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Rain jackets, swimming trunks or upholstery fabrics: Textiles with water-repellent properties require chemical impregnation. Although fluorine-containing PFAS chemicals are effective, they are also harmful to human health and accumulate in the environment. researchers are now developing a process with alternative substances that can be used to produce environmentally friendly water-repellent textile fibers.

Ultra-light, thermally insulating and biodegradable: Cellulose-based aerogels are versatile. researchers have succeeded in 3D printing the natural material into complex shapes that could one day serve as precision insulation in microelectronics or as personalized medical implants. At first glance, biodegradable materials, inks for 3D printing and aerogels don't seem to have much in common.

Automated building systems offer a great potential for reducing the energy consumption of properties. Studies on such systems show that optimized solutions can reduce the energy requirements of buildings by around 30 percent on average. In order to avoid the necessity to produce new and emission-heavy computer chips, Empa researcher Hanmin Cai is currently investigating the extent to which damaged smartphones that are no longer used could perform these control and maintenance tasks.

Is it possible to convert CO2 back to fuels or other useful chemicals? Absolutely - but not in a very targeted way just yet. Empa researcher Alessandro Senocrate is looking at defects in materials that will help us achieve this goal. Can we undo the burning of oil, gas and coal? With a renewable source of electricity, some water and a suitable catalyst, the excess CO2 in the atmosphere could become a resource, for example for the production of synthetic fuels, so-called synfuels.

Biomolecules such as amino acids and sugars occur in two mirror-image forms - in all living organisms, however, only one is ever found. Why this is the case is still unclear. Researchers at Empa and Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany have now found evidence that the interplay between electric and magnetic fields could be at the origin of this phenomenon.

Tire wear of motor vehicles is responsible for a large proportion of microplastics in the environment. Researchers from Empa and the company wst21 have summarized the results of various studies in a recently published basic report in response to postulate Po 19.3559 and presented approaches for reduction.

Textiles made of synthetic fibers release microand nanoplastics during washing. researchers have now been able to show: Some of the supposed nanoplastics do not actually consist of plastic particles, but of water-insoluble oligomers. The effects they have on humans and the environment are not yet well-understood.

Researchers have observed living red blood cells transforming into spiky "echinocytes" in real time when treated with high concentrations of ibuprofen using holotomographic microscopy and displayed them in 3D renderings. Blood is indeed "a juice of rarest quality." What the poet and natural scientist Goethe already suspected can now actually be visualized using innovative imaging techniques.

Not every wound can be closed with needle and thread. researchers have now developed a soldering process with nanoparticles that gently fuses tissue. The soldering technique is expected to prevent wound healing disorders and life-threatening complications from leaking sutures. The team recently published the promising method in the journal Small Methods and applied for a patent.

The construction industry as a CO2 sink? Researchers at Empa's Concrete & Asphalt lab are working on this. By incorporating biochar into concrete, they are exploring the potential of CO2-neutral or even CO2-negative concrete. For optimal applicability, they process the biochar into pellets and use them to replace conventional aggregates.

Antimicrobial hospital curtains Hospital germs and pathogens are not always transmitted directly from person to person. They can also spread via germ-contaminated surfaces and objects. researchers, together with the chemical company BASF, Spiez Laboratory and the Technical University of Berlin, have now developed coated textiles that inhibit or even kill pathogens.

Researchers are developing a dressing containing probiotic lactobacilli. These are intended to heal chronically infected wounds by destroying persistent biofilms, the scientists report in a study published in the scientific journal Microbes and Infection. Millimeter by millimeter, new tissue makes its way through a wound until it has closed a skin lesion.

After their production, which emits a lot of carbon dioxide, cement-based building materials such as concrete absorb the climate gas again - a process that takes decades and can hardly be controlled. What if it could be accelerated to protect the climate? researchers are collaborating with numerous partners in an elaborate project to find a solution that already takes place in the concrete production plant.

Although strict limits exist, batteries can still contain too many harmful ingredients such as mercury, cadmium and lead. The Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) has therefore launched a control campaign. Empa has laid the foundations for this with a specially developed method for analyzing heavy metals .

At Empa, acoustics experts have been investigating for years how noise is generated by passenger and cargo trains - and which technical and structural measures are particularly effective to prevent or at least reduce it. Their findings have now been incorporated into the SILVARSTAR project resulting in a simulation tool for rail noise that can help in practice.

When the children's creativity meets scientific expertise, new ideas are born - for example, about what the sustainable world of tomorrow might look like.

The Empa spin-off BTRY wants to revolutionize rechargeable batteries: Their thin-film batteries are not only safer and longer-lasting than conventional lithium-ion batteries, they are also much more environmentally friendly to manufacture and can be charged and discharged in just one minute. For now, the battery is very small, but the founders have big plans for it.

Researchers have developed an epoxy resin that can be repaired and recycled, in addition to being flame-retardant and mechanically strong. Potential applications range from coating for wooden flooring to composites in aerospace and railways. Epoxy resins are tough and versatile polymers. In combination with glass or carbon fibers, they are used, for example, to manufacture components for aircraft, cars, trains, ships and wind turbines.

Quantum technology is promising, but also perplexing. In the coming decades, it is expected to provide us with various technological breakthroughs: smaller and more precise sensors, highly secure communication networks, and powerful computers that can help develop new drugs and materials, control financial markets, and predict the weather much faster than current computing technology ever could.