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University of Nottingham scientists have discovered a new process to break bulk metal into atoms to produce heterogeneous catalysts without any chemical waste. Its a technique that will lead to new sustainable ways of making and using molecules in the most atom efficient way. Researchers from the University of Nottingham have demonstrated that “naked” Pt atoms can be dispersed onto powder supports directly by splitting bulk metal to atoms at the record-breaking rate of four and a half thousand trillion atoms per second (4.5 x 1015 atom/s) by magnetron sputtering.

A simple visit to an obscure factory by Chinese President Xi on Monday is all it took to raise the specter that China could be contemplating cutting off supply of critical materials to the U.S. and potentially crippling large swathes of its industries. Also, fueled by political innuendo in Xi’s recent call for a new “Long March” in reference to a key founding tenet of the Chinese Communist Party, speculators are growing increasingly wary of Chinese export restrictions to the U.S., including rare earth minerals. As the world’s largest producer, the Middle Kingdom has a vice-like grip on rare earths...

Enlarge Image Catalysts are prized for their ability to speed chemical reactions by grabbing molecular building blocks and knitting them together. But most catalysts are either on or off—and there hasn't been much scientists could do to flip the switch. Now, however, researchers have created a sandwich-shaped scaffold for turning on and off nearly any catalyst at will. If developed further, the new design could allow researchers to detect minute amounts of a wide range of small molecules—from explosives such as TNT to neurotransmitters that carry messages in the nervous system. Unlike industrial catalysts, many enzymes—biological catalysts made from...

A new catalyst that generates hydrogen from sea water has been developed by scientists in the US. This new metal-oxo complex displays high catalytic activity and stability, whilst being low cost, the researchers say.Hydrogen is very attractive as a clean source of power. Currently, it is produced by natural gas reforming - where steam is reacted with methane in the presence of a nickel catalyst to form hydrogen - but this method produces the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.Jeffrey Long and colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley, prepared a simple molybdenum-oxo complex that can serve as an electrocatalyst, reducing the energy required to generate hydrogen...

Researchers in the US have shown that perovskites - a class of mixed oxide minerals - can perform as well as platinum in certain types of catalytic converter for removing pollutants from diesel exhaust. The finding could eventually result in cheaper, more robust catalytic converters for diesel engines that do not rely on expensive and scarce platinum group metals. Vehicle exhaust is a major polluter One of the main pollutants that needs to be removed from vehicle exhaust is a mixture of NO and NO2, referred to as NOx, which can be rendered harmless by reducing the gases to nitrogen. But...

Chemical engineers have found a cheaper and possibly better material than platinum for cleaning up the exhaust streams of diesel vehicles. Many automobiles use platinum-containing catalytic converters to help clean their exhaust streams of various pollutants, notably the nitrogen oxide compounds that can contribute to smog. But the high and volatile price of the precious metal makes it difficult to build an economical catalyst. An alternative material, known as perovskite, is far less expensive than platinum and may do the job more effectively, engineers from the research arm of General Motors report in the March 26 Science. “It’s excellent work,...

New studies with different fuel cell catalysts show promising results As the automotive industry is betting that hydrogen can become the fuel of the future, technology is taking steps to bring that hope closer to reality. Three papers being published by the journal Science promise to fill some of the most significant gaps in what could someday be an environmentally friendly cycle of hydrogen production and consumption. --snip-- Platinum is also commonly used on the consumption side, in the fuel cells that turn hydrogen back into water and produce electric currents. In Science‘s August 1 issue, researchers at Monash University...