A September 17, 2025 news item from ScienceDaily announced research from Harvard University focused on more sustainable ways to recycle protein by breaking down keratin,
Key Takeaways
SEAS [School of Engineering and Applied Sciences] researchers have discovered the chemical mechanism by which certain salt compounds break down protein waste, like wool and feathers.
The discovery enables a gentler and more sustainable protein recycling process.
The textile and meat-processing industries produce billions of tons of waste annually in the form of feathers, wool and hair, all of which are rich in keratin – the strong, fibrous protein found in hair, skin and nails.
Turning all that animal waste into useful products – from wound dressings to eco-friendly textiles to health extracts – would be a boon for the environment and for new, sustainable industries. But upcycling proteins is challenging: Breaking down, or de-naturing, proteins into their component parts typically requires corrosive chemicals in large, polluting facilities, keeping any cost-effective protocol out of reach.
Researchers in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have uncovered key fundamental chemistry of how proteins like keratin de-nature in the presence of certain salt compounds – an insight that could take protein recycling to the next level.
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Caption: An artist’s depiction of hair, made out of keratin, denaturing when ions are present. Credit: Michael Rosnach
A team led by Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at SEAS, combined experiments and molecular simulations to better illuminate the chemical mechanisms by which salts cause proteins to unfold. They’ve shown that a solution of concentrated, a salt compound known to break apart keratin, interacts with the protein molecules in a completely unexpected way – not by binding to the proteins directly, as was conventional wisdom, but by changing the structure of the surrounding water molecules to create a setting more favorable for spontaneous protein unfolding.
This insight allowed the researchers to design a gentler, more sustainable keratin extraction process, separating the protein out of solution easily and without the need for harsh chemicals. The process can also be reversed with the same salt mixture, enabling recovery and reuse of lithium bromide denaturants.
The research is published in Nature Communicationsand is also featured in a Behind the Paper blog post.
Inspired by keratin biomaterials
First author Yichong Wang, a graduate student in chemistry who works in Parker’s group, said the research builds on the lab’s longstanding interest in developing keratin biomaterials with shape memory for biomedical applications. They had previously observed that keratin extracted from lithium bromide solvents can form thick, shapeable gels that readily separate from the surrounding solution and solidify almost immediately when placed back in water. While useful, they found the behavior odd, and they wanted to understand it better.
“We thought there might be a gap between current mechanistic understanding of how de-naturation works, and what we were seeing,” Wang said. “That’s when we got very interested in the mechanism itself to see if we could optimize our extraction procedures by explaining this phenomenon better.”
Molecular dynamics reveals shifts in surrounding water
To dig deeper, the team turned to the lab of Professor Eugene Shakhnovich in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, whose expertise is in protein biophysics. Molecular dynamics simulations led by co-author Junlang Liu allowed them to see that the lithium bromides were not working on the proteins at all, but rather, on the water around them.
It turns out lithium bromide ions cause water molecules to shift into two different populations – normal water, and water molecules that become trapped by the salt ions. As the normal water volume decreases, the proteins start to unfold due to the thermodynamic shift in the environment, rather than being directly ripped apart like in other de-naturation methods. “Making the water less like water, allows the protein to unfold itself,” Wang said. They had similar results by testing simpler proteins like fibronectin, pointing to a universal mechanism.
Better understanding and designing protein extraction methods that are less energy-intensive and less polluting than conventional ones opens potential avenues for protein-upcycling industries. In the Parker lab, using keratin as a substrate for tissue engineering is a major research thrust; having a reliable, sustainable method to extract and re-use such products would bolster their efforts.
What’s more, the process could lay a path for a whole new biomaterials industry, turning a massive waste stream like hair or chicken feathers into low-cost recycled materials, possibly as an alternative for traditional plastics, for example.
The research had many sources of federal support, including the National Institutes of Health (R35GM139571 and R01EY030444) and the National Science Foundation through the Harvard University Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (DMR-2011764). Other funding came from the Health@InnoHK program of the Innovation and Technology Commission, part of the Hong Kong SAR Government; and the Medical and Health Informatics Laboratories at NTT Research, Inc.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Entropy-driven denaturation enables sustainable protein regeneration through rapid gel-solid transition by Yichong Wang, Junlang Liu, Michael M. Peters, Ryoma Ishii, Dianzhuo Wang, Sourav Chowdhury, Kevin Kit Parker & Eugene I. Shakhnovich. Nature Communications volume 16, Article number: 6907 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61959-9 Published online: 26 July 2025 Version of record: 26 July 2025
This paper is open access.
There’s also an August 1, 2025 posting by Yichong Wang and Kit Parker (two of the paper’s authors) on SpringerNature’s Behind the Paper blog,
From Hofmeister’s Curiosity to an Interesting Mechanism
In 1888, Franz Hofmeister published a curious observation: salts affect protein solubility in water in systematic ways. This led to the famous “Hofmeister Series,” a ranking of ions based on their ability to precipitate or solubilize proteins. Over the next century, many studies expanded on these observations of salt-induced effects on protein folding, but a unifying theory explaining how ions influence protein structure remained elusive.
Our recent study originated from a practical challenge rather than a theoretical hypothesis. In our lab’s ongoing work to study the shape memory effect of regenerated keratin — a structural protein abundant in wool, hair, and feathers — we observed some puzzling behaviors. When keratin is extracted using concentrated lithium bromide (LiBr), it does not form a fully solubilized protein solution. Instead, we observed that the proteins spontaneously aggregate into a thick, cohesive gel that can be readily separated from the surrounding solution. More unexpectedly, this protein gel solidifies almost immediately upon rehydration, without the need for dialysis or removal of the denaturants. These phenomenon contrasted sharply with the behavior observed when using organic denaturants such as urea or guanidine hydrochloride.
Illustration by Michael Rosnach (Disease Biophysics Group, Harvard University)
None of these phenomenon matched existing explanations for how LiBr supposedly works. If LiBr denatures proteins by directly binding to them, why would the keratin spontaneously separate out of solution? Why would it renature so quickly just by being placed back in water? …
Water security, of course, is a key issue and of particular concern in many parts of the world including the Middle East. (In the Pacific Northwest, an area described as a temperate rain forest, there tends to be less awareness but even we are sometimes forced to ration water.) According to a July 5, 2017 posting by Bhok Thompson (on the Green Prophet website) scientists at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates [UA]E) have applied for a patent on a new technique for rainmaking,
Umbrella sales in the UAE may soon see a surge in pricing. Researchers at the Masdar Institute have filed for a provisional patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for their discovery – and innovative cloud seeding material that moves them closer to their goal of producing rain on demand. It appears to be a more practical approach than building artificial mountains.
Dr. Linda Zou is leading the project. A professor of chemical and environmental engineering, she is one of the first scientists to explore nanotechnology to enhance a cloud seeding material’s ability to produce rain. By filing a patent, the team is paving a way to commercialize their discovery, and aligning with Masdar Institute’s aim to position the UAE as a world leader in science and tech, specifically in the realm of environmental sustainability.
A January 31, 2017 posting by Erica Solomon for the Masdar Institute reveals more about the project,
The Masdar Institute research team that was one of the inaugural recipients of the US$ 5 million grant from the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science last year has made significant progress in their work as evidenced by the filing a provisional patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
By filing a patent on their innovative cloud seeding material, the research team is bringing the material in the pathway for commercialization, thereby supporting Masdar Institute’s goal of bolstering the United Arab Emirates’ local intellectual property, which is a key measure of the country’s innovation drive. It also signifies a milestone towards achieving greater water security in the UAE, as rainfall enhancement via cloud seeding can potentially increase rainfall between 10% to 30%, helping to refresh groundwater reserves, boost agricultural production, and reduce the country’s heavy reliance on freshwater produced by energy-intensive seawater desalination.
