Nanowerk

Nanowerk News ) Plastics are inescapable in our daily lives. The vast amounts of plastic garbage heaped in landfills and in the environment, however, are as problematic as the plastics are useful. In the journal Angewandte Chemie ( "Anodic Commodity Polymer Recycling: The Merger of Iron-Electrocatalysis with Scalable Hydrogen Evolution Reaction"

Nanowerk News ) Much of modern life depends on the coding of information onto means of delivering it. A common method is to encode data in laser light and send it through optic cables. The increasing demand for more information capacity demands that we constantly find better ways of encoding it.

Nanowerk Spotlight ) A tennis racket that knows exactly where the ball hits and an elbow pad that tracks every detail of arm movement – these innovations are now helping players improve their game without expensive coaching or complex equipment. Scientists have created these devices using special yarns that generate electricity from motion, enabling the equipment to analyze technique and provide instant feedback through a smartphone app.

Nanowerk News ) Bioprinting is a technology used to create three-dimensional structures, such as human tissues or organs, using bio-inks made of cells and hydrogels. However, conventional inkjet technology has difficulty dispensing bio-inks that are sensitive to temperature due to the heat generated during operation. Furthermore, conventional 3D bioprinting mainly utilizes simple syringe-type printing devices with a single needle, making it time-consuming to produce artificial organs like the brain, lungs, and heart.

Nanowerk Spotlight ) Scientists manipulating living cells face a fundamental challenge: working with thousands of samples at the nanoliter scale – volumes measured in billionths of a liter. At this scale, researchers can dramatically reduce the volume of expensive reagents and biological materials needed while increasing the number of experiments they can run simultaneously. However, precisely controlling such small volumes while maintaining living cells has proven technologically difficult.

Nanowerk News ) Plastic pollution has become a growing crisis for aquatic environments, with nanoplastics being particularly hazardous due to their minuscule size and broad dispersal. Unlike larger plastic fragments, nanoplastics infiltrate cellular systems and affect organisms in intricate ways.

Nanowerk Spotlight ) The human digestive system presents a formidable challenge for medication delivery. Powerful stomach acids, protective barriers, and complex immune responses make it difficult for therapeutic compounds to reach their intended targets. This challenge is particularly acute in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), where inflammation creates additional obstacles for treatment. Medications must navigate through multiple defensive layers while maintaining their therapeutic properties - similar to delivering a fragile package through a obstacle course.

Nanowerk News ) As electronic devices get smaller, it's becoming harder to achieve high-quality connections that are both reliable and safe from short circuits. Researchers developed the array-ACF (anisotropic conductive adhesives film) using metal-coated polymer microsphere arrays to make these connections years ago, but the bond between the metal and polymer could crack under pressure, affecting its performance.

Nanowerk News ) Most people think of coffee cups, bathroom tiles or flower pots when they hear the word "ceramic". Not so Frank Clemens. For the research group leader in Empa's Laboratory for High-Performance Ceramics, ceramics can conduct electricity, be intelligent, and even feel. Together with his team, Clemens is developing soft sensor materials based on ceramics. Such sensors can "feel" temperature, strain, pressure or humidity, for instance, which makes them interesting for use in medicine, but also in the field of soft robotics.

Nanowerk News ) Researchers have developed a deep learning-based approach that significantly streamlines the accurate identification and classification of two-dimensional (2D) materials through Raman spectroscopy. In comparison, traditional Raman analysis methods are slow and require manual subjective interpretation. This new method will speed up the development and analysis of 2D materials, which are used in a variety of applications such as electronics and medical technologies.