New research method answers important questions

15-Jan-2021

Metal surfaces play a role as catalysts for many important applications - from fuel cells to the purification of car exhaust gases. However, their behaviour is decisively affected by oxygen atoms incorporated into the surface. This phenomenon has been known for a long time, but until now it has ...

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Crucial new technologies such as hydrogen production or carbon capture require new catalysts. Experiments show: It's not just the material that matters, but also its atomic surface structure

26-Nov-2020

On the way to a CO2-neutral economy, we need to perfect a whole range of technologies - including the electrochemical extraction of hydrogen from water, fuel cells, or carbon capture. All these technologies have one thing in common: they only work if suitable catalysts are used. For many years, ...

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What happens when you pull a DNA molecule? It behaves quite differently than we are used to from macroscopic objects

06-Aug-2020

When large forces, for example in bridge construction, act on a heavy beam, the beam will be slightly deformed. Calculating the relationship between forces, internal stresses and deformations is one of the standard tasks in civil engineering. But what happens when you apply these considerations ...

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Chemist from the TU Wien was awarded an Elise-Richter scholarship: She is conducting research in catalysis with ultra-small gold clusters

17-Jul-2020

Nanometer-sized gold particles consisting of only a few atoms can be used as catalysts for important chemical reactions. Noelia Barrabés from the Institute of Materials Chemistry at TU Wien has been researching new methods of adapting and precisely controlling such tiny gold clusters for years. ...

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Water replaces toxins: Green production of plastics using hydrothermal synthesis

22-Apr-2020

Although organic plastics are not harmful to the environment themselves, toxic substances are often used during their synthesis. TU Wien shows - there is another way. Many materials that we use every day are not sustainable. Some are harmful to plants or animals, others contain rare elements that ...

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Ultra-fast image sensor with a built-in neural network can be trained to recognize certain objects

06-Mar-2020

Automatic image recognition is widely used today: There are computer programs that can reliably diagnose skin cancer, navigate self-driving cars, or control robots. Up to now, all this has been based on the evaluation of image data as delivered by normal cameras - and that is time-consuming. ...

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17-Oct-2019

A very special kind of light is emitted by tungsten diselenide layers. The reason for this has been unclear. Now an explanation has been found at TU Wien (Vienna). It is an exotic phenomenon that nobody was able to explain for years: when energy is supplied to a thin layer of the material ...

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25-Feb-2019

Physicists have discovered a new effect, which makes it possible to create excellent thermal insulators which conduct electricity. Such materials can be used to convert waste heat into electrical energy. Every day we lose valuable energy in the form of waste heat - in technical devices at home, ...

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12-Dec-2018

"Frequency combs" are optimally suited for chemical sensors. A revolutionary technology developed at TU Wien (Vienna) now produces these laser frequencies in a much easier and more robust way. Most lasers have only one color. All the photons it emits have exactly the same wavelength. However, ...

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A microscopy technique in which sound is measured instead of light.

28-Sep-2018

Individual molecules cannot be photographed – if you wish to visualise objects that are smaller than the wavelength of light, you'll need a few special tricks up your sleeve. You can use electron microscopes for example, or determine the position of specific fluorescent molecules by taking a ...

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