News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have shown that a newly engineered catalyst made of gold nanoparticles supported on a metal oxide framework shows breakdown of ammonia impurities in air, with excellent selectivity for conversion to nitrogen gas. Importantly, it is effective at room temperature, making it suitable for everyday air purification systems. The team successfully identified the mechanism behind this behavior, paving the way towards the design of other novel catalytic materials.

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have shown that the tunable hydrophobic nature of dense siloxane gels is strongly correlated with their catalytic activity, explicitly demonstrating how molecules with different hydrophobic nature at the molecular level interact differently with surfaces of differing hydrophobicity. This is also the first time a siloxane gel has been shown to be highly effective for the reaction of silyl ethers, commonly used as a protecting agent.

Imagine smart materials that can morph from being stiff as wood to as soft as a sponge - and also change shape. Rutgers University-New Brunswick engineers have created flexible, lightweight materials with 4D printing that could lead to better shock absorption, morphing airplane or drone wings, soft robotics and tiny implantable biomedical devices. Their research is published in the journal Materials Horizons.

A new type of hydrogel material developed by Brown University researchers could soon make assembling complex microfluidic or soft robotic devices as simple as putting together a LEGO set.

Cells of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) form unique patterns that can be used to track changes in this important layer of tissue in the back of the eye, researchers at the National Eye Institute (NEI) have found. Using a combination of adaptive optics imaging and a fluorescent dye, the researchers used the RPE patterns to track individual cells in healthy volunteers and people with retinal disease.