News and information Samsung's New Graphene technology Will Double Life Of Your Lithium-Ion Battery July 1st,
2015announcements Samsung's New Graphene technology Will Double Life Of Your Lithium-Ion Battery July 1st, 2015researchers from the UCA, key players in a pioneering study that may explain the origin of several digestive diseases June 30th,
2015interviews/Book reviews/Essays/Reports/Podcasts/Journals/White papers Samsung's New Graphene technology Will Double Life Of Your Lithium-Ion Battery July 1st,
It's an advance that could have huge implications for everything from photography to solar power.
and emit light energy is such that it can make itself--and, in applications, other very small things--appear 10,000 times as large as its physical size."
amplifying itself as the surrounding environment manipulates the physical properties of its wave energy. The researchers took advantage of this by creating an artificial material in
meaning it can gather a lot of light energy, and then scatters the light over a very large area,
Much as a very thin string on a guitar can absorb a large amount of acoustic energy from its surroundings
this one very small optical device can receive light energy from all around and yield a surprisingly strong output.
Given the nanoresonator's capacity to absorb large amounts of light energy, the technology also has potential in applications that harvest the sun's energy with high efficiency.
In addition, Yu envisions simply letting the resonator emit that energy in the form of infrared light toward the sky,
which is very cold. Because the nanoresonator has a large optical cross-section--that is, an ability to emit light that dramatically exceeds its physical size--it can shed a lot of heat energy,
and could enable new technologies in light sensing and solar energy conversion, "Yu says s
#An easy, scalable and direct method for synthesizing graphene in silicon microelectronics: Korean researchers grow 4-inch diameter, high-quality, multi-layer graphene on desired silicon substrates,
and lead to faster transistors, cheaper solar cells, new types of sensors and more efficient bioelectric sensory devices.
and it can conduct electricity as well as copper, carrying electrons with almost no resistance even at room temperature, a property known as ballistic transport.
Graphene ink with binders usually conducts electricity better than binder-free ink, but only after the binder material,
#Hematite're-growth'smoothes rough edges for clean energy harvest (Nanowerk News) Finding an efficient solar water splitting method to mine electron-rich hydrogen for clean
But by'regrowing'the mineral's surface, a smoother version of hematite doubled electrical yield, opening a new door to energy harvesting artificial photosynthesis,
a team of researchers led by Boston College chemist Dunwei Wang achieved'unassisted'water splitting using the abundant rust-like mineral and silicon to capture and store solar energy within hydrogen gas.
whose research focuses on discovering new methods to generate clean energy.''This unassisted water splitting, which is very rare,
'Getting there will contribute to a sustainable future powered by renewable energy.''The team, which included researchers from Boston College, UC Berkeley and China's University of Science and Technology, decided to focus on hematite's surface imperfections,
the central process behind using artificial photosynthesis to capture and store solar energy in hydrogen gas.
when enough heat or other energy is applied, the forces that bond the atoms together cause the atoms to vibrate
and spread the energy throughout the material, akin to how the vibration of a violin's string resonates throughout the body of the violin when played.
take out or move energy around inside a material. In particular, finding effective ways to remove heat energy is vital to the continued miniaturization of electronics.
and measure how much energy the electrons have transferred to the vibrating atoms. But it's difficult.
"Unlike a violin that sounds at the lightest touch, according to Natterer, phonons have a characteristic threshold energy.
unless they get just the right amount of energy, such as that supplied by the electrons in a scanning tunneling microscope (STM).
the unwanted signals also varied in energy, but the phonons remained fixed at their characteristic frequency.
their designs are intended to be powered grid. When operating off the grid, these systems are not cost-effective,
essentially blocking disconnected, rural villages from using them. Wrights solution offers an alternative to grid power:
Shes designed a village-scale desalination system that runs on solar power. Since her system is powered by the sun,
operational and maintenance costs are fairly minimal: The system requires an occasional cartridge filter change,
however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes or, even better,
that can extract energy from the environment to recharge. Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology And circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it
even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous experimental ultralow-power converters had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent.
Moreover, the researcherschip achieves those efficiency improvements while assuming additional responsibilities. Where its predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery
or directly power a device, this new chip can do both, and it can power the device directly from the battery.
All of those operations also share a single inductor the chip main electrical component which saves on circuit board space
the chip power consumption remains low. e still want to have battery-charging capability, and we still want to provide a regulated output voltage,
Ups and downs The circuit chief function is to regulate the voltages between the solar cell, the battery,
If the battery operates for too long at a voltage that either too high or too low, for instance, its chemical reactants break down,
since the rate at which it dissipates energy as heat is proportional to the square of the current.
and falls depends on the voltage generated by the solar cell, which is highly variable. So the timing of the switch throws has to vary, too.
whose selection is determined by the solar cell voltage. Once again, when the capacitor fills, the switches in the inductor path are flipped. n this technology space,
because there a fixed amount of energy that consumed by doing the work, says Brett Miwa,
#Nanogenerator harvests power from rolling tires A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers and a collaborator from China have developed a nanogenerator that harvests energy from a car's rolling tire friction.
An innovative method of reusing energy, the nanogenerator ultimately could provide automobile manufacturers a new way to squeeze greater efficiency out of their vehicles.
which is the first of its kind, in a paper published May 6, 2015, in the journal Nano Energy("Single-electrode triboelectric nanogenerator for scavenging friction energy from rolling tires").
Xudong Wang has developed a new way to harvest energy from rolling tires. The nanogenerator relies on the triboelectric effect to harness energy from the changing electric potential between the pavement and a vehicle's wheels.
The triboelectric effect is the electric charge that results from the contact or rubbing together of two dissimilar objects.
Wang says the nanogenerator provides an excellent way to take advantage of energy that is usually lost due to friction."
"The friction between the tire and the ground consumes about 10 percent of a vehicle's fuel,
"That energy is wasted. So if we can convert that energy, it could give us very good improvement in fuel efficiency."
"The nanogenerator relies on an electrode integrated into a segment of the tire. When this part of the tire surface comes into contact with the ground,
the friction between those two surfaces ultimately produces an electrical charge-a type of contact electrification known as the triboelectric effect.
The movement of electrons caused by friction was able to generate enough energy to power the lights
supporting the idea that energy lost to friction can actually be collected and reused.""Regardless of the energy being wasted,
we can reclaim it, and this makes things more efficient, "Wang says.""I think that's the most exciting part of this,
how to save the energy from consumption.""The researchers also determined that the amount of energy harnessed is directly related to the weight of a car,
as well as its speed. Therefore the amount of energy saved can vary depending on the vehicle -but Wang estimates about a 10-percent increase in the average vehicle's gas mileage given 50-percent friction energy conversion efficiency."
"There's big potential with this type of energy, "Wang says.""I think the impact could be huge."
"Source: University of Wisconsin-Madiso o
#New lithium ion battery is safer, tougher, and more powerful Lithium ion batteries (LIBS) are a huge technological advancement from lead acid batteries
which have existed since the late 1850. Thanks to their low weight, high energy density and slower loss of charge when not in use, LIBS have become the preferred choice for consumer electronics.
Lithium-ion cells with cobalt cathodes hold twice the energy of a nickel-based battery and four times that of lead acid.
Despite being a superior consumer battery, LIBS still have some drawbacks. Current manufacturing technology is reaching the theoretical energy density limit for LIBS
and overheating leading to thermal runaway i e. enting with flameis a serious concern. South korean researchers at the Center for Self-assembly and Complexity, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Department of chemistry and Division of Advanced Materials science at Pohang University, have created a new LIB made from a porous solid
which greatly improves its performance as well as reducing the risks due to overheating("Solid lithium electrolytes based on an organic molecular porous solid").
"Since 2002 there have been over 40 recalls in the US alone due to fire or explosion risk from LIBS used in consumer electronic devices.
These types of batteries, in all of their different lithium-anode combinations, continue to be an essential part of modern consumer electronics
despite their poor track record at high temperatures. The Korean team tried a totally new approach in making the batteries.
According to Dr. Kimoon Kim at IBS, e have investigated already high and highly anisotropic directionally dependent proton conducting behaviors in porous CB 6 for fuel cell electrolytes.
It is possible for this lithium ion conduction following porous CB 6 to be safer than existing solid lithium electrolyte-based organic-molecular porous-materials utilizing the simple soaking method
Current LIB technology relies on intercalated lithium which functions well, but due to ever increasing demands from electronic devices to be lighter and more powerful,
investigation of novel electrolytes is necessary in order. The new battery is built from pumpkin-shaped molecules called cucurbit 6 uril (CB 6)
which are organized in a honeycomb-like structure. The molecules have an incredibly thin 1d-channel,
The physical structure of the porous CB 6 enables the lithium ions to battery to diffuse more freely than in conventional LIBS
and exist without the separators found in other batteries. In tests the porous CB 6 solid electrolytes showed impressive lithium ion conductivity.
To compare this to existing battery electrolytes, the team used a measurement of the lithium transference number (tli)
+which was recorded at 0. 7-0. 8 compared to 0. 2-0. 5 of existing electrolytes.
They also subjected the batteries to extreme temperatures of up to 373 K (99.85°C), well above the 80°C typical upper temperature window for exiting LIBS.
In the tests, the batteries were cycled at temperatures between 298 K and 373 K (24.85°C and 99.85°C) for a duration of four days and after each cycle the results showed no thermal runaway and hardly any change in conductivity.
Various conventional liquid electrolytes can incorporate in a porous CB 6 framework and converted to safer solid lithium electrolytes.
Additionally, electrolyte usage is limited not to use only in LIBS, but a lithium air battery potentially feasible.
What makes this new technique most exciting is that it is a new method of preparing a solid lithium electrolyte
which starts as a liquid but no post-synthetic modification or chemical treatment is needed t
#Nanotechnology transforms cotton fibers into modern marvel (Nanowerk News) Juan Hinestroza and his students live in a cotton-soft nano world,
where they create clothing that kills bacteria, conducts electricity, wards off malaria, captures harmful gas and weaves transistors into shirts and dresses.
Cotton is one of the most fascinating and misunderstood materials, said Hinestroza, associate professor of fiber science,
With ultrathin solar panels for trim and a USB charger tucked into the waist, the Southwest-inspired garment captured enough sunshine to charge cell phones
It's an advance that could have huge implications for everything from photography to solar power.
and emit light energy is such that it can make itself--and, in applications, other very small things--appear 10,000 times as large as its physical size."
amplifying itself as the surrounding environment manipulates the physical properties of its wave energy. The researchers took advantage of this by creating an artificial material in
meaning it can gather a lot of light energy, and then scatters the light over a very large area,
Much as a very thin string on a guitar can absorb a large amount of acoustic energy from its surroundings
this one very small optical device can receive light energy from all around and yield a surprisingly strong output.
Given the nanoresonator's capacity to absorb large amounts of light energy, the technology also has potential in applications that harvest the sun's energy with high efficiency.
In addition, Yu envisions simply letting the resonator emit that energy in the form of infrared light toward the sky,
which is very cold. Because the nanoresonator has a large optical cross-section--that is, an ability to emit light that dramatically exceeds its physical size--it can shed a lot of heat energy,
and could enable new technologies in light sensing and solar energy conversion, "Yu says s
#An easy, scalable and direct method for synthesizing graphene in silicon microelectronics (Nanowerk News) In the last decade,
and lead to faster transistors, cheaper solar cells, new types of sensors and more efficient bioelectric sensory devices.
and it can conduct electricity as well as copper, carrying electrons with almost no resistance even at room temperature, a property known as ballistic transport.
#Making polymer nanostructures from a greenhouse gas (Nanowerk News) A future where power plants feed their carbon dioxide directly into an adjacent production facility instead of spewing it up a chimney
#Nikola Labs unveils new tech to harvest electricity from EMFS; learn history behind Nikola Tesla's free electricity A revolutionary new energy harvesting technology recently unveiled by Nikola Labs,
an Ohio-based startup company inspired by the late inventor and energy genius Nikola Tesla,
promises to capture all those stray radio waves emitted back and forth between wireless phones and the towers through
and convert them back into more energy, extending a smartphone's battery life by as much as 30%.
%Announced as part of an upcoming Kickstarter fundraising campaign, the technology, which Nikola's designers engineered into a special case made for Apple's iphone,
reportedly harvests the electromagnetic radiation transferring to and from mobile phones and converts it into direct current (DC) electrical energy,
which is recycled then back into the phone's battery.""Nikola Technology efficiently converts RF signals like Wi-fi, Bluetooth,
and LTE into DC power using its proprietary energy harvesting circuit, "explains the company on its website."
"The result is usable energy that can provide power to mobile devices wirelessly.""Though not perfect by any means, Nikola energy-capturing case holds promise For a sponsorship contribution of $99,
early supporters of the project will gain exclusive first-issue access to the case, which doesn't so much charge an iphone actively as it does extend its normal battery life.
Still, the case's novelty, and more importantly its longer-term potential, is what stands to inspire a new generation to take advantage of energy inefficiency and waste.
One major drawback to the technology is that its relatively slow to harvest energy, and the case itself doesn't contain an actual battery of its own to store excess charge.
At the same time the case itself is small and form-fits well to the iphone, acting as an all-in-one battery extension package that's sleek, discreet and unobtrusive."
"As magical as this sounds, the iphone case won't be able to charge your phone from zero to 100,
%"explains Business Insider about the case, which captures some 90%of the stray signals that would
either--the antenna and power-converting circuit can only extend the battery life of an iphone 6 by about 30,
"Tesla's visions of wireless energy threatened the military-industrial complex; were sabotaged his ideas? The official Kickstarter campaign for the case is expected to be launched in June,
and its unveiling is sure to inspire many curious folks to take a closer look at the energy discoveries of the man behind the Nikola name, Nikola Tesla.
Tesla's pie-in-the-sky ideas admittedly led to some pretty amazing breakthroughs in energy technology.
Of particular interest was Tesla's dream of developing a way to transmit energy wirelessly using only air as a medium.
which reports at the time highlighted was being designed to draw millions of volts of electricity through the air from Niagara falls and feed it into cities, factories and private houses from the tops of towers, all without wires.
and threaten other industries related to the control of energy and power r
#World's first biolimb: Rat forelimb grown in the lab IT MIGHT look like an amputated rat forelimb,
and preparation-has been designed to produce crops with the least amount of energy expenditure possible. The operators claim the hydroponics
#Flexible methane production from electricity and biomass The variable operation modes were the biggest challenge during development says Project Head Siegfried Bajohr of the Engler-Bunte Institute (EBI) of KIT.
From the products of a biomass gasification plant i e. hydrogen carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide the Demosng pilot plant directly produces methane and water by means of a nickel catalyst (SNG operation.
Then the volume flow in the plant can be doubled utilization of carbon from biomass will increase to nearly 100%and a large amount of usable waste heat will be produced by the catalyst (Ptg operation.
As conventional methanation processes reach their limits at this point we have developed a new reactor concept Bajohr says.
There it will be integrated into the gas flows of a biomass gasification plant utilizing wooden residues.
and transporting it in our gas grids in the form of methane Thomas Kolb Head of the Engler-Bunte Institute of KIT emphasizes.
So far admixture of hydrogen in the natural gas grid has been limited to a few percent as storage distribution
Via an effective methanation wind and solar power can be fed into the natural gas grid without any limitations.
With plants such as Demosng excessive green electricity can be used much better. For example it might be converted decentrally with the carbon dioxide produced by the about 800000 biogas facilities
which could help us reduce our reliance on conventional energy sources, in the ACS journal Nano Letters.
Yi Cui and colleagues note that nearly half of global energy consumption goes toward heating buildings and homes.
they can also be warmed actively with an electricity source to further crank up the heat. The researchers calculated that their thermal textiles could save about 1
000 kilowatt hours per person every year--that's about how much electricity an average U s. home consumes in one month h
Running fuel cells on bacteria Researchers in Norway have succeeded in getting bacteria to power a fuel cell.
and the products of the process are purified water droplets and electricity. This is an environmentally-friendly process for the purification of water derived from industrial processes and suchlike.
It also generates small amounts of electricity--in practice enough to drive a small fan, a sensor or a light-emitting diode.
In the future, the researchers hope to scale up this energy generation to enable the same energy to be used to power the water purification process
often involving mechanical and energy-demanding decontamination steps at its outset. Nature's own generator The biological fuel cell is powered by entirely natural processes--with the help of living microorganisms."
"In simple terms, this type of fuel cell works because the bacteria consume the waste materials found in the water,
The voltage that arises between these particles generates energy that we can exploit. Since the waste in the wastewater (organic material) is consumed and thus removed,
and began discussing how bacteria could be used to generate energy. Since then, they have both been working to put the idea into practice--each from their own respective fields of expertise.
and generate electricity. The wastewater comes from the local Tine dairy and is rich in organic acids,
"At the moment, we're not talking about producing large volumes of energy, "says Netzer.""But the process is very interesting
because water purification processes are very energy-demanding using current technology. We're particularly pleased at being able to produce
just as much energy using low-cost materials as others are achieving using much more expensive approaches,
The clock signal alone synchronizing the circuits uses up to 30%of the energy--energy which can be saved through optical transmission explains Prof.
The next big step forward will be generating laser light with electricity instead and without the need for cooling if possible.
The current 3. 5-inch lab prototype, for example, has a force threshold level of 200 newtons--capable of absorbing the energy of a 100 mph fastball in 0. 03 seconds.
"First, lactic acid is fed into a reactor and converted into a type of pre-plastic under high temperature and in a vacuum,
"We have applied a petrochemical concept to biomass, "says postdoctoral researcher Michiel Dusselier.""We speed up and guide the chemical process in the reactor with a zeolite as a catalyst.
Zeolites are porous minerals. By selecting a specific type on the basis of its pore shape,
It's an advance that could have huge implications for everything from photography to solar power.
and emit light energy is such that it can make itself--and, in applications, other very small things--appear 10,000 times as large as its physical size."
amplifying itself as the surrounding environment manipulates the physical properties of its wave energy. The researchers took advantage of this by creating an artificial material in
meaning it can gather a lot of light energy, and then scatters the light over a very large area,
Much as a very thin string on a guitar can absorb a large amount of acoustic energy from its surroundings
this one very small optical device can receive light energy from all around and yield a surprisingly strong output.
Given the nanoresonator's capacity to absorb large amounts of light energy, the technology also has potential in applications that harvest the sun's energy with high efficiency.
In addition, Yu envisions simply letting the resonator emit that energy in the form of infrared light toward the sky,
which is very cold. Because the nanoresonator has a large optical cross-section--that is, an ability to emit light that dramatically exceeds its physical size--it can shed a lot of heat energy,
and could enable new technologies in light sensing and solar energy conversion, "Yu says s
#Chemists find a way to unboil eggs UC Irvine and Australian chemists have figured out how to unboil egg whites an innovation that could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production and other segments of the $160 billion global biotechnology industry,
#Perovskites provide big boost to silicon solar cells Stacking perovskites onto a conventional silicon solar cell dramatically improves the overall efficiency of the cell,
The researchers describe their novel perovskite-silicon solar cell in this week edition of the journal Energy & Environmental science. ee been looking for ways to make solar panels that are more efficient and lower cost,
said study co-author Michael Mcgehee, a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. ight now, silicon solar cells dominate the world market,
but the power conversion efficiency of silicon photovoltaics has been stuck at 25 percent for 15 years.
One cost-effective way to improve efficiency is to build a tandem device made of silicon and another inexpensive photovoltaic material,
Mcgehee said. ou simply put one solar cell on top of the other, and you get more efficiency than either could do by itself.
iodide and methylammonium could convert sunlight into electricity with an efficiency of 3. 8 percent.
rivaling commercially available silicon solar cells and spawning widespread interest among silicon manufacturers. ur goal is to leverage the silicon factories that already exist around the world,
co-lead author of the study. ith tandem solar cells, you don need a billion-dollar capital expenditure to build a new factory.
Sunlight to electricity Solar cells work by converting photons of sunlight into an electric current that moves between two electrodes.
Silicon solar cells generate electricity by absorbing photons of visible and infrared light, while perovskite cells harvest only the visible part of the solar spectrum where the photons have more energy.
Microscopic cross-section of a tandem solar cell made with two photovoltaic materials, perovskite stacked on top of CIGS (copper indium gallium diselenide).
COURTESY: Colin Bailie, Stanford bsorbing the high-energy part of the spectrum allows perovskite solar cells to generate more power per photon of visible light than silicon cells,
Bailie said. A key roadblock to building an efficient perovskite-silicon tandem has been a lack of transparency. olin had to figure out how to put a transparent electrode on the top
Mcgehee said. o one had made ever a perovskite solar cell with two transparent electrodes. Perovskites are damaged easily by heat and readily dissolve in water.
This inherent instability ruled out virtually all of the conventional techniques for applying electrodes onto the perovoskite solar cell
Remarkable efficiency For the experiment, the Stanford team stacked a perovskite solar cell with an efficiency of a 12.7 percent on top of a low-quality silicon cell with an efficiency of just 11.4 percent. y combining two cells
In another experiment, the research team replaced the silicon solar cell with a cell made of copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS.
it might be possible to upgrade conventional solar cells into higher-performing tandems with little increase in cost,
We have a ways to go to show that perovskite solar cells are stable enough to last 25 years.
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