New technique developed at Brookhaven Lab makes self-assembly 1,000 times faster and could be used for industrial-scale solar panels and electronics.

UMass Amherst scientists advance understanding of strain effects on performance.

The probe of an atomic force microscope (AFM) scans a surface to reveal details at a resolution 1,000 times greater than that of an optical microscope. That makes AFM the premier tool for analyzing physical features, but it cannot tell scientists anything about chemistry. For that they turn to the mass spectrometer (MS).

University of Washington research pinpoints defects in popular perovskites.

Kyle Lampe, an assistant professor of chemical engineering in the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, is growing cells in three-dimensional hydrogels, an environment closer than petri dishes to how cells grow on their own. He can control the hydrogel’s softness or stiffness, and by raising the cells in a three-dimensional solution, the cells react more closely to how they would in nature

The folks at the American Chemical Society's Reactions video series check out the science of the Avengers' superpowers in advance of the latest film's release.

In 2013 James Hone, Wang Fong-Jen Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia Engineering, and colleagues at Columbia demonstrated that they could dramatically improve the performance of graphene—highly conducting two-dimensional (2D) carbon—by encapsulating it in boron nitride (BN), an insulating material with a similar layered structure. In work published this week in the Advance Online Publication on Nature Nanotechnology’s website, researchers at Columbia Engineering, Harvard, Cornell, University of Minnesota, Yonsei University in Korea, Danish Technical University, and the Japanese National Institute of Materials Science have shown that the performance of another 2D material—molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)—can be similarly improved by BN-encapsulation.

Karl A. Gschneidner and fellow scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have created a new magnetic alloy that is an alternative to traditional rare-earth permanent magnets.

New approach to designing ordered composite materials for possible energy applications.

Nano-coated mesh could clean oil spills for less than $1 per square foot.

Take a material that is a focus of interest in the quest for advanced solar cells. Discover a "freshman chemistry level" technique for growing that material into high-efficiency, ultra-small lasers. The result, disclosed today (Monday, April 13) in Nature Materials, is a shortcut to lasers that are extremely efficient and able to create many colors of light.

The elusive quantum phenomenon—called van Vleck magnetism—may allow scientists to manipulate topological insulators and engineer new electronics.