What is Aqua Regia, and what makes it royal?

Aqua regia, latin for “royal water”, is a fascinating, dangerous, and useful liquid that some of us in the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology use on a regular basis. As I learned how to use this powerful material for my research, I started to wonder: What makes it royal? It turns out that aqua regia can …

What’s With All Those Flaming Cell Phones? A Primer on Battery Safety

cell with smoke

By now you’ve probably heard about Samsung’s recall of all Galaxy Notes 7s. Several years ago the entire worldwide fleet of 787 “Dreamliners” was grounded due to onboard battery fires. You might be wondering, “Why are all these batteries catching on fire? Are lithium ion batteries safe?” To answer this, let’s look at how a …

Battery Behavior in the Biosphere: How We Probed Nanoscale Battery Materials Interacting with Bacteria

Along with eight colleagues (most from the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology) I recently co-authored an article in the American Chemical Society’s Chemistry of Materials journal titled “Impact of Nanoscale Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (NMC) on the Bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR‐1.”1 Just as the name suggests, we analyzed how nanoscale NMC, an important material in some …

More Media Coverage for NMC Paper

Interested in learning more about the study on NMC nanomaterials and bacteria that was discussed in Monday's post? We've had two more opportunities to discuss this Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology research with the media this week, and it's pretty cool to see how each piece explains the work a little differently. Thank you to KARE 11's Jeff …