2022 New's Items

Joel Moore Elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

May 3, 2022
National Academy of Sciences Elects Members and International Members

WASHINGTON — The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of 120 members and 30 international members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Those elected today bring the total number of active members to 2,512 and the total number of international members to 517. International members are nonvoting members of the Academy, with citizenship outside the United States.

New institute brings together chemistry and machine learning to tackle climate change

September 21, 2022

Imagine a technology that could remove planet-warming emissions from smokestacks, turn moisture in the air into drinking water and transform carbon dioxide into clean energy.

A new UC Berkeley institute will bring together top machine learning and chemistry researchers to make this vision a reality, and a Bay Area foundation is providing a substantial gift to launch and enable this work at UC Berkeley over the next five years.

The Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP) aims to develop cost-efficient, easily deployable versions of two classes of ultra...

Operando Study of CO2 Reduction by Copper Nanoparticles

July 25, 2022

In shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy, a promising strategy is to convert the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), into useful liquid fuels and chemicals. Since copper (Cu) remains the sole element able to catalyze the reduction of CO2 to valuable products, significant effort has been devoted to developing Cu electrocatalysts with improved selectivity and activity. While information about Cu chemical states and particle structure under reaction conditions would help in these efforts, such “operando” experiments had previously been unfeasible,...

Print, Recycle, Repeat: Scientists Demonstrate a Biodegradable Printed Circuit

August 29, 2022

According to the United Nations, less than a quarter of all U.S. electronic waste gets recycled. In 2021 alone, global e-waste surged at 57.4 million tons, and only 17.4% of that was recycled.

Some experts predict that our e-waste problem will only get worse over time, because most electronics on the market today are designed for portability, not recyclability. Tablets and readers, for...

Two Faculty Elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

April 28, 2022
Academy, founded in 1780, honors excellence and leadership

Two Kavli ENSI faculty have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

"Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and advance the public good."

"For more than 240 years, the Academy has been electing and engaging exceptional individuals. This year’s election of 261 new members continues a tradition of recognizing accomplishments and leadership in academia,...

With a Little Help, New Optical Material Assembles Itself

February 4, 2022

A research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)has demonstrated tiny concentric nanocircles that self-assemble into an optical material with precision and efficiency.

Their work overcomes a longstanding problem in nanoscience – molecular impurities. The researchers described their work in the journals ACS Nano and Advanced Materials.

The new findings could enable the large-scale manufacturing of multifunctional nanocomposites – materials made from different components on a scale of a billionth of a meter. Such materials...

Yang P. Liquid Sunlight: The Evolution of Photosynthetic Biohybrids

July 2, 2022

in acetogenic bacteria is used to reduce CO2 to acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA), a common biosynthetic intermediate, and eventually acetic acid. This WLP pathway for acetate synthesis consists of two separate branches, the methyl-branch and the carbonyl branch (Figure 1). In the carbonyl branch, CO2 is reduced to CO via the carbon monoxide dehydrogenase/acetyl-CoA synthase (CODH/ACS). In...

Study Answers Questions about an Elusive Tiny Molecule

March 15, 2022

A new study with implications for atmospheric chemistry has answered some long-enduring questions about the chemical reactivity of an air pollutant molecule with aerosol, revealing the vital role played by the interface between water and gas. The results carry impacts for environmental and climate science, as well as human health.

Researchers from the University of California conducted the research, which provides a quantitative picture of the reactive uptake of dinitrogen pentoxide (N2O5) to aqueous aerosol. Their findings have been published in ...

A Novel Insulating State Emerges in a 2D Material

April 20, 2022
SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT

Using the Advanced Light Source (ALS), researchers found a unique insulating state in an atomically thin material, driven by the combined effects of lattice–electron interactions and atomic-bond formation.

SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT

The work provides a better understanding of charge ordering in two-dimensional materials and opens up new possibilities for achieving designer electronic properties.

A material smorgasbord

Transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are materials characterized by atomically thin, weakly bonded layers. The basic TMD building block—a...