Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: Researchers developed a brain-inspired AI technique using neural networks to model the challenging quantum states of molecules, crucial for technologies like solar panels and photocatalyst.

This new approach significantly improves accuracy, enabling better prediction of molecular behaviors during energy transitions. By enhancing our understanding of molecular excited states, this research could revolutionize material prototyping and chemical synthesis.

A team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently made an unprecedented observation of how promethium, a rare element, forms chemical bonds in aqueous solutions.

This groundbreaking discovery was made using the Beamline for Materials Measurement (BMM), a beamline funded and operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, at the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a DOE Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Recently, two-dimensional (2D) materials have gained immense attention, as they are promising in various application fields, such as energy storage, thermal management, photodetectors, catalysis, field-effect transistors, and photovoltaic modules. These merits of 2D materials are attributed to their unique structure and properties. Chirality is an intrinsic property of a substance, which means the substance can not overlap with its mirror image. Significant progress has been made in chiral science, for chirality uniquely influences a chiral substance’s performance. With the rapid development of chiral science, it became unveiled that chirality not only exists in chiral organic molecules but can also be induced in 2D inorganic materials and 2D organic-inorganic hybrid materials by breaking the chiral symmetry within their framework to form 2D chiral materials. Compared with 2D materials that do not have chirality, these 2D inorganic chiral materials and 2D organic-inorganic hybrid chiral materials exhibit innovative performance due to chiral symmetry breaking. Nevertheless, at present, only a fraction of work is available which comprehensively sums up the progress of these promising 2D chiral materials. Thus, given their high potential, it is urgent to summarize these newly developed 2D chiral materials comprehensively. In the current study, to feature and highlight their major significance, the recent progress of 2D inorganic materials and 2D organic-inorganic hybrid materials from their chemical composition and categories, application potential associated with their unique properties, and present synthesis strategies to fabricate them along with discussion concerning the development challenges and their bright future were reviewed. This review is anticipated to be instructive and provide a high understanding of advanced functional 2D materials with chirality.

Keywords: Chirality, two-dimensional, inorganic, organic-inorganic hybrid, asymmetric, enantioselective, chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS), photoelectronic, spintronics.

A research team at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed what it believes could be the template for the first building blocks for human-compatible organs printed on demand.

Liheng Cai, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering and chemical engineering, and his Ph.D. student, Jinchang Zhu, have made biomaterials with controlled mechanical properties matching those of various human tissues.

“That’s a big leap compared to existing bioprinting technologies,” Zhu said.

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Johns Hopkins University have demonstrated a technology capable of a suite of data storage and computing functions – repeatedly storing, retrieving, computing, erasing or rewriting data – that uses DNA rather than conventional electronics. Previous DNA data storage and computing technologies could complete some but not all of these tasks.

“In conventional computing technologies, we take for granted that the ways data are stored and the way data are processed are compatible with each other,” says project leader Albert Keung, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work (Nature Nanotechnology, “A Primordial DNA Store and Compute Engine”). “But in reality, data storage and data processing are done in separate parts of the computer, and modern computers are a network of complex technologies,” Keung is an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and a Goodnight Distinguished Scholar at NC State.

“DNA computing has been grappling with the challenge of how to store, retrieve and compute when the data is being stored in the form of nucleic acids,” Keung says. “For electronic computing, the fact that all of a device’s components are compatible is one reason those technologies are attractive. But, to date, it’s been thought that while DNA data storage may be useful for long-term data storage, it would be difficult or impossible to develop a DNA technology that encompassed the full range of operations found in traditional electronic devices: storing and moving data; the ability to read, erase, rewrite, reload or compute specific data files; and doing all of these things in programmable and repeatable ways.

University of Arizona researchers have developed an ‘attomicroscopy’ technique using a novel ultrafast electron microscope that captures moving electrons in unprecedented detail, paving the way for significant scientific breakthroughs in physics and other fields.

Imagine having a camera so advanced that it can capture freeze-frame images of a moving electron—an object so fast it could orbit the Earth multiple times in just a second. Researchers at the University of Arizona have developed the world’s fastest electron microscope capable of this remarkable feat.

They believe their work will lead to groundbreaking advancements in physics, chemistry, bioengineering, materials sciences, and more.

The detection of individual particles and molecules has opened new horizons in analytical chemistry, cellular imaging, nanomaterials, and biomedical diagnostics. Traditional single-molecule detection methods rely heavily on fluorescence techniques, which require labeling of the target molecules.

The new research centers on the use of LSPs to achieve atomic-level control of chemical reactions. A team has successfully extended LSP functionality to semiconductor platforms. By using a plasmon-resonant tip in a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope, they enabled the reversible lift-up and drop-down of single organic molecules on a silicon surface.

The LSP at the tip induces breaking and forming specific chemical bonds between the molecule and silicon, resulting in the reversible switching. The switching rate can be tuned by the tip position with exceptional precision down to 0.01 nanometer. This precise manipulation allows for reversible changes between two different molecular configurations.

An additional key aspect of this breakthrough is the tunability of the optoelectronic function through atomic-level molecular modification. The team confirmed that photoswitching is inhibited for another organic molecule, in which only one oxygen atom not bonding to silicon is substituted for a nitrogen atom. This chemical tailoring is essential for tuning the properties of single-molecule optoelectronic devices, enabling the design of components with specific functionalities and paving the way for more efficient and adaptable nano-optoelectronic systems.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) see a realistic path forward to the manufacture of bio-derivable wind blades that can be chemically recycled and the components reused, ending the practice of old blades winding up in landfills at the end of their useful life.

The findings are published in the journal Science. The new resin, which is made of materials produced using bio-derivable resources, performs on par with the current industry standard of blades made from a thermoset resin and outperforms certain thermoplastic resins intended to be recyclable.

The researchers built a prototype 9-meter blade to demonstrate the manufacturability of an NREL-developed biomass-derivable resin nicknamed PECAN. The acronym stands for PolyEster Covalently Adaptable Network, and the manufacturing process dovetails with current methods.