Creating new optical properties from self-stacking nanostructures So what is a Metamaterial?! Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties not readily available in nature. These materials gain their properties from structure rather than composition. Potential applications of optical metamaterials include superlenses and cloaking devices that hide their contents, unachievable with normal materials. In my […]
Plastic semiconductors as an alternative to silicon When we think of electronics, what usually springs to mind is a black box of metal and silicon. The advent of the laptop and more recently the tablet computer has reduced the size of these boxes, but they remain the same in most respects. Over the last few […]
The ancestors of modern life used nucleic acids to do nearly everything necessary for survival and procreation. Catalysis, information storage, and interaction with the surrounding chemical environment were all performed with a versatile array of nucleic acids. These thread like polymers of nucleotides have a sequence which uniquely determines their structure and function. Recently, researchers […]
We all want batteries that allow us to listen to music for hours on our phone or an electric car that will drive miles after miles but at the same time we want the batteries to be long-lived and safe. Most commonly, rechargeable batteries are so-called Li-ion batteries that consist of a cathode, and an […]
Water scarcity is emerging as a major environmental problem in the 21st century, fresh water is an essential ingredient for life and scarcity will have global repercussions. The reduction of water usage and minimisation of waste is essential for sustainable industrial practice. One approach to improve water usage involves the use of superhydrophobic surfaces which […]
The price of producing electricity from sunlight has been falling dramatically over the past three decades, but a push towards more efficient devices is still necessary for it to truly compete with fossil fuels. The price improvements so far have mainly been due to the falling cost of producing the solar modules themselves. This also […]
If you’ve heard about graphene, you’ve probably heard about all its wonderful claims but you are unlikely to have heard about any practical uses for the material. How about graphene as a ‘selective membrane for filtration and nano-pore sensing’? It’s just a fancy colander. We use one in our daily lives to separate one thing […]
Solar fuels combat the intermittency problems of common renewable energies. If plants and bacteria can produce fuel from sunlight and water, can we? The future of human civilisation depends upon the development of renewable energy sources to counteract the pervasive consumption of fossil fuels. The production of sustainable electricity has been realised by mass manufacture […]
Can nanomaterials make gas powered cars a reality? Increased energy usage and pollutant emissions over the last century have already caused devastating climate change including rising global temperatures and severe weather events. Global energy demand is predicated to further increase exponentially over the next 50 years. If irreversible climate change and fuel shortages are to […]
Extremely small tubes of carbon have the potential to make excellent night vision cameras for future self-driving cars due to their unique optical properties. Self-driving cars are just around the corner and will likely become part of our daily life in the next 5 years, however improvement in their vision at night and in harsh […]