Month: March 2026

Mar 26, 2026 Researchers developed an air-breakdown triboelectric nanogenerator that harvests skin static electricity to power ultrathin keyboards and remote controls without batteries. (Nanowerk News) A team of engineers has developed a triboelectric nanogenerator that harvests the static electricity naturally present on human skin, producing enough power to operate keyboards,...

Mar 26, 2026 A new study has developed an innovative biochar-based nanomaterial that can rapidly remove harmful herbicides from soil while simultaneously protecting crops from contamination. The research offers a promising solution to one of agriculture's most persistent challenges: balancing soil remediation with food safety. (Nanowerk News) “Traditional methods often...

Mar 26, 2026 Researchers identify why graphene oxide selectively destroys bacteria while remaining safe for human cells, with applications from toothbrushes to sportswear. (Nanowerk News) A graphene-coated toothbrush has sold more than 10 million units on the strength of its antibacterial properties, but until now the precise mechanism behind that...

Mar 24, 2026 Researchers have uncovered the origin of polarity inversion, a long-standing phenomenon in polymer semiconductors that occurs only in certain materials. (Nanowerk News) A research team led by Prof. Boseok Kang at Sungkyunkwan University has uncovered the origin of polarity inversion—a long-standing phenomenon in polymer semiconductors that occurs...

Mar 25, 2026 Extracting and restoring potassium from layers of nickel and sulfur enables switching between two electronic states. (Nanowerk News) A team of scientists led by Argonne National Laboratory have identified a rare, switchable quantum property in a new type of nickel sulfide material (Matter, "Evolution from topological Dirac...

Mar 25, 2026 A molybdenum-based spin-flip emitter harvested singlet fission excitons at 130% quantum yield, demonstrating a new path beyond the Shockley-Queisser solar cell efficiency limit. (Nanowerk News) Solar cells built from standard semiconductors can convert only about one-third of incoming sunlight into electricity. High-energy photons waste their excess as...

Mar 25, 2026 New insights into metallic cracks that harm battery performance could advance the longstanding quest to develop energy-dense solid-state batteries. (Nanowerk News) Batteries that use solid metal as their charge-carrying electrolyte could potentially be a safer and far more energy-dense alternative to lithium-ion batteries. However, these solid-state batteries...

Mar 25, 2026 Astronomers found evidence that some of the fastest-spinning stars in the Universe broadcast radio waves from far beyond where scientists thought possible. (Nanowerk News) Pulsars are ultra-dense, rapidly spinning, and highly magnetised remnants of dead stars. They act like cosmic lighthouses, sending out regular pulses of radio...

Mar 25, 2026 Silicon nanospheres amplify second-harmonic generation from monolayer semiconductors over 40-fold while retaining valley-polarization information. (Nanowerk News) A team of researchers has demonstrated that silicon nanospheres placed on monolayer tungsten disulfide can amplify second-harmonic generation more than 40-fold without disrupting the circular polarization that encodes valley information. Published...

Mar 25, 2026 Tunable DNA hairpin springs stretch millions of protein copies under piconewton tension, enabling bulk biochemical discovery of binding partners invisible to single-molecule techniques. (Nanowerk Spotlight) Some proteins only reveal their full function when they are physically pulled. Under tension, their folded structures open up, exposing surfaces that...