Computers, light bulbs, and even people generate heat—energy that ends up being wasted. Thermoelectric devices, which convert heat to electricity and vice versa, harness that energy. But they're not efficient enough for widespread commercial use or are made from expensive or environmentally harmful rare materials.

Now, Caltech researchers have developed a new type of material—a nanomesh, composed of a thin film with a grid-like arrangement of tiny holes—that could lead to efficient thermoelectric devices.

Researchers at Caltech have devised a new technique—using a sheet of carbon just one atom thick—to visualize the structure of molecules. The technique, which was used to obtain the first direct images of how water coats surfaces at room temperature, can also be used to image a potentially unlimited number of other molecules, including antibodies and other biomolecules.

Professor Jacqueline Barton, chair of Caltech's Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, talks about the divsion's science, culture, and contributions and how the division's graduate students are the bonds that hold it all together.

As part of a broad effort to achieve breakthrough innovations in energy production, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman announced an award of up to $122 million over five years to a multidisciplinary team of top scientists, led by Caltech, to establish an Energy Innovation Hub aimed at developing revolutionary methods to generate fuels directly from sunlight.  

For the past month, Caltech scientists have been zigzagging across the Los Angeles basin. Using an orange and white DeHavilland Twin Otter aircraft packed with instruments, the researchers have been sampling the air, measuring particles and pollutants to help policymakers improve air quality and dampen the impacts of climate change.

Caltech is opening the new Warren and Katharine Schlinger Laboratory for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. The state-of-the-art, sustainable Schlinger Laboratory will provide a custom-designed, adaptable facility for a number of Caltech's chemists and chemical engineers, and will house synthetic chemistry and chemical engineering, enabling new research in catalysis, materials, and the atmosphere. 

Caltech graduate student Heather D. Agnew is the recipient of the 2010 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Caltech Student Prize. Agnew is among the four $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize winners. She was recognized for her integral contributions to the development of innovative biochemical protocols that can be utilized for more stable, robust—and inexpensive—detection of diseases like cancer, HIV, or malaria.

Research in genomic sciences, astronomy, seismology, and neuroeconomics are some of the many projects being funded at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

A gift of $3.9 million from the estate of Edward and Ruth Hughes to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) wll support graduate research fellowships in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (CCE).

Techniques recently invented by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)—which allow the real-time, real-space visualization of fleeting changes in the structure of nanoscale matter—have been used to image the evanescent electrical fields produced by the interaction of electrons and photons, and to track changes in atomic-scale structures.