form hydrogel networks for tissue regeneration and drug delivery applications. They have designed shear thinning hydrogels, which can be passed through a 22-gauge syringe by taking advantage of the native chemical...
Sep 24, 2018
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Nanomaterials can improve the properties of food contact materials. Innovations of this kind are of particular interest for food packaging made out of plastic materials. The purpose of their use is to improve food storage and so to guarantee both freshness and quality. A further goal is to improve the technical properties of materials in order to make them sturdier more resistant to abrasion, and easier to process. With regard...
Sep 20, 2018
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Development of an effective approach for delivering a new drug is as important as inventing a new drug. Even if a developed new drug has excellent pharmacokinetic and therapeutic properties, it shows its potential activity in the body effectively only when it is exactly targeted to specific molecules. Various nanotechnological approaches for effective drug delivery have been developed and some of them have already been successfully...
Sep 18, 2018
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Researchers have developed a way to achieve an ultra-high bioelectric signal from human embryonic stem cells using direct current-voltage measurements facilitated by few-layered 2D molybdenum disulfide sheets. This method, which produces cell signals 2 orders of magnitude higher than previous electrical-based detection methods, paves the way for the development of a broadly applicable, fast, and damage-free stem cell detection...
Sep 17, 2018
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Black phosphorus (BP or phosphorene), a novel two-dimensional semiconducting material, has gained tremendous attention because of its intriguing properties, such as ON/OFF ratio, high carrier mobility, and tunable direct band. However, a fundamental obstacle hindering practical applications is the lack of stability under ambient conditions. Now researchers demonstrated both excellent photoelectrochemical performance and significantly...
Sep 13, 2018
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