AIMS Tellurium-based devices, such as photovoltaic (PV) modules and thermoelectric generators, are expected to play an increasing role in renewable energy technologies. Tellurium, however, is one of the scarcest elements in the earth's crust, and current production and recycling methods are inefficient and use toxic chemicals. This study demonstrates an alternative, bacterially mediated telluri...

Squalene monooxygenase is a flavin adenine dinucleotide-containing, microsomal enzyme that catalyzes the second step in the committed pathway for cholesterol biosynthesis. Feeding weanling rats a diet containing 1% elemental tellurium causes a transient, peripheral demyelination due to the disruption of cholesterol synthesis in Schwann cells secondary to inhibition of squalene monooxygenase. Th...

Basnayake, Rukma ST, Inorganic Selenium and Tellurium Speciation in Aqueous Medium of Biological Samples, Master of Science (Chemistry), December 2001, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, 60 pp. Purpose The purpose of this research was to develop methods to study the ability of bacteria, Pseudomonas fluorescens K27 to detoxify tellurium and selenium salts by biotransformation proce...

Tellurium is an element used in the vulcanization of rubber and in metal-oxidizing solutions to blacken or tarnish metals. Descriptions of human toxicity from tellurium ingestion are rare. We report the clinical course of 2 children who ingested metal-oxidizing solutions containing substantial concentrations of tellurium. Clinical features included vomiting, black discoloration of the oral muco...

Single crystalline tellurium nanowires were successfully synthesized in large scale by a facile approach of vaporizing tellurium metal and condensing the vapor in an inert atmosphere onto a Si substrate. Tellurium was evaporated by heating at 300 degrees C at 1 torr and condensed on the Si substrate at 100-150 degrees C, in the downstream of argon (Ar) gas at a flow rate of 25 sccm for 30 min. ...

A highly sensitive and selective catalytic method with 2.5-order differential oscillopolarographic detection is described for the determination of tellurium, based on its activation effect on the slow Pd(II)-catalyzed reaction of sodium hypophosphite and methyl red in hydrochloric acid medium at 100 degrees C. Methyl red exhibited a sensitive 2.5-order differential polarographic wave at -0.35 V...

Coevaporated bismuth-tellurium and antimony-tellurium films were fabricated under various deposition conditions scontrolled evaporation rates of individual species, substrate temperature, and substrate materiald, and their thermoelectric sTEd properties sSeebeck coefficient, electrical resistivity, and carrier concentrationd were measured in search of optimal TE performance. The tellurium atomi...

Owing to the very brittle nature of tellurium powder, nanoscopic grains with an average size of 4.8 ± 0.8 nm were produced by dry vibration milling technique using a mixer/mill apparatus. A novel material was obtained by binding the nanosized tellurium grains with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polymer. The morphology, elemental composition, and structural and optical properties of Te/PMMA fi...

An overview highlighting the anti-cancer potential of (bio-essential) seleniumand tellurium-containing species, with an emphasis on biological targets and mechanisms of action, is presented. Studies thus far have focused on selenium(II) compounds (along with – to a lesser extent – inorganic selenium and selenium nanoparticles) which often successfully exploit the inherent anti-oxidizing ability...