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Recently, a research group led by Prof. Peng Tong from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), significantly improved the negative thermal expansion (NTE) effect of Cu₂P₂O₇, a new but excellent NTE material, and prepared a zero thermal expansion (ZTE) Cu₂P₂O₇/2024Al composite with high specific thermal conductivity and good machinability.

The research results were published in Journal of Materials Science & Technology and Ceramics International.

With the advancement of high-tech fields, it is not possible to adjust the dimensions of precision equipment. However, thermal expansion with temperature is a fundamental property of many regularly used materials that is difficult to control. Combining NTE materials with ordinary positive thermal expansion materials is an efficient way to produce ZTE materials.

Right in time for spooky season, scientists have discovered the existence of something called the “demon” particle. While the name of the material may strike terror in some, its discovery is actually far less sinister. Hidden from researchers for over seven decades, the “composite” of electrons was recently discovered according to a new study published in Nature.

“Demons have been theoretically conjectured for a long time, but experimentalists never studied them,” paper senior author Peter Abbamonte said in the study. “In fact, we weren’t even looking for it. But it turned out we were doing exactly the right thing, and we found it.”

From VC Elements—bridging the gap between global trends shaping our future, and the raw materials powering them ⚡️.

Coal is Still King

Coal still leads the charge when it comes to electricity, representing 35.4% of global power generation in 2022, followed by natural gas at 22.7%, and hydroelectric at 14.9%.

Apple’s iPhone 15 launched at the company’s fall event today, and I got to spend some time with the new smartphone. It didn’t get the flashy new titanium of the iPhone 15 Pro that Brian checked out, but it does have a new design that includes softer, more rounded edges and the introduction the Dynamic Island to a non-Pro phone for the first time.

The iPhone 15 is actually very impressive in the looks department. Apple went into details about all the material science magic it put into the new colored glass and anodized aluminum used in the cases during its presentation. The ultimate effect, and all most people need to care about, is that they look really good, like candy-colored confections in muted but fun tones.

If you could quickly predict the reactivity of a material in different scenarios using only its atomic-level geometry, you’d hold the golden ticket to finding application-specific catalytic materials. Some methods exist for making these predictions, but they require detailed knowledge about the arrangement of the atoms and are computationally expensive to perform and thus slow to run. Now Evan Miu and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a method that requires only information about the connectivity of the atoms, is computationally cheap, and is quick to run [1]. Their method accurately predicts how metal oxides interact with hydrogen in a reaction important to energy storage and catalysis.

Miu and the team hypothesized that they could predict a material’s reactivity using a single number that describes the so-called global connectivity of the system’s atoms. A material with a high global connectivity contains atoms that are, on average, bonded to more of their neighbors than does a system with a low value of this parameter. The researchers have used a similar concept to study reactivity for metal catalysts, but not for more complex structures, such as metal oxides.

To test their idea, the researchers examined—in different metal oxides—so-called hydrogen intercalation, a type of redox reaction that alters the host material’s properties. They found that they could use each oxide’s global connectivity to determine the strength of its hydrogen reactivity. The model-determined values for the various hydrogen-binding energies agree with experimental data and took mere seconds to obtain. The tool could thus allow scientists to rapidly develop and optimize novel materials to use in energy-storage applications.

BARDA is part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The NTxscribe platform is a cell-free, continuous flow manufacturing system that reportedly delivers scalable RNA (including mRNA and self-amplifying RNA) materials in a tabletop footprint. This enzymatic process is designed to provide a low cost and rapidly deployable, vertically integrated manufacturing system, according to Jamie Coffin, PhD, CEO of NTx. Through this program, the system is being evaluated for its express development of RNA vaccines and therapeutics for infectious diseases, as well as its capability for distributed biomanufacturing.

“The traditional batch processes for developing vaccines and other biologics are burdensome and cannot be scaled quickly in the event of an emergency,” said Coffin. “Over the course of this project, we will aim to prove that NTxscribe can help BARDA meet its goals toward decentralized and rapidly deployable vaccine manufacturing.”

There are several perfectly good reasons why water isn’t a popular medium for calligraphers to write in. Constantly shifting and swirling, it doesn’t take long for ink to diffuse and flow out of formation.

An ingenious ‘pen’ developed by the researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, could give artists a whole new medium to work with.

The new device is a tiny, 50 micron-wide bead made of a special material that exchanges ions in the liquid, creating zones of relatively low pH. Traces of particles suspended in the water are then drawn to the acidic solution. Drawing out that zone can create persistent, ‘written’ lines.

Prepare to be awestruck by the incredible technological advancements on the horizon! Explore the mind-blowing innovations coming in the next 10 years.
#brightside.

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Year 2022 femtosecond logic gates for computers once thought to be almost a myth only for 2099 dreams is now real.

Light-field control of real and virtual charge carriers in a gold–graphene–gold heterostructure is demonstrated, and used to create a logic gate for application in lightwave electronics.