The team also found that the sounds bats use to echolocate come from thin vocal membranes that sit at the ends of their vocal cords. Humans don’t have these vocal membranes, says Jonas Håkansson, a postdoctoral researcher now at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and first author on the paper. The team figured out the basics of bat vocalization by removing larynxes from Daubenton’s bats, blowing air over them, and filming the results with a high-speed camera. They found that echolocation calls occur at high frequencies, while the bat screaming was at a much lower frequency, Håkansson tells Newscripts.
by Leigh Krietsch Boerner | January 13, 2023
The membrane can withstand high temperatures and harsh conditions and could offer a less energy-intensive way to separate gasoline from light crude oil (Science 2022, DOI: 10.1126/science.abm7686). 24.4% Efficiency of a perovskite solar cell reported in 2022, setting a record for flexible thin-film photovoltaics.
by Corinna Wu | December 15, 2022
For example, including precise molecular fractions allowed scientists to create thinner films with high performance, says Jackie deGroot, a Dow senior fellow who led the application development of the first portfolio of Elite resins. Later, a new bis(biphenyl phenol) catalyst enabled new polymer architectures that resulted in further performance enhancements.
by Nina Notman, special to C&EN | December 01, 2022
LambdaVision, which fabricates artificial retinas intended to restore vision in people who are blind, is taking advantage of microgravity to deposit atoms-thick protein films on a polymer membrane. The manufacturing process can take up to a week. On Earth, tiny convection vortices, minute concentration gradients, and sedimentation effects may interfere with the films’ homogeneity. And since the protein films are so thin, traditional manufacturing processes under normal gravity conditions just won’t cut it. “There’s unfortunately no way to replicate the microgravity environment, at least for the long-term needs that we have,” says Jordan Greco, the chief scientific officer of LambdaVision.
by Shi En Kim | November 13, 2022
Caelux, which emerged from the California Institute of Technology in 2014, hopes to improve the performance of silicon by coating the glass that covers it with a thin layer of perovskite, a material that generates energy from a different part of the light spectrum. In the 1960s, the semiconductor researchers William Shockley and Hans-Joachim Queisser estimated that the efficiency of solar panels made of a single material would top out at about 30% because they absorb only a portion of the light spectrum and lose some energy to heat.
by Matt Blois | November 04, 2022
IUPAC’s top emerging technologies for 2022 are aerogels, fiber batteries, film-based fluorescent sensors, the synthesis of liquid solar fuels, nanoparticle megalibraries, nanozymes, rational vaccines with spherical nucleic acids, sodium-ion batteries, textile displays, and virtual reality–enabled interactive modeling.
by Bibiana Campos Seijo | October 29, 2022
—This multilayer film constricts under an electric field “The new material gets its electrostrictive properties from stress-inducing interactions between metal oxides” Researchers have discovered a new way to engineer thin films that change volume under an electric field. Their technique could help scientists create small, energy-efficient biomedical devices (Nature 2022, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05073-6).
by Ariana Remmel | September 22, 2022
Beads from the FBR process or chunks from the Siemens process are sold to companies that turn them into cubed ingots, which are sawed into paper-thin wafers. The wafers are textured and treated with other elements to turn them into individual solar cells. Multiple cells are soldered and sandwiched between a glass panel and a plastic back sheet to form solar panels.
by Matt Blois | September 18, 2022