A review of rare earth element-containing materials finds that cerium, lanthanum, and other REEs can improve redox behavior, oxygen mobility, electrochemical activity, charge separation, hydrogen storage, and membrane performance across several hydrogen-production technologies. Most advances remain at laboratory scale, with wider deployment dependent on cost, resource availability, extraction impacts, long-term stability, recycling, and techno-economic feasibility.
By Akshatha Chandrashekar
11 Sep 2026
The Austrian instrumentation specialist eralytics has expanded the technical capabilities of its eraspec oil, a portable, stand-alone FTIR lubricant analyzer.
The advanced manufacturing technologies have driven mechanical equipment toward higher speeds, greater loads, and longer service lifetimes. The intensive and high-frequency operation inevitably leads to friction and wear of mechanical components, compromising their reliability, functionality, and service life, as well as leading to safety issues and causing considerable waste of energy and resources.
A research team at the University of Vienna led by physicist Jani Kotakoski demonstrates how the shape of nanopores in hexagonal boron nitride - the electrically insulating counterpart to graphene, also known as "white graphene" - can be precisely controlled at the atomic level. Electron irradiation in ultra-high vacuum creates circular pores, while adding small amounts of oxygen yields triangular pores. The nanopore engineering presented in the journal Nature Communications thus unlocks new applications in filtration, DNA sequencing, catalysis, and quantum technologies.
Virginia Tech researchers have put that idea to the test, creating degradable polymers with a new molecular architecture that combines properties that are often difficult to achieve in one material: strength, toughness, flexibility, and the ability to block oxygen.
Aerogels are often described as 'frozen smoke' because these extremely light materials are composed mostly of air
Until now, it has been almost impossible to measure the energy density of hydrogen precisely, but a new sensor can register every single molecule. This could lay the foundation for correct accounting in the hydrogen economy.
Researchers developed a room-temperature, maskless electrodeposition method for directly 3D-printing freestanding copper microinductors onto chip contact pads, enabling inductance to be generated without requiring additional dedicated planar silicon area. The printed microsolenoids achieved nanohenry-range inductance, quality factors up to 18, and experimentally validated inductive behavior up to 15 GHz, supporting their potential for post-fabrication integration into future RF electronics.
By Akshatha Chandrashekar
10 Sep 2026
High-entropy alloys are highly promising structural and functional materials. Among them, refractory high-entropy alloys possess outstanding high-temperature mechanical properties and have broad application prospects in critical components under extreme working conditions such as aerospace, nuclear power, and gas turbines.
A signal that appears to show ions moving inside a battery may, in fact, be an illusion caused by an uneven surface. A KAIST research team has identified the origin of this type of artifacts, which can lead researchers to misinterpret what is happening inside a battery, and has developed a method to reduce it. The findings are expected to enable more accurate analysis of ion movement and improve the reliability of next-generation battery-material development, including that of solid-state and sodium-ion batteries.
Researchers characterized four commercial blue pigments with three conservation binders using thermal analysis, ATR-FTIR, SEM-EDS, and microscopy, revealing marked differences in thermal behavior and predominantly non-homogeneous pigment-binder mixtures. Most notably, a commercial manganese blue contained no detectable manganese, while 11 of 12 pigment-binder combinations showed non-uniform behavior, highlighting the value of verifying material composition and compatibility before conservation use.
By Muhammad Osama
9 Sep 2026
Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS), led by President Chul-jin Choi, announced that a research team led by Principal Researcher Sung Mook Choi of the Energy & Environment Materials Research Division, in collaboration with research teams led by Professor Min Ho Seo of Pukyong National University and Professor Won Bae Kim of Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), has developed a highly durable platinum-nickel (PtNi) hydrogen evolution catalyst that suppresses nickel (Ni) leaching through atomic ordering.
Rare-earth oxides such as cerium oxide, lanthanum oxide, and yttrium oxide can improve laser-cladded metal coatings by refining grains, purifying the molten pool, strengthening interfaces, and altering solidification behavior. The review finds that these effects can increase hardness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, and crack resistance, although performance depends strongly on additive concentration, particle size, alloy system, and processing conditions.
By Muhammad Osama
8 Sep 2026
Detecting radiation is key to technologies ranging from particle accelerators and scientific instruments to medical imaging and security screening.
Inside some fusion energy systems, particles hotter than the core of the sun can become unruly in a few thousandths of a second, far faster than any human operator can react.