Masdar Institute Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Dr. Linda Zou, is the principal investigator of this research project, and one of the first scientists in the world to explore the use of nanotechnology to enhance a cloud seeding material’s ability to produce rain.
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“Using nanotechnology to accelerate water droplet formation on a typical cloud seeding material has never been researched before. It is a new approach that could revolutionize the development of cloud seeding materials and make them significantly more efficient and effective,” Dr. Zou remarked.
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Conventional cloud seeding materials are small particles such as pure salt crystals, dry ice and silver iodide. These tiny particles, which are a few microns (one-thousandth of a millimeter) in size, act as the core around which water condenses in the clouds, stimulating water droplet growth. Once the air in the cloud reaches a certain level of saturation, it can no longer hold in that moisture, and rain falls. Cloud seeding essentially mimics what naturally occurs in clouds, but enhances the process by adding particles that can stimulate and accelerate the condensation process.
Dr. Zou and her collaborators, Dr. Mustapha Jouiad, Principal Research Scientist in Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department, postdoctoral researcher Dr. Nabil El Hadri and PhD student Haoran Liang, explored ways to improve the process of condensation on a pure salt crystal by layering it with a thin coating of titanium dioxide.
The extremely thin coating measures around 50 nanometers, which is more than one thousand times thinner than a human hair. Despite the coating’s miniscule size, the titanium dioxide’s effect on the salt’s condensation efficiency is significant. Titanium dioxide is a hydrophilic photocatalyst, which means that when in contact with water vapor in the cloud, it helps to initiate and sustain the water vapor adsorption and condensation on the nanoparticle’s surface. This important property of the cloud seeding material speeds up the formation of large water droplets for rainfall.
Dr. Zou’s team found that the titanium dioxide coating improved the salt’s ability to adsorb and condense water vapor over 100 times compared to a pure salt crystal. Such an increase in condensation efficiency could improve a cloud’s ability to produce more precipitation, making rain enhancement operations more efficient and effective. The research will now move to the next stage of simulated cloud and field testing in the future.
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Dr. Zou’s research grant covers two more years of research. During this time, her team will continue to study different design concepts and structures for cloud seeding materials inspired by nanotechnology.
To give you a sense of the urgent need for these technologies, here’s the title from my Aug. 24, 2015 posting, The Gaza is running out of water by 2016 if the United Nations predictions are correct. I’ve not come across any updates on the situation in the Gaza Strip but both Israel and Palestine have recently signed a deal concerning water. Dalia Hatuqa’s August 2017 feature on the water deal for Al Jazeera is critical primarily of Israel (as might be expected) but there are one or two subtle criticisms of Palestine too,
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Critics have also warned that the plan does not address Israeli restrictions on Palestinian access to water and the development of infrastructure needed to address the water crisis in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians in the West Bank consume only 70 litres of water per capita per day, well below what the World Health Organization recommends as a minimum (100).
In the most vulnerable communities in Area C – those not connected to the water network – that number further drops to 20, according to EWASH, a coalition of Palestinian and international organisations working on water and sanitation in the Palestinian territories.
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The recent bilateral agreement, which does not increase the Palestinians’ quota of water in the Jordan River, makes an untenable situation permanent and guarantees Israel a lion’s share of its water, thus reinforcing the status quo, Buttu [Diana Buttu, a former adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team] said.
“They have moved away from the idea that water is a shared resource and instead adopted the approach that Israel controls and allocates water to Palestinians,” she added. “Israel has been selling water to Palestinians for a long time, but this is enshrining it even further by saying that this is the way to alleviate the water problem.”
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Israeli officials say that water problems in the territories could have been addressed had the Palestinians attended the meetings of the joint committee. Palestinians attribute their refusal to conditions set by their counterparts, namely that they must support Israeli settlement water projects for any Palestinian water improvements to be approved.
