Carbon-neutral fuels are crucial for making aviation and maritime transport sustainable. ETH researchers have developed a solar plant to produce synthetic liquid fuels that release as much CO2 during their combustion as previously extracted from the air for their production. CO2 and water are extracted directly from ambient air and split using solar energy. This…
The Global Impact of Coal Power
Gulf Stream Eddies as a Source of Iron
Minuscule sea creatures like cyanobacteria need large amounts of trace elements such as zinc and iron. In the world’s oceans, however, the latter is often in short supply. This is true of large stretches of the North Atlantic, especially the large North Atlantic Gyre between North America, the Canary Islands, the Caribbean and the Gulf…
Researchers Use Supercomputer to Determine How Fish Schools Save Energy
The schooling behaviour of fish fascinates engineers as much as biologists. Fish in schools swim in a flow environment full of mechanical energy generated by the movements of their fellow swimmers. Researchers from ETH Zurich’s Computational Science & Engineering Lab (CSElab) have now answered the longstanding question of whether fish gain an energetic advantage by swimming in…
New Materials for Sustainable, Low-Cost Batteries
The energy transition depends on technologies that allow the inexpensive temporary storage of electricity from renewable sources. A promising new candidate is aluminium batteries, which are made from cheap and abundant raw materials. Scientists from ETH Zurich and Empa – led by Maksym Kovalenko, Professor of Functional Inorganic Materials – are among those involved in…
New Tool for the Crystallization of Proteins
Membrane-embedded proteins are an essential part of cells and any form of life. They not only exist in many different varieties, but also perform a wide range of functions, ranging from intracellular communication and the transport of substances into or out of the cell to mediating the immune response. Membrane proteins are considered important therapeutic…
Weather Anomalies Accelerate the Melting of Sea Ice
In the winter of 2015/16, something happened that had never before been seen on this scale: at the end of December, temperatures rose above zero degrees Celsius for several days in parts of the Arctic. Temperatures of up to eight degrees were registered north of Svalbard. Temperatures this high have not been recorded in the…
Researchers Print ‘Living Materials’ With Bacteria-Loaded Inks
There will soon be nothing that cannot be produced with 3D printing. However, the materials used for this process are still “dead matter” such as plastics or metals. A group of ETH researchers led by Professor André Studart, Head of the Laboratory for Complex Materials, has now introduced a new 3D printing platform that works…
Nano-Sensor Measures Tension of Tissue Fibers
Computer simulations have helped a team of researchers led by ETH professor Viola Vogel to develop a peptide that is able to detect the tensional state of tissue fibres. This paves the way for completely novel research approaches in medicine and pharmacology. Bacteria are able to attach themselves to tissue fibres with the aid of…
Breath Instead of a Blood Test
Experts advise anyone looking to shed extra kilos to eat less and exercise more. One way is with endurance training, during which the body burns not only carbohydrates such as sugar, but also fat. When exactly the body begins burning fat can now be determined by analysing, for example, biomarkers in the blood or urine.…
Biodegradable Microsensors for Food Monitoring
Nowadays microsensors are already used in many different applications, such as the detection of poisonous gases. They are also integrated into miniaturised transmitter/receiver systems, such as the ubiquitous RFID chips. However, as the sensors often contain precious metals that are harmful to both the environment and human health, they are not suitable for medical applications…
Rapid Imaging of Granular Matter
Even in our modern world full of highly technological machines and devices it is still impossible to predict when rockslides, such as the recent one in Graubünden, or earthquakes will occur and how exactly they evolve. This is partly due to the fact that despite many years of research, scientists have only just begun to…
Green Light for Ultra-fine Display Colors
Chemical engineers from ETH Zurich have succeeded in generating ultra-pure green light for the first time. The new light-emitting diode will pave the way for visibly improved colour quality in a new generation of ultra-high definition displays for TVs and smartphones. Chih-Jen Shih is very satisfied with his breakthrough: “To date, no one has succeeded…
Testing a Soft Artificial Heart
It looks like a real heart. And this is the goal of the first entirely soft artificial heart: to mimic its natural model as closely as possible. The silicone heart has been developed by Nicholas Cohrs, a doctoral student in the group led by Wendelin Stark, Professor of Functional Materials Engineering at ETH Zurich. The…
A Levitated Nanosphere as an Ultra-sensitive Sensor
Sensitive sensors must be isolated from their environment as much as possible to avoid disturbances. Scientists at ETH Zurich have now demonstrated how to remove from and add elementary charges to a nanosphere that can be used for measuring extremely weak forces. A tiny sphere and a laser beam inside of which it hovers as…
Universal Emulsion Stabilization
Researchers led by Lucio Isa, Professor of Interfaces, Soft Matter and Assembly at ETH Zurich’s Department of Materials, have created a new type of silica particle able to stabilise emulsions in a new way. An emulsion is a finely dispersed mixture of two immiscible liquids, constituted by droplets of one liquid dispersed in the second…
Nanoparticles Remain Unpredictable
The nanotech industry is booming. Every year, several thousands of tonnes of man-made nanoparticles are produced worldwide; sooner or later, a certain part of them will end up in bodies of water or soil. But even experts find it difficult to say exactly what happens to them there. It is a complex question, not only…
Digital Fabrication in Architecture
Many building processes still involve sub-standard working conditions and are not compellingly sustainable. Current research on the integration of digital technologies within construction processes promises substantial contributions to sustainability and productivity, while at the same time enabling completely new forms of architectural expression. The multidisciplinary nature of integrating digital processes remains a key challenge to…
Sustainable Ceramics Without a Kiln
The manufacture of cement, bricks, bathroom tiles and porcelain crockery normally requires a great deal of heat: a kiln is used to fire the ceramic materials at temperatures well in excess of 1,000°C. Now, material scientists from ETH Zurich have developed what seems at first glance to be an astonishingly simple method of manufacture that…
Diatoms: Tiny Organisms With a Massive Impact
Diatoms are a very common group of algae found not only in freshwater streams, rivers and lakes, but also in marine waters. These unicellular organisms are particularly prevalent in the waters of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. Given an adequate supply of nutrients and light, diatoms can multiply with such explosive force that they create…
High-Precision Magnetic Field Sensing
Scientists have developed a highly sensitive sensor to detect tiny changes in strong magnetic fields. The sensor may find widespread use in medicine and other areas. Researchers from the Institute for Biomedical Engineering, which is operated jointly by ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, have succeeded in measuring tiny changes in strong magnetic fields with unprecedented…
Electrons at the Speed Limit
Speed may not be witchcraft, but it is the basis for technologies that often seem like magic. Modern computers, for instance, are as powerful as they are because tiny switches inside them steer electric currents in fractions of a billionth of a second. The incredible data flows of the internet, on the other hand, are…
Solid Batteries Improve Safety
Lithium-ion batteries store a lot of energy in a small space, making them the energy source of choice for mobile electronic devices. Today, mobile phones, laptops, e-bikes and electric cars are all powered by such batteries. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now developed a type of battery that, unlike conventional ones, consists entirely of solid…