#Discovery about new battery overturns decades of false assumptions Abstract: New findings at Oregon State university have overturned a scientific dogma that stood for decades,
by showing that potassium can work with graphite in a potassium-ion battery-a discovery that could pose a challenge and sustainable alternative to the widely-used lithium-ion battery.
Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous in devices all over the world, ranging from cell phones to laptop computers and electric cars.
But there may soon be a new type of battery based on materials that are far more abundant and less costly.
A potassium-ion battery has been shown to be possible. And the last time this possibility was explored was
or other bulk carbon anodes in a battery,"said Xiulei (David) Ji, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Science at Oregon State university."
because they open some new alternatives to batteries that can work with well-established and inexpensive graphite as the anode,
or high-energy reservoir of electrons. Lithium can do that, as the charge carrier whose ions migrate into the graphite
The new findings show that it can work effectively with graphite or soft carbon in the anode of an electrochemical battery.
Right now, batteries based on this approach don't have performance that equals those of lithium-ion batteries,
"It's safe to say that the energy density of a potassium-ion battery may never exceed that of lithium-ion batteries,
"Electrical energy storage in batteries is essential not only for consumer products such as cell phones and computers,
Mcmaster engineers build better energy storage device Mcmaster Engineering researchers Emily Cranston and Igor Zhitomirsky are turning trees into energy storage devices capable of powering everything from a smart watch to a hybrid car.
an organic compound found in plants, bacteria, algae and trees, to build more efficient and longer-lasting energy storage devices or supercapacitors.
and Zhitomirsky, a materials science and engineering professor, demonstrates an improved three-dimensional energy storage device constructed by trapping functional nanoparticles within the walls of a nanocellulose foam.
and faster charging abilities compared to rechargeable batteries. Lightweight and high-power density capacitors are of particular interest for the development of hybrid and electric vehicles.
The fast-charging devices allow for significant energy saving, because they can accumulate energy during braking and release it during acceleration."
"I believe that the best results can be obtained when researchers combine their expertise, "Zhitomirsky says."
and the energy costs are expected to be said extremely low Kai Liu, professor of physics at UC Davis and corresponding author of a paper on the work, published in the journal Nature Communications Oct 8.
That means they can potentially store information at an energy cost much lower than current technology,
In Science Advances, the researchers report the discovery of an optical effect that allows them to"tune"the energy of electrons in these materials using light,
Platinum is used as a catalyst in fuel cells, in automobile converters and in the chemical industry because of its remarkable ability to facilitate a wide range of chemical reactions.
for example in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells, which are the leading contenders for small-scale and mobile power generation not based on batteries or combustion engines.
The Tufts researchers discovered that dispersing individual, isolated platinum atoms in much less costly copper surfaces can create a highly effective
With that knowledge, Sykes and his fellow chemists turned to long-time Tufts collaborator Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos, Ph d.,the Robert and Marcy Haber Endowed Professor in Energy Sustainability at the School of engineering,
"While we had shown previously that palladium would do related reactions in a closed reactor system, this work with platinum is our first demonstration of operation in a flow reactor at industrially relevant conditions.
We believe this approach is also applicable to other precious metals if added as minority components in copper."
"Environmental Benefits Because platinum is at the center of many clean energy and green chemicals production technologies, such as fuel cells, catalytic converters,
In the early 2000s, Maria's group had pioneered the single-atom approach for metals anchored on oxide supports as the exclusive active sites for the water-gas shift reaction to upgrade hydrogen streams for fuel cell use.
and manage electric charge.""The key to the film's performance is ordered the highly spacing of the pores,
"The tunnel effect enables us to move electrons through the ultra-thin layer with very little energy,
If one adds energy to an atom-one says that the atom is excited--it normally takes some time before the atom loses energy and returns to its original state.
Just like a natural atom, you can charge it with energy; excite the atom; which it then emits in the form of light particles.
is that it sees the very small variations in the electromagnetic field which must exist due to quantum theory,
Iranian researchers from Materials and Energy Research center (MERC) succeeded in the production of a type of biocompatible nanocomposite with the ability to carry drugs,
i e. the electrons can have different states at the same energy level. The superposition of several anyons cannot be affected without moving them,
Phosphors are common light emitters used in light bulbs, LEDS and elsewhere. They are extremely efficient
because much of the energy pumped into them is converted to light as opposed to heat.
when pumped with energy, changes very quickly from a transparent insulating state to a reflective metallic state.