According to Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, “There are many things to be done together to upgrade the water infrastructure in the PA. We are talking about old, leaking pipes, and a more rational use of water.” He also pointed to the illegal tapping into pipes, which he maintained Palestinians did because they did not want to pay for water. “This is something we’ve been wanting to do over the years, and the new water agreement is one of the ways to deal with that. The new agreement … is not only about water quotas; it’s also about more coherent and better use of water, in order to address the needs of the Palestinians.”
But water specialists say that the root cause of the problem is not illegal activity, but the unavailability of water resources to Palestinians and the mismanagement and diversion of the Jordan River.
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Access to water is gong to be of increasing urgency should temperatures continue to rise as they have. In many parts of the world, potable water is not easy to find and if temperatures continue to rise areas that did have some water security will lose it and the potential for conflict rises hugely. Palestine and Israel may be a harbinger of what’s to come. As for the commodification of water, I have trouble accepting it; I think everyone has a right to water.
Salt, snowflakes and diamonds are all crystals, meaning their atoms are arranged in 3-D patterns that repeat. Today scientists are reporting in the journal Nature on the creation of a phase of matter, dubbed a time crystal, in which atoms move in a pattern that repeats in time rather than in space.
The atoms in a time crystal never settle down into what’s known as thermal equilibrium, a state in which they all have the same amount of heat. It’s one of the first examples of a broad new class of matter, called nonequilibrium phases, that have been predicted but until now have remained out of reach. Like explorers stepping onto an uncharted continent, physicists are eager to explore this exotic new realm.
“This opens the door to a whole new world of nonequilibrium phases,” says Andrew Potter, an assistant professor of physics at The University of Texas at Austin. “We’ve taken these theoretical ideas that we’ve been poking around for the last couple of years and actually built it in the laboratory. Hopefully, this is just the first example of these, with many more to come.”
Some of these nonequilibrium phases of matter may prove useful for storing or transferring information in quantum computers.
Potter is part of the team led by researchers at the University of Maryland who successfully created the first time crystal from ions, or electrically charged atoms, of the element ytterbium. By applying just the right electrical field, the researchers levitated 10 of these ions above a surface like a magician’s assistant. Next, they whacked the atoms with a laser pulse, causing them to flip head over heels. Then they hit them again and again in a regular rhythm. That set up a pattern of flips that repeated in time.
Crucially, Potter noted, the pattern of atom flips repeated only half as fast as the laser pulses. This would be like pounding on a bunch of piano keys twice a second and notes coming out only once a second. This weird quantum behavior was a signature that he and his colleagues predicted, and helped confirm that the result was indeed a time crystal.
The team also consists of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University, in addition to the University of Maryland and UT Austin.
Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was teaching a class about crystals in 2012 when he wondered whether a phase of matter could be created such that its atoms move in a pattern that repeats in time, rather than just in space.
Potter and his colleague Norman Yao at UC Berkeley created a recipe for building such a time crystal and developed ways to confirm that, once you had built such a crystal, it was in fact the real deal. That theoretical work was announced publically last August and then published in January in the journal Physical Review Letters.
A team led by Chris Monroe of the University of Maryland in College Park built a time crystal, and Potter and Yao helped confirm that it indeed had the properties they predicted. The team announced that breakthrough—constructing a working time crystal—last September and is publishing the full, peer-reviewed description today in Nature.
A team led by Mikhail Lukin at Harvard University created a second time crystal a month after the first team, in that case, from a diamond.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Observation of a discrete time crystal by J. Zhang, P. W. Hess, A. Kyprianidis, P. Becker, A. Lee, J. Smith, G. Pagano, I.-D. Potirniche, A. C. Potter, A. Vishwanath, N. Y. Yao, & C. Monroe. Nature 543, 217–220 (09 March 2017) doi:10.1038/nature21413 Published online 08 March 2017
This research comes from Russia (mostly). A July 29, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily describes a graphene-like structure derived from salt,
Researchers from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), the Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials (TISNCM), the National University of Science and Technology MISiS (Russia), and Rice University (USA) used computer simulations to find how thin a slab of salt has to be in order for it to break up into graphene-like layers. Based on the computer simulation, they derived the equation for the number of layers in a crystal that will produce ultrathin films with applications in nanoelectronics. …
Caption: Transition from a cubic arrangement into several hexagonal layers. Credit: authors of the study
Unique monoatomic thickness of graphene makes it an attractive and useful material. Its crystal lattice resembles a honeycombs, as the bonds between the constituent atoms form regular hexagons. Graphene is a single layer of a three-dimensional graphite crystal and its properties (as well as properties of any 2D crystal) are radically different from its 3D counterpart. Since the discovery of graphene, a large amount of research has been directed at new two-dimensional materials with intriguing properties. Ultrathin films have unusual properties that might be useful for applications such as nano- and microelectronics.
Previous theoretical studies suggested that films with a cubic structure and ionic bonding could spontaneously convert to a layered hexagonal graphitic structure in what is known as graphitisation. For some substances, this conversion has been experimentally observed. It was predicted that rock salt NaCl can be one of the compounds with graphitisation tendencies. Graphitisation of cubic compounds could produce new and promising structures for applications in nanoelectronics. However, no theory has been developed that would account for this process in the case of an arbitrary cubic compound and make predictions about its conversion into graphene-like salt layers.
For graphitisation to occur, the crystal layers need to be reduced along the main diagonal of the cubic structure. This will result in one crystal surface being made of sodium ions Na? and the other of chloride ions Cl?. It is important to note that positive and negative ions (i.e. Na? and Cl?)–and not neutral atoms–occupy the lattice points of the structure. This generates charges of opposite signs on the two surfaces. As long as the surfaces are remote from each other, all charges cancel out, and the salt slab shows a preference for a cubic structure. However, if the film is made sufficiently thin, this gives rise to a large dipole moment due to the opposite charges of the two crystal surfaces. The structure seeks to get rid of the dipole moment, which increases the energy of the system. To make the surfaces charge-neutral, the crystal undergoes a rearrangement of atoms.
Experiment vs model
To study how graphitisation tendencies vary depending on the compound, the researchers examined 16 binary compounds with the general formula AB, where A stands for one of the four alkali metals lithium Li, sodium Na, potassium K, and rubidium Rb. These are highly reactive elements found in Group 1 of the periodic table. The B in the formula stands for any of the four halogens fluorine F, chlorine Cl, bromine Br, and iodine I. These elements are in Group 17 of the periodic table and readily react with alkali metals.
All compounds in this study come in a number of different structures, also known as crystal lattices or phases. If atmospheric pressure is increased to 300,000 times its normal value, an another phase (B2) of NaCl (represented by the yellow portion of the diagram) becomes more stable, effecting a change in the crystal lattice. To test their choice of methods and parameters, the researchers simulated two crystal lattices and calculated the pressure that corresponds to the phase transition between them. Their predictions agree with experimental data.
Just how thin should it be?
The compounds within the scope of this study can all have a hexagonal, “graphitic”, G phase (the red in the diagram) that is unstable in 3D bulk but becomes the most stable structure for ultrathin (2D or quasi-2D) films. The researchers identified the relationship between the surface energy of a film and the number of layers in it for both cubic and hexagonal structures. They graphed this relationship by plotting two lines with different slopes for each of the compounds studied. Each pair of lines associated with one compound has a common point that corresponds to the critical slab thickness that makes conversion from a cubic to a hexagonal structure energetically favourable. For example, the critical number of layers was found to be close to 11 for all sodium salts and between 19 and 27 for lithium salts.
Based on this data, the researchers established a relationship between the critical number of layers and two parameters that determine the strength of the ionic bonds in various compounds. The first parameter indicates the size of an ion of a given metal–its ionic radius. The second parameter is called electronegativity and is a measure of the ? atom’s ability to attract the electrons of element B. Higher electronegativity means more powerful attraction of electrons by the atom, a more pronounced ionic nature of the bond, a larger surface dipole, and a lower critical slab thickness.
And there’s more
Pavel Sorokin, Dr. habil., [sic] is head of the Laboratory of New Materials Simulation at TISNCM. He explains the importance of the study, ‘This work has already attracted our colleagues from Israel and Japan. If they confirm our findings experimentally, this phenomenon [of graphitisation] will provide a viable route to the synthesis of ultrathin films with potential applications in nanoelectronics.’
The scientists intend to broaden the scope of their studies by examining other compounds. They believe that ultrathin films of different composition might also undergo spontaneous graphitisation, yielding new layered structures with properties that are even more intriguing.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Ionic Graphitization of Ultrathin Films of Ionic Compounds by A. G. Kvashnin, E. Y. Pashkin, B. I. Yakobson, and P. B. Sorokin. J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2016, 7 (14), pp 2659–2663 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.6b01214 Publication Date (Web): June 23, 2016
The secret to making the best energy storage materials is growing them with as much surface area as possible. Like baking, it requires just the right mixture of ingredients prepared in a specific amount and order at just the right temperature to produce a thin sheet of material with the perfect chemical consistency to be useful for storing energy. A team of researchers from Drexel University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and Tsinghua University recently discovered a way to improve the recipe and make the resulting materials bigger and better and soaking up energy — the secret? Just add salt.
The team’s findings, which were recently published in the journal Nature Communications, show that using salt crystals as a template to grow thin sheets of conductive metal oxides make the materials turn out larger and more chemically pure — which makes them better suited for gathering ions and storing energy.
“The challenge of producing a metal oxide that reaches theoretical performance values is that the methods for making it inherently limit its size and often foul its chemical purity, which makes it fall short of predicted energy storage performance,” said Jun Zhou, a professor at HUST’s Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics and an author of the research. Our research reveals a way to grow stable oxide sheets with less fouling that are on the order of several hundreds of times larger than the ones that are currently being fabricated.”
In an energy storage device — a battery or a capacitor, for example — energy is contained in the chemical transfer of ions from an electrolyte solution to thin layers of conductive materials. As these devices evolve they’re becoming smaller and capable of holding an electric charge for longer periods of time without needing a recharge. The reason for their improvement is that researchers are fabricating materials that are better equipped, structurally and chemically, for collecting and disbursing ions.
In theory, the best materials for the job should be thin sheets of metal oxides, because their chemical structure and high surface area makes it easy for ions to attach — which is how energy storage occurs. But the metal oxide sheets that have been fabricated in labs thus far have fallen well short of their theoretical capabilities.
According to Zhou, Tang [?] and the team from HUST, the problem lies in the process of making the nanosheets — which involves either a deposition from gas or a chemical etching — often leaves trace chemical residues that contaminate the material and prevent ions from bonding to it. In addition, the materials made in this way are often just a few square micrometers in size.
Using salt crystals as a substrate for growing the crystals lets them spread out and form a larger sheet of oxide material. Think of it like making a waffle by dripping batter into a pan versus pouring it into a big waffle iron; the key to getting a big, sturdy product is getting the solution — be it batter, or chemical compound — to spread evenly over the template and stabilize in a uniform way.
“This method of synthesis, called ‘templating’ — where we use a sacrificial material as a substrate for growing a crystal — is used to create a certain shape or structure,” said Yury Gogotsi, PhD, University and Trustee Chair professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering and head of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute, who was an author of the paper. “The trick in this work is that the crystal structure of salt must match the crystal structure of the oxide, otherwise it will form an amorphous film of oxide rather than a thing, strong and stable nanocrystal. This is the key finding of our research — it means that different salts must be used to produce different oxides.”
Researchers have used a variety of chemicals, compounds, polymers and objects as growth templates for nanomaterials. But this discovery shows the importance of matching a template to the structure of the material being grown. Salt crystals turn out to be the perfect substrate for growing oxide sheets of magnesium, molybdenum and tungsten.
The precursor solution coats the sides of the salt crystals as the oxides begin to form. After they’ve solidified, the salt is dissolved in a wash, leaving nanometer-thin two-dimensional sheets that formed on the sides of the salt crystal — and little trace of any contaminants that might hinder their energy storage performance. By making oxide nanosheets in this way, the only factors that limit their growth is the size of the salt crystal and the amount of precursor solution used.
“Lateral growth of the 2D oxides was guided by salt crystal geometry and promoted by lattice matching and the thickness was restrained by the raw material supply. The dimensions of the salt crystals are tens of micrometers and guide the growth of the 2D oxide to a similar size,” the researchers write in the paper. “On the basis of the naturally non-layered crystal structures of these oxides, the suitability of salt-assisted templating as a general method for synthesis of 2D oxides has been convincingly demonstrated.”
As predicted, the larger size of the oxide sheets also equated to a greater ability to collect and disburse ions from an electrolyte solution — the ultimate test for its potential to be used in energy storage devices. Results reported in the paper suggest that use of these materials may help in creating an aluminum-ion battery that could store more charge than the best lithium-ion batteries found in laptops and mobile devices today.
Gogotsi, along with his students in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been collaborating with Huazhong University of Science and Technology since 2012 to explore a wide variety of materials for energy storage application. The lead author of the Nature Communications article, Xu Xiao, and co-author Tiangi Li, both Zhou’s doctoral students, came to Drexel as exchange students to learn about the University’s supercapacitor research. Those visits started a collaboration, which was supported by Gogotsi’s annual trips to HUST. While the partnership has already yielded five joint publications, Gogotsi speculates that this work is only beginning.
“The most significant result of this work thus far is that we’ve demonstrated the ability to generate high-quality 2D oxides with various compositions,” Gogotsi said. “I can certainly see expanding this approach to other oxides that may offer attractive properties for electrical energy storage, water desalination membranes, photocatalysis and other applications.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Scalable salt-templated synthesis of two-dimensional transition metal oxides by Xu Xiao, Huaibing Song, Shizhe Lin, Ying Zhou, Xiaojun Zhan, Zhimi Hu, Qi Zhang, Jiyu Sun, Bo Yang, Tianqi Li, Liying Jiao, Jun Zhou, Jiang Tang, & Yury Gogotsi. Nature Communications 7, Article number: 11296 doi:10.1038/ncomms11296 Published 22 April 2016
I’ve not heard of nanobubbles before but apparently it is possible to form them from conventional microbubbles. Researchers in Japan have figured out how to make the nanobubbles more stable by using salt. Nanowerk has the media release, which includes a pretty graphic, here. Applications for nanobubbles have much potential for preventing arteriosclerosis, better food preservation, and as cleaning agents.
Researchers have discovered that salt can be stretched physically. (That’s not what my science teachers told me!) The unexpected discovery may help researchers better understand sea salt aerosols which have been implicated in ozone depletion, smog formation, and as triggers for asthma. The full media release can be read here on Nanowerk News.
I mentioned the bubble charts on Andrew Maynard’s 2020 Science blog yesterday and noted that I have some difficulty fully understanding the information they convey. I’m much more comfortable with standard bar charts. I know how to read them and can tell if the information is being manipulated.
I noted that in Maynard’s screen cast he describes them as “classic” bubble charts. I haven’t come across them before but that doesn’t preclude their use in sectors that are not familiar to me. At any rate, it got me to thinking about a paper I just wrote called, ‘Nanotechnology, storytelling, sensing, and materiality‘. In it I suggest that we will need modes other than the purely visual to understand nanotechnology (or science at quantum scales) and implied that we rely too much on the visual. Then yesterday I posted here that I think visual data will become increasingly important. My suspicion is that both are somewhat true and I think the answer lies in a multimodal approach. More about that tomorrow.
