With a little practice, it doesn’t take much more than 10 minutes, a couple of bags and a big bucket to keep nanomaterials in their place. The Rice University lab of chemist Andrew Barron works with bulk carbon nanotubes on a variety of projects. Years ago, members of the lab became concerned that nanotubes could…

 Wearable devices that harvest energy from movement are not a new idea, but a material created at Rice University may make them more practical. The Rice lab of chemist James Tour has adapted laser-induced graphene (LIG) into small, metal-free devices that generate electricity. Like rubbing a balloon on hair, putting LIG composites in contact with…

Rice University researchers, in a collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine and Houston nonprofit Technology For All (TFA), are developing a fleet of autonomous aerial drones that coordinate with each other to detect, track and model the environment and let neighborhoods know of airborne perils that can be especially hazardous following extreme weather events. Rice electrical and computer engineer Edward…

Boron nitride nanotubes are primed to become effective building blocks for next-generation composite and polymer materials based on a new discovery at Rice University—and a previous one. Scientists at known-for-nano Rice have found a way to enhance a unique class of nanotubes using a chemical process pioneered at the university. The Rice lab of chemist…

Rice University scientists who introduced laser-induced graphene (LIG) have enhanced their technique to produce what may become a new class of edible electronics. The Rice lab of chemist James Tour, which once turned Girl Scout cookies into graphene, is investigating ways to write graphene patterns onto food and other materials to quickly embed conductive identification…

One-sixty-six, where are you? Oh, there you are. The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft – NASA ID 166 – was lost for more than a decade until an amateur astronomer found it last month, to the delight of Rice University’s Patricia Reiff, one of the original scientists in charge of the mission that began in 1989 and launched…

The right mix of hydrogen bonds in polymer and cement composites is critical to making strong, tough and ductile infrastructure material, according to Rice University scientists who want to mimic the mechanics of mother-of-pearl and similar natural composites with synthetic materials. Seashells made of mother-of-pearl, aka nacre, get their remarkable properties from overlapping micron-sized, mineralized…

How a material breaks may be the most important property to consider when designing layered composites that mimic those found in nature. A method by Rice University engineers decodes the interactions between materials and the structures they form and can help maximize their strength, toughness, stiffness and fracture strain. In a study that required more…

Rice University engineers are using 3-D printers to turn structures that have until now existed primarily in theory into strong, light and durable materials with complex, repeating patterns. The porous structures called schwarzites are designed with computer algorithms, but Rice researchers found they could send data from the programs to printers and make macroscale, polymer…

High-performance electrodes for lithium-ion batteries can be improved by paying closer attention to their defects — and capitalizing on them, according to Rice University scientists. Rice materials scientist Ming Tang and chemists Song Jin at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Linsen Li at Wisconsin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led a study that combined…

Substituting atoms in the process of making two-dimensional alloys not only allows them to be customized for applications but also can make them magnetic, according to Rice University scientists and their collaborators. A new paper in Advanced Materials outlines how researchers at Rice, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Southern California (USC) and Kumamoto…

Rice University materials scientists have created a light foam from two-dimensional sheets of hexagonal-boron nitride (h-BN) that absorbs carbon dioxide. They discovered freeze-drying h-BN turned it into a macro-scale foam that disintegrates in liquids. But adding a bit of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) into the mix transformed it into a far more robust and useful material.…

Like a sandwich with wheat on the bottom and rye on the top, Rice University scientists have cooked up a tasty new twist on two-dimensional materials. The Rice laboratory of materials scientist Jun Lou has made a semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) that starts as a monolayer of molybdenum diselenide. They then strip the top layer…

Rice University researchers have learned to manipulate two-dimensional materials to design in defects that enhance the materials’ properties. The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are combining theory and experimentation to prove it’s possible to give 2-D materials specific defects, especially atomic-scale seams called grain boundaries. These…

Rice University scientists have made wood into an electrical conductor by turning its surface into graphene. Rice chemist James Tour and his colleagues used a laser to blacken a thin film pattern onto a block of pine. The pattern is laser-induced graphene (LIG), a form of the atom-thin carbon material discovered at Rice in 2014.…

A little fluorine turns an insulating ceramic known as white graphene into a wide-bandgap semiconductor with magnetic properties. Rice University scientists said that could make the unique material suitable for electronics in extreme environments. A proof-of-concept paper from Rice researchers demonstrates a way to turn two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) – aka white graphene –…

Rice University scientists have fabricated a durable catalyst for high-performance fuel cells by attaching single ruthenium atoms to graphene. Catalysts that drive the oxygen reduction reaction that lets fuel cells turn chemical energy into electricity are usually made of platinum, which stands up to the acidic nature of the cell’s charge-carrying electrolyte. But platinum is…

To stand up to the heat and pressure of next-generation rocket engines, the composite fibers used to make them should be fuzzy. The Rice University laboratory of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan, in collaboration with NASA, has developed “fuzzy fibers” of silicon carbide that act like Velcro and stand up to the punishment that materials experience…

A few nanoscale adjustments may be all that is required to make graphene-nanotube junctions excel at transferring heat, according to Rice University scientists. The Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson found that putting a cone-like “chimney” between the graphene and nanotube all but eliminates a barrier that blocks heat from escaping. The research appears…

Concrete isn’t thought of as a plastic, but plasticity at small scales boosts concrete’s utility as the world’s most-used material by letting it constantly adjust to stress, decades and sometimes even centuries after hardening. Rice University researchers are a step closer to understanding why. The Rice lab of materials scientist Rouzbeh Shahsavari performed an atom-level…

Bringing order to disorder is key to making stronger and greener cement, the paste that binds concrete. Scientists at Rice University have decoded the kinetic properties of cement and developed a way to “program” the microscopic, semicrystalline particles within. The process turns particles from disordered clumps into regimented cubes, spheres and other forms that combine…

A new Rice University technique grabs images of chemical processes that happen faster than most laboratory cameras are able to capture them. The technique, super temporal resolution microscopy (STReM), allows researchers to view and gather useful information about fluorescing molecules at a frame rate 20 times faster than typical lab cameras normally allow. The work…

A Rice University laboratory has improved its method to turn plain asphalt into a porous material that can capture greenhouse gases from natural gas. In research detailed this month in Advanced Energy Materials, Rice researchers showed that a new form of the material can sequester 154 percent of its weight in carbon dioxide at high pressures…

What does one need to strengthen or toughen concrete? A lot of nothing. Or something. The “nothing” is in the form of microscopic voids and the “something” consists of particular particles embedded in the most common construction material on Earth. Rice University materials scientist Rouzbeh Shahsavari and postdoctoral researcher Ning Zhang analyzed more than 600…