Across billions of years of evolution, nature has retained a common light-absorbing hexameric cofactor core for carrying out the very first chemical reaction of photosynthesis, the light-induced electron transfer across approximately 3 nanometers.
Batteries have come a long way since Alessandro Volta first discovered in 1800 that two unlike metals, when separated by an acidic solution, could produce an electric current.
Drawn together by the force of nature, but pulled apart by the force of man – it sounds like the setting for a love story, but it is also a basic description of how scientists have begun to make more efficient organic solar cells.
Quantum physics and plant biology seem like two branches of science that could not be more different, but surprisingly they may in fact be intimately tied.
The two main routes for the deactivation of catalysts consisting of metal nanoparticles are coking (the accumulation of carbon on the metal that blocks the catalytic sites) and sintering (the formation of larger metal particles that lowers the activity).
Catalysts are one of those things that few people think much about, beyond perhaps in high school chemistry, but they make the world tick. Catalysts are all around us.
Although lithium-ion technology dominates headlines in battery research and development, a new element is making its presence known as a potentially powerful alternative: sodium.
