Tag
#nanotechnology
Every article tagged “nanotechnology”.
8 articles
Nanotechnology
Mineral sunscreen used to leave you grey. The chemistry did not change — the particle size did
Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are the same two compounds in the white cricket-umpire nose paste and in a modern invisible sunscreen. What changed is how big the particles are — and that one variable controls the colour, the protection and most of the safety argument.
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Materials Science
Self-cleaning glass does not repel water. It does the opposite — and that is the whole trick
Everyone assumes a self-cleaning surface is one water bounces off. The self-cleaning glass sold on real buildings works the other way round — water spreads into a sheet. Here is why there are two opposite routes to the same result, which one survives contact with the world, and the number suppliers quote that tells you almost nothing.
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Nanotechnology
A carbon nanotube is stronger than steel. A rope of them is not — and the reason is worth understanding
A single carbon nanotube is among the strongest things ever measured. Fibres spun from billions of them come in an order of magnitude weaker. The gap is not a manufacturing failure — it is physics, and it explains what nanotubes are actually good for today.
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Materials Science
How antimicrobial coatings keep working after the cleaner has gone
A disinfectant stops working the moment it dries. An antimicrobial coating is designed for the hours in between — the gap between one clean and the next. Here is the chemistry behind it, what a 99.9% claim actually measures, and the questions worth asking before you buy one.
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Nanotechnology
Why materials behave differently at the nanoscale
Gold that is not gold-coloured, carbon stronger than steel, sunscreen that stops being white. At the nanoscale a material's properties stop depending only on what it is made of and start depending on how big it is. Here is why.
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Materials Science
MXenes explained: the 2D material powering next-gen batteries, sensors and shielding
MXenes are a young family of two-dimensional materials with metallic conductivity and a surface you can tune. Here is what they are, and why labs from Drexel to India are racing to use them.
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Nanotechnology
Graphene, twenty years on: where the wonder material actually shows up
A single layer of carbon won a Nobel Prize and a decade of hype. Two decades later, where does graphene genuinely deliver — and where is it still catching up to the headlines?
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Nanotechnology
Quantum dots: the tiny crystals that won a Nobel and lit up your TV
Quantum dots are nanocrystals so small that their colour depends on their size. The idea earned the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry — and it is already inside QLED televisions and medical imaging.
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