As the VO2 changes phase, the erbium emissions go from being generated mostly by magnetic dipole transitions (the rotational torque push
A faster means of changing the VO2 phase--perhaps using electricity instead of a laser--could make the system much faster still.
sensitivity, cost, energy loss and human resources. The system designed in this research is complicated less in comparison with other diagnosis methods,
#Production of Special Coating to Increase Efficiency of Solar cells in Iran Results of the experiments prove the increase in the efficiency of the produced cells.
The solar cells can be used to produce electricity for industrial applications, including domestic appliance, automotive and aerospace after being produced mass.
In recent years, dye sensitized solar cells have become very important as the third generation of solar cells. The cheap equipment has very simple production technology
and study the performance of a type of coating to be used in dye sensitized solar cells. Titanium dioxide nanoparticles doped with elements such as strontium
chemical structure and composition of the coatings have been controlled in a way that it increases the current density in short circuits of dye sensitized solar cells.
for some materials to conduct electricity without resistance, even at"high temperatures approaching-100 degrees Celsius."
where an additional amount of energy is required to strip electrons out of the material. For decades, scientists have debated the origin of the pseudogap
"Crystallites that experience higher external pressures will have a greater free energy change associated with the phase transition
they found out that silicon nanoparticles are exhibit strong resonances in the visible spectrum-the so-called magnetic dipole resonances.
#Silk could be new'green'material for next-generation batteries Lithium-ion batteries have enabled many of today electronics, from portable gadgets to electric cars.
But much to the frustration of consumers, none of these batteries last long without a recharge.
Now scientists report in the journal ACS Nano("Hierarchical Porous Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Nanosheets Derived from Silk for Ultrahigh-Capacity Battery Anodes and Supercapacitors")the development of a new,
reenway to boost the performance of these batteries with a material derived from silk. Chuanbao Cao and colleagues note that carbon is a key component in commercial Li-ion energy storage devices including batteries and supercapacitors.
Most commonly graphite fills that role, but it has limited a energy capacity. To improve the energy storage,
manufacturers are looking for an alternative material to replace graphite. Cao team wanted to see
The researchers found a way to process natural silk to create carbon-based nanosheets that could potentially be used in energy storage devices.
Their material stores five times more lithium than graphite can a capacity that is critical to improving battery performance.
The researchers successfully incorporated their material in prototype batteries and supercapacitors in a one-step method that could easily be scaled up,
#New metal-organic framework material captures carbon at half the energy cost UC Berkeley chemists have made a major leap forward in carbon-capture technology with a material that can
potentially cutting by half or more the energy currently consumed in the process. The released CO2 can then be injected underground,
"Carbon dioxide is 15 percent of the gas coming off a power plant, so a carbon-capture unit is going to be said big
or the 100-Degree fahrenheit) flue gases from a power plant.""It would work great on something like the International space station,
Graphic by Thomas Mcdonald, Jarad Mason, Jeffrey Long/UC Berkeley) Though power plants are required not now to capture carbon dioxide from their emissions,
"From flue gas to submarines Power plants that capture CO2 today use an old technology whereby flue gases are bubbled through organic amines in water, where the carbon dioxide binds to amines.
the process also saves the huge energy costs of heating the water in which amines are dissolved.
to use the new technology to radically reduce the cost of chemical separations, with plans in the works for a pilot study of CO2 separation from power plant emissions.
and solar cells also rely on small molecules. mall molecules have had already a big impact on the world,
"Considering the massive use of vehicles, a small gain in efficiency has a big impact in saving energy and reducing carbon emissions annually."
"The combination of friction and mechanical pressure enhances the probability of chemical reactions by reducing the energy needed to break
energy efficiency and size of future data centers, supercomputers and cloud systems. Photonic devices, which use photons instead of electrons to transport
which will lead to computing systems that can process more information at higher performance levels and with better energy efficiency,
The entire device is powered by a 3. 9-volt micro lithium battery and weighs 1 to 1. 5 grams."
where the position or energy of a particle exists in two or more states at the same time and entanglement,
and draw motional energy out of it at the same time. However since the laser light can sometimes actually heat the objects up this method has not been shown to work before."
#Energy-generating nanopatterened cloth could replace batteries From light up shoes to smart watches, wearable electronics are gaining traction among consumers,
short-lived batteries that are required. These limitations, however, could soon be overcome. In the journal ACS Nano("Nanopatterned Textile-Based Wearable Triboelectric Nanogenerator"),scientists report the first durable,
flexible cloth that harnesses human motion to generate energy. It can also self-charge batteries
or supercapacitors without an external power source and make new commercial and medical applications possible.
A new kind of material can harness energy from human movement and use it to light up a small LCD display.
American Chemical Society) Sang-Woo Kim and colleagues point out that the potential of wearable electronics extends far beyond the flashy and convenient.
long-lasting energy source that is seamlessly incorporated into the device's design. For a possible solution, Kim's team turned to the emerging technology of"triboelectric nanogenerators,
"or TNGS, which harvest energy from everyday motion. The researchers created a novel TNG fabric out of a silvery textile coated with nanorods and a silicon-based organic material.
When they stacked four pieces of the cloth together and pushed down on the material,
it captured the energy generated from the pressure. The material immediately pumped out that energy,
which was used to power light-emitting diodes, a liquid crystal display and a vehicle's keyless entry remote. The cloth worked for more than 12,000 cycles.
#Putting batteries on stage spotlights performance at the nanoscale Used in everything from electric vehicles to laptop computers,
the lithium battery is ubiquitous, but it is understood not well at the atomic scale. To see what happens on the nanoscale,
Using this stage inside a state-of-the-art aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope they can take nanoscale-resolution pictures of lithium ions as they are deposited on or dissolve off of an electrode while the battery runs("Observation and Quantification of Nanoscale Processes in Lithium batteries
and descriptions of what happens inside the battery. This information is vital to control performance-and safety-limiting processes.
and electrolytes (see Battery 101). The new stage will help quickly sort through options for longer lasting, safer batteries.
Methodsmoving beyond the current industry-standard lithium-ion battery has been difficult. In lithium-air and other designs, interactions at the electrode-electrolyte interfaces affect the battery's performance and safety.
To understand the reactions, scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, as part of JCESR, created an operando electrochemical stage.
Using it in an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope, scientists can now chemically image the interface between the platinum anode and the electrolyte during the battery operation.
The imaging method highlights solid lithium metal uniquely identifying it from the components that make up the protective solid electrolyte interphase layer.
Using these images and standard electrochemical data, scientists can quantify, at the nanoscale, the amount of lithium that ends up irreversibly deposited after each charge/discharge cycle.
This means they can view dendrites--the microscopic thorns that cause batteries to fail--as they form.
The technique also shows the growth of the solid electrolyte interphase layer, which wraps around and protects the anode.
as a result of the electrolyte breaking down. In their studies, the team found that extended battery cycling leads to lithium growing beneath the layer--the genesis of the dendrites that have implications for battery safety and performance.
What's Next? This new imaging tool opens up possibilities to rapidly visualize and test electrode/electrolyte pairings for new battery systems.
These systems could allow electric cars to travel great distances between charges. Also, one day, such systems could store energy from wind and solar stations, making the intermittent energy available when needed d
#Squid-inspired'invisibility stickers'could help you evade detection in the dark (w/video) Squid are the ultimate camouflage artists,
when it conducts electricity, the material transforms its lattice structure causing it to contract like a muscle,
New materials for energy application, new concepts for medical surfaces, new surface materials for tribological applications and nano safety and nano bio.
But desalination is an energy-intensive process, which concerns those wanting to expand its application.
who co-led the study with Ivan Vlassiouk in ORNL's Energy and Transportation Science Division."
requires a significant amount of energy. Reverse osmosis, a more energy-efficient process that nonetheless requires a fair amount of energy,
is the basis for the ORNL technology. Making pores in the graphene is key. Without these holes, water cannot travel from one side of the membrane to the other.
"That all serves to reduce the amount of energy that it takes to drive the process."
meaning it could also be used to make electrodes in those types of batteries. Chemists from Brown University have come up with a way to make new nanomaterials from a silicon-based compound.
optics or batteries. Image: Koski lab/Brown University)" Silicon-based compounds are the backbone of modern electronics processing,
#New study shows bacteria can use magnetic nanoparticles to create a'natural battery'(Nanowerk News) New research shows bacteria can use tiny magnetic particles to effectively create a'natural battery.'
but we speculate that it might be possible for other non-iron metabolizing organisms to use magnetite as a battery as well
meaning that the battery was used over repeated day-night cycles. Whilst this work has been on iron-metabolizing bacteria,
it is thought that in the environment the potential for magnetite to act as a battery could extend to many other types of bacteria
Supported by Northwestern's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern,
The team's next step is to use the same strategy for increasing the material's light absorption abilities to create a better material for solar cells and photodetectors."
atomlike energy levels that can be probed using green laser light. Like atomic systems, the NV centers can be used as a qubit.
As a result, the material conducts electricity better when temperature increases. The scientists submitted a patent application for their sensor.
or motors with soft and lightweight properties that can undergo large active deformations with high-energy conversion efficiencies.
Reporting this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters("Phenomena of nonlinear oscillation and special resonance of a dielectric elastomer minimum energy structure rotary joint"),researchers from the Harbin Institute of technology in Weihai, China
The dielectric elastomer actuator Zhao used is called a"dielectric elastomer minimum-energy structure""which is composed of a thin elastic frame and pre-stretched dielectric elastomer films,
balancing at a minimum energy state. When applying kilovolts of low-current electricity on the dielectric elastomer,
which makes dielectric elastomer minimum-energy structures a useful structure for fabricating soft devices, Zhao said.
Also, since dielectric elastomers feature high energy density (seventy times higher than conventional electromagnetic actuators) and high-energy conversion efficiency (60 to 90 percent), they could be good candidates for making energy-efficient devices,
#Thermal properties of nanowires-Follow the heat A mathematical model of heat flow through miniature wires could help develop thermoelectric devices that efficiently convert heat even their own waste heat into electricity.
when moved from water to an electrolyte solution, such as salt water("Dual hydrophilic and salt responsive schizophrenic block copolymers synthesis and study of self-assembly behavior").
"This would translate into huge energy savings on an industrial scale. l
#Scientists get 1 step closer to finding how to repair damaged nerve cells A team of researchers at the IRCM led by Frdric Charron, Phd,
meaning the electricity going in was only slightly less than the heat coming out. Since the 1960's there have been incremental advancements in alloy technology used in Peltier devices.
it is becoming increasingly necessary to have more efficient systems for localized electrical power generation and effective cooling mechanisms.
which had no moving parts (Fig. 1) and no energy storage device other than a thin elastic outer membrane.
When a fish escapes by swimming fast, it bends its body and zooms through the water, losing some energy to the surrounding water
and recovering about 30%of the energy. An octopus, on the other hand, uses more effectively, energy recovery mechanism to power its ultra-fast escape,
and is able to recover more than 50%of the energy available at the beginning. Hence, rendering this octopus robot highly energy efficient.
Underwater'robot'with 3d printed hull and elastic membrane demonstrates ultra-fast escape inspired from Octopus.
With further R&d, future AUVS and other marine vehicles can adopt this mechanism to help it evade threats or track something fast stealthily underwater without the need for much energy.
It could lead to miniaturized, battery-powered devices for medical and materials imaging, contraband detection,
3-D images of nanoscale objects (w/video)( Nanowerk News) To design the next generation of optical devices, ranging from efficient solar panels to LEDS to optical transistors,
who is an affiliate of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences at SLAC.
or in solar panels to improve the absorption of light by the active materials.""The technique could even be modified for imaging biological systems without the need for fluorescent labels.
"This novel material significantly enhanced catalytic activity for the oxygen reduction reaction--the splitting of an O2 molecule into two oxygen ions--that is critical to fuel cells and potentially other electrochemical applications.
energy and for building construction could soon arise, thanks to a key advance in understanding the structure of wood.
energy and for building construction"."Professors Ray and Paul Dupree have discussed the possibility of working together to solve outstanding questions in plant biochemistry for twenty years.
The chemical industry is undergoing a major transformation as a consequence of unstable energy costs, limited natural resources and climate change.
more sustainable forms of energy as well as using biotechnology techniques to produce synthetic chemicals are currently being developed at The University of Manchester.
Other promising devices include very inexpensive solar cells for low-cost and low-carbon electricity generation and ultra-efficient building lighting which could substantially lower electricity consumption.
Yajun Gao and Professor Paul H. M. van Loosdrecht from the University of Cologne have made now substantial progress in this field in collaboration with researchers from Jilin University (China) and the University of Nottingham (UK).
#Harvesting energy from electromagnetic waves (Nanowerk News) For our modern, technologically-advanced society, in which technology has become the solution to a myriad of challenges,
energy is critical not only for growth but also, more importantly, survival. The sun is an abundant and practically infinite source of energy,
so researchers around the world are racing to create novel approaches to"harvest"clean energy from the sun or transfer that energy to other sources.
This week in the journal Applied Physics Letters("Metamaterial electromagnetic energy harvester with near unity efficiency"),researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada report a novel design for electromagnetic energy harvesting based on
the"full absorption concept.""This involves the use of metamaterials that can be tailored to produce media that neither reflects nor transmits any power--enabling full absorption of incident waves at a specific range of frequencies and polarizations."
"The growing demand for electrical energy around the globe is the main factor driving our research,
"More than 80 percent of our energy today comes from burning fossil fuels, which is both harmful to our environment and unsustainable as well.
In our group, we're trying to help solve the energy crisis by improving the efficiency of electromagnetic energy-harvesting systems."
and harvesting electromagnetic energy, classical dipole patch antennas have been used.""Now, our technology introduces'metasurfaces'that are much better energy collectors than classical antennas,
"explained Omar M. Ramahi, professor of electrical and computer engineering. Metasurfaces are formed by etching the surface of a material with an elegant pattern of periodic shapes.
The particular dimensions of these patterns and their proximity to each other can be tuned to provide"near-unity"energy absorption.
This energy is channeled then to a load through a conducting path that connects the metasurface to a ground plane.
The key significance of the researchers'work is that it demonstrates for the first time that it's possible to collect essentially all of the electromagnetic energy that falls onto a surface."
"Conventional antennas can channel electromagnetic energy to a load --but at much lower energy absorption efficiency levels,"said Ramahi."
"We can also channel the absorbed energy into a load, rather than having the energy dissipate in the material as was done in previous works."
"As you can imagine, this work has a broad range of applications. Among the most important is space solar power,
an emerging critical technology that can significantly help to address energy shortages. It converts solar rays into microwaves--using conventional photovoltaic solar panels--and then beams the microwave's energy to microwave collector farms at designated locations On earth.
Japan is way out in front of rest of the world in this realm, with plans to begin harvesting solar power from space by 2030."
"Our research enables significantly higher energy absorption than classical antennas, "Ramahi said.""This results in a significant reduction of the energy harvesting surface footprint.
Real estate is a precious commodity for energy absorption --whether it's wind, hydro, solar or electromagnetic energy."
"Other key applications include"wireless power transfer--directly adaptable to power remote devices such as RFID devices and tags or even remote devices in general,"Ramahi noted.
#Graphene pushes the speed limit of light-to-electricity conversion (Nanowerk News) The efficient conversion of light into electricity plays a crucial role in many technologies,
ranging from cameras to solar cells. It also forms an essential step in data communication applications, since it allows for information carried by light to be converted into electrical information that can be processed in electrical circuits.
"The new device that the researchers developed is capable of converting light into electricity in less than 50 femtoseconds (a twentieth of a millionth of a millionth of a second.
Thus, the energy absorbed from light is efficiently and rapidly converted into electron heat. Next, the electron heat is converted into a voltage at the interface of two graphene regions with different doping.
, biological fl uids, strong electromagnetic fields, and fast-moving objects. The strategy followed to design this kind of devices relies on the thermal dependence of the phosphor luminescence,
biological fluids, strong electromagnetic fields, and fast-moving objects. The temperature determination is usually based on the change of the luminescence intensity or decay times.
the acib method replaces chemical synthesis-an energy-consuming and anything but environmentally friendly process.
which designs and builds organisms able to make useful products such as medicines, energy, food, materials and chemicals.
and energy to perform. What are these functions? Well, youe performing some of them right now.
the resulting device would have to be loaded enormous with multitudes of transistors that would require far more energy. lassical computers will always find an ineluctable limit to efficient brain-like computation in their very architecture,
however, many more memristors would be required to build more complