The fluorescence emitted by tiny zinc oxide quantum dots can be used to determine the penetration depth of certain substances used in the restoration of historical buildings. Researchers from Pablo de Olavide University have tested this with samples collected from historical quarries in Cadiz, where the stone was used to build the city hall and cathedral of Seville.

More than 600 experts from 43 countries have gathered in San Sebastian this week to exchange ideas and share their work on this substance. Their ultimate goal: to take this material out of the laboratory to make the promised revolution a reality. This is the Graphene Week, which this year has received the visit of the ‘father’ of graphene, Andre Geim.

Professor Cinzia Casiraghi leads a laboratory specializing in graphene and other 2-Dimensional materials at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom), with which they manufacture photodetectors and electronic memories by means of ink-jet printing. Getting up to this point has not been an easy task for this Italian engineer, as she explained during the meeting Women in Graphene held recently in London.

Porphyrins, the same molecules that convey oxygen in haemoglobin and absorb light during photosynthesis, can be joined to the material of the future, graphene, to give it new properties. This was recently shown by a team of scientists at the Technical University of Munich, in which a Spanish researcher also participated. The resulting hybrid structures could be used in the field of molecular electronics and in developing new sensors

Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have visualized step-by-step and on a microscopic level how certain steels fracture when extreme loads are applied to them. This could help to improve these materials, which are used in the automobile industry.

A research conducted by the Institute for Molecular Science of the Universitat de València and of the Institute for Chemical Technology of the Universitat Politècnica de València and the Spanish National Research Council, confirms for the first time the possibility of modulating the magnetic properties of an inorganic material through organic photoactive molecules activated by light.

New pneumatic launchers at the Impact on Aeronautical Structures Laboratory, located at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) Science Park, make it possible to carry out a wide range of studies on problems of impact that arise in the aeronautics industry and on optimum armor plating in other sectors.

US and Spanish researchers have used a polymeric material to replicate the body of the Agrilus planipennis, a beetle that invades woods in North America. The decoy reproduces the texture and iridescent green colour of the females’ shell on a nanometric scale, and does so with such perfection that the males pounce on them as if they were real. In this way they can be caught and populations of this pest reduced.