To mark the Cambridge Festival, Taylor Uekert (c2016) brings us The Great Escape of Ellie the Electron, a children’s book exploring photocatalysis on the nanoscale. We’re extremely proud of Taylor’s work, making nanoscience accessible to a younger audience – and hopefully inspiring future generations of NanoDTC students! What does photocatalysis look like on the nanoscale? […]
Demelza Wright (c2016) and co-authors use plasmonic nano-junctions to learn about catalysis. Climate change is a constant, yet multifaceted, threat. One of the issues we face is the release of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fuels, where it acts like a blanket absorbing heat then slowly releasing it over time. One strategy to mitigate […]
Taylor Uekert (c2016) and co-authors highlight key steps for taking a solar waste-to-hydrogen technology from the lab to the real world. With 70% of global municipal solid waste lost to landfills or the environment each year, methods for managing and reclaiming the value in waste are urgently needed. One potential option is photoreforming: a simple, […]
Astronomy is the mission to understand the origin and evolution of the celestial objects and phenomena in our Universe, from distant stars, galaxies and black holes, to planetary systems such as our own. Astronomers observe the Universe both from the ground and from telescopes in space, across the electromagnetic spectrum of light, from gamma-rays and […]
Nanotechnology has the ability to revolutionise many of the products we use in our everyday lives, from the development of new materials to complex devices. Individual nanoparticles can be thought of as a bridge between bulk materials and individual molecules, and as a result of their small size and structure can possess remarkable properties. However, […]
Surfaces – Take a sheet of A4 paper. Fold it in half. Now fold it in half again. One more time please. Look at the sheet that you have got now. Is it smaller? Yes, the external dimensions are now one eighth of the original sheet size (they are now A7). Does it have the […]
Devices for printing 3 dimensional objects, called 3D printers, have received a lot of public and scientific attention in the past few decades. They are now being used across multiple industries, such as manufacturing, medicine, architecture, art and science. After drawing the desired object in computer programs, such as toys, models, or even artificial limbs, […]
In-situ metrology techniques are crucial in order to characterise how two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, can be grown by chemical vapour deposition. Such techniques will lead to greater understanding and control of the resulting material properties, critical for potential applications. Imagine you are asked bake a cake for the first time – except, you aren’t […]
What’s the smallest thing you can see? Depending your eyesight; you might see something a tenth of a millimetre across – about the width of a human hair. A microscope lets you see a hundred times smaller, but what about something even smaller? That’s where the good vibrations come in. Spectroscopy looks at light interacting […]
Did you know that 150 million tons of plastic products are thrown away every year? This represents not only a severe environmental hazard but also a waste of valuable resources. Turning rubbish into hydrogen could be a solution. You may have heard hydrogen (H2) endorsed as a green energy source. However, 96% of all H2 is […]