• The value of gold keeps going up in more ways than one. Most recently, it has been shown to have value in producing cleaner and greeneragricultural, pharmaceutical, and other chemicals. 

   

• The game of paper-scissors-stone will need to be reinvented. A new form of papercould not be cut with a chainsaw. 

   

• Solar film made of nanocrystals may be inexpensive enough to turn every building into a power generator.

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The selective oxidation processes used to make compounds contained in agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other chemical products can be accomplished more cleanly and more efficiently with gold nanoparticle catalysts, says a report published in Nature. The gold catalysts can also carry out partial oxidations without environmentally harmful chlorine solvents or costly organic peroxides. An expert wrote in a commentary accompanying the Nature article that the breakthrough had the potential to “transform” the chemical industry if selective oxidation of hydrocarbons could be achieved efficiently using cheap and clean oxygen from the air.

Gold is increasingly viewed as a potential catalyst in chemical processing, pollution control, and fuel cell applications. It was demonstrated a decade ago that gold nanoparticles could be used as catalysts to de-odorize restrooms and to convert carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide at low temperatures. But much remains to be learned for nano-gold to realize its full potential.

Buckypaper

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Florida State University researchers are developing real-world applications for a material 10 times lighter yet 250 times stronger than steel, as well as processes to be mass-produce it cheaply. The material is also highly conductive of heat and electricity. “Buckypaper,” as it is called, is made from carbon nanotubes, and has promise in aerospace structures, body armor, armored vehicles, as a heat sink in computers, and brighter computer displays.

Nanosolar cells

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Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California have developed cheap and easy to make ultra-thin solar cells comprised entirely of inorganic nanocrystals. They are more stable than solar cells made from organic polymers. The solar film converts sunlight to electricity as efficiently as the best organic solar cells, and while that is substantially lower than conventional silicon solar cell thin films, its lower cost makes it attractive. And unlike plastic solar cells, whose performance deteriorates over time, aging seems actually to improve the performance of the nanocrystal solar cells.

According to the Energy Foundation, if the available residential and commercial rooftops in the US were to be coated with solar cell thin films, they could furnish an estimated 710,000 megawatts of electricity — more than three-quarters of all the electricity the US is currently able to generate.