Antennas made of carbon nanotube films are just as efficient as copper for wireless applications, according to researchers at Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering. They’re also tougher, more flexible and can essentially be painted onto devices. The Rice lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Matteo Pasquali tested antennas made of “shear-aligned” nanotube films. The…

Like fishermen, Rice University bioengineers are angling for their daily catch. But their bait, biomolecules in a hydrogel scaffold, lures microscopic stem cells instead of fish. These, they say, will seed the growth of new tissue to heal wounds. The team led by Brown School of Engineering bioengineer Antonios Mikos and graduate student Jason Guo…

An international team of scientists is getting closer to perfecting molecule-sized motors that drill through the surface of cancer cells, killing them in an instant. Researchers at Rice University, Durham (U.K.) University and North Carolina State University reported their success at activating the motors with precise two-photon excitation via near-infrared light. Unlike the ultraviolet light…

A nanocomposite invented at Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering promises to be a superior high-temperature dielectric material for flexible electronics, energy storage and electric devices. The nanocomposite combines one-dimensional polymer nanofibers and two-dimensional boron nitride nanosheets. The nanofibers reinforce the self-assembling material while the “white graphene” nanosheets provide a thermally conductive network that allows…

Graphene quantum dots drawn from common coal may be the basis for an effective antioxidant for people who suffer traumatic brain injuries, strokes or heart attacks. Their ability to quench oxidative stress after such injuries is the subject of a study by scientists at Rice University, the Texas A&M Health Science Center and the McGovern…

Graphene can come from graphite. But borophene? There’s no such thing as borite. Unlike its carbon cousin, two-dimensional borophene can’t be reduced from a larger natural form. Bulk boron is usually only found in combination with other elements, and is certainly not layered, so borophene has to be made from the atoms up. Even then,…

Bioscientists are moving closer to 3D-printed artificial tissues to help heal bone and cartilage typically damaged in sports-related injuries to knees, ankles and elbows. Scientists at Rice University and the University of Maryland reported their first success at engineering scaffolds that replicate the physical characteristics of osteochondral tissue – basically, hard bone beneath a compressible…

Rice University physicists have created the world’s first laser-cooled neutral plasma, completing a 20-year quest that sets the stage for simulators that re-create exotic states of matter found inside Jupiter and white dwarf stars. The findings are detailed this week in the journal Science and involve new techniques for laser cooling clouds of rapidly expanding…

Rice University scientists have created a rubbery, shape-shifting material that morphs from one sophisticated form to another on demand. The shapes programmed into a polymer by materials scientist Rafael Verduzco and graduate student Morgan Barnes appear in ambient conditions and melt away when heat is applied. The process also works in reverse. The smooth operation…

It’s easy to make bubbles, but try making hundreds of thousands of them a minute – all the same size. Rice University engineers can do that and much more. Rice chemical and biomolecular engineer Sibani Lisa Biswal and lead author and graduate student Daniel Vecchiolla have created a microfluidic device that pumps out more than…

Rice University researchers have discovered a fundamentally different form of light-matter interaction in their experiments with gold nanoparticles. They weren’t looking for it, but students in the lab of Rice chemist Stephan Link found that exciting the microscopic particles just right produced a near-perfect modulation of the light they scatter. The discovery may become useful…

A new technology that relies on a moth-infecting virus and nanomagnets could be used to edit defective genes that give rise to diseases like sickle cell, muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis. Rice University bioengineer Gang Bao has combined magnetic nanoparticles with a viral container drawn from a particular species of moth to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 payloads…

Rice University scientists have found a simple method to attach drugs or other substances to antibodies, the powerful proteins that are central to the body’s immune system. The Rice lab of bioengineer Han Xiao developed a technique called pClick, which uses a cross-linker that snaps to a specific site on antibodies and serves as a…

How cold did Earth get during the last ice age? The truth may lie deep beneath lakes and could help predict how the planet will warm again. Sediments in lake beds hold chemical records of ages past, among them the concurrent state of the atmosphere above. Scientists led by a Rice University professor and her…

The ability of metallic or semiconducting materials to absorb, reflect and act upon light is of primary importance to scientists developing optoelectronics – electronic devices that interact with light to perform tasks. Rice University scientists have now produced a method to determine the properties of atom-thin materials that promise to refine the modulation and manipulation…

Oil and water tend to separate, but they mix well enough to form stable oil-in-water emulsions in produced water from oil reservoirs to become a problem. Rice University scientists have developed a nanoparticle-based solution that reliably removes more than 99 percent of the emulsified oil that remains after other processing is done. The Rice lab…

There’s a literal disturbance in the force that alters what physicists have long thought of as a characteristic of superconductivity, according to Rice University scientists. Rice physicists Pengcheng Dai and Andriy Nevidomskyy and their colleagues used simulations and neutron scattering experiments that show the atomic structure of materials to reveal tiny distortions of the crystal…

Rice University scientists are developing technology to remove contaminants from water – but only as many as necessary. The Rice lab of engineer Qilin Li is building a treatment system that can be tuned to selectively pull toxins from drinking water and wastewater from factories, sewage systems and oil and gas wells. The researchers said…

Growing a batch of carbon nanotubes that are all the same may not be as simple as researchers had hoped, according to Rice University scientists. Rice materials theorist Boris Yakobson and his team bucked a theory that when growing nanotubes in a furnace, a catalyst with a specific atomic arrangement and symmetry would reliably make…

Just because an animal is soft and squishy doesn’t mean it isn’t tough. Experiments at Rice University show the humble hydra is a good example. The hydra doesn’t appear to age – and apparently never dies of old age. If you cut one in two, you get hydrae. And each one can eat animals twice…

Borophene, the atomically flat form of boron with unique properties, is even more interesting when different forms of the material mix and mingle, according to scientists at Rice and Northwestern universities. Scientists at the institutions made and analyzed borophene with different lattice arrangements and discovered how amenable the varied structures are to combining into new…

Rice University scientists have developed a simple way to produce conductive, three-dimensional objects made of graphene foam. The squishy solids look and feel something like a child’s toy but offer new possibilities for energy storage and flexible electronic sensor applications, according to Rice chemist James Tour. The technique detailed in Advanced Materialsis an extension of groundbreaking…

Computer scientists from Rice University’s DARPA-funded Pliny Project believe they have the answer for every stressed-out systems programmer who has struggled to implement complex objects and workflows on ‘big data’ platforms like Spark and thought: “Isn’t there a better way?” Rice’s PlinyCompute will be unveiled here Thursday at the 2018 ACM SIGMOD conference. In a…

Rice University researchers have synthesized and isolated plasmonic magnesium nanoparticles that show all the promise of their gold, silver and aluminum cousins with none of the drawbacks. The Rice lab of materials scientist Emilie Ringe produced the particles to test their ability to emit plasmons, the ghostly electron bands that, when triggered by energy from…