Mechanochemistry

Chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer is one of the major medical success stories of the 20th century, but it's far from perfect. Anyone who has been through chemotherapy or who has had a friend or loved one go through it will be familiar with its many side effects: hair loss, nausea, weakened immune system, and even infertility and nerve damage.

The production of chemicals accounts for 40% of all energy currently used in manufacturing, and the process also results in toxic solvent waste that pollutes the environment and poses health risks to humans and animals. A study published in the journal Science details a novel mechanochemistry method that has the ability to manufacture chemicals without those deleterious effects.

Researchers recovered lithium from batteries on a small scale by using mechanical force

Two renewable resources—cellulose from wood pulp and chitin from the shells of crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans—are known to industrial chemists for their potential for creating highly versatile nanocrystals, useful for making pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, industrial additives and much more.

Thanks to a mechanochemically engineered combination of the liquid metal alloy Galinstan and ceramic aluminum nitride, this thermal interface material, or TIM, outperformed the best commercial liquid...

In a review led by Prof. Zhijie Chen's group from Department of Chemistry at Zhejiang University, an overview of recent progress in the development of Zr-MOFs is provided. The article titled "Design, synthesis and applications of functional zirconium-based metal-organic frameworks" is published in the journal Science China Chemistry.

In 2016, experts writing in Nature listed seven breakthroughs in how we process chemicals that could change the world for the better. We believe we've just ticked one of those off the list.

Light-driven chemical reactions have usually been conducted with large amounts of solvents that are often toxic. By combining them with mechanical energy in ball mills, Professor Lars Borchardt's team at the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry I at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has succeeded in carrying them out in the solid-state without resorting heavily to solvents.

Chemists at Hokkaido University and the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD) have developed the first high-performance catalyst specifically designed and optimized for solid-state, mechanochemical synthesis.

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Energetic Materials Center and Purdue University Materials Engineering Department have used simulations performed on the LLNL supercomputer Quartz to uncover a general mechanism that accelerates chemistry in detonating explosives critical to managing the nation's nuclear stockpile. Their research is featured in the July 15 issue of the Journal of…

Australian scientists say they've made a "eureka moment" breakthrough in gas separation and storage that could radically reduce energy use in the petrochemical industry, while making hydrogen much easier and safer to store and transport in a powder.

Global warming has been attributed to the sharp increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, in particular CO2 emissions. Carbon capture technology, such as using adsorbents to capture and store CO2 from ambient air, is a promising solution to mitigate emissions.

A purely mechanical method can produce a novel, more sustainable fertilizer in a less polluting way. Scientists have optimized a production method that is an adaptation of an ancient technique: by milling two common ingredients, urea and gypsum, the scientists produce a new solid compound that slowly releases two chemical elements critical to soil fertilization, nitrogen, and calcium. The milling method is rapid,…

A research team, affiliated with UNIST has come up with an innovative hydrocarbon manufacturing route, using a commercially available ball-milling device. The new method has commercial potential, as it uses natural wood-derived charcoal to produce methane (CH4), the main hydrocarbon component of natural gas.

The exploration of mechanophores continues to expand the practical application of these molecules in materials science, organic synthesis, and pharmaceuticals due to their ability to change physically or chemically in response to force.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are key materials for the development of renewable energy devices such as high-power magnets for wind turbines, electric vehicles, or fuel cells for hydrogen generation, aiming to fulfill the objectives of the European Green Deal for a carbon-neutral economy. The increased demand for REEs and their criticality strongly require the improvement of their extraction technologies from primary…

Before their approval, pharmaceuticals not only have to be tested for their effectiveness and safety, but also for their stability, since they are usually stored in pharmacies and private households for years. To test stability, a process is needed that decomposes a drug "in fast motion."

The traditionally cumbersome yet widely-used Birch reduction can now be carried out in a mere minute in air using an optimized mechanochemical approach.