Chemistry

Defects make catalysts perfect
There is now one less mystery in chemical production plants. For many decades industry has been producing methanol on a large scale from a mixture of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as hydrogen. An international team, including chemists from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, has now clarified why the catalyst used in this process - copper and zinc oxide particles and a small portion of aluminium oxide - works so well.

Comparing apples and oranges
Every year, U.S. supermarkets lose roughly 10 percent of their fruits and vegetables to spoilage, according to the Department of Agriculture. To help combat those losses, MIT chemistry professor Timothy Swager and his students have built a new sensor that could help grocers and food distributors better monitor their produce.

Chemistry of life: following carbon fixation to the earliest branches on the tree of life
In a study published in PLoS Computational Biology, SFI's Rogier Braakman and D. Eric Smith map the development of life-sustaining chemistry to the history of early life and trace six methods of carbon fixation seen in modern life back to a single ancestral form.

Scientists discover bilayer structure in efficient solar material
Detailed studies of one of the best-performing organic photovoltaic materials reveal an unusual bilayer lamellar structure that may help explain the material's superior performance at converting sunlight to electricity and guide the synthesis of new materials with even better properties.

Self-assembling highly conductive plastic nanofibers
Researchers from CNRS and the Université de Strasbourg, headed by Nicolas Giuseppone and Bernard Doudin, have succeeded in making highly conductive plastic fibers that are only several nanometers thick.

In protein folding, internal friction may play a more significant role than previously thought
An international team of researchers has reported a new understanding of a little-known process that happens in virtually every cell of our bodies.

Nontoxic nanosheets could turn waste heat into power
Cornell materials scientists have developed an inexpensive, environmentally friendly way of synthesizing oxide crystal sheets, just nanometers thick, which have useful properties for electronics and alternative energy applications.

Origami-inspired paper sensor could test for malaria and HIV for less than 10 cents
Inspired by the paper-folding art of origami, chemists at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a 3-D paper sensor that may be able to test for diseases such as malaria and HIV for less than 10 cents a pop.

ORNL process converts polyethylene into carbon fiber
Common material such as polyethylene used in plastic bags could be turned into something far more valuable through a process being developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

New plastics 'bleed' when cut or scratched - and then heal like human skin
A new genre of plastics that mimic the human skin's ability to heal scratches and cuts offers the promise of endowing cell phones, laptops, cars and other products with self-repairing surfaces, scientists reported today. The team's lead researcher described the plastics, which change color to warn of wounds and heal themselves when exposed to light, at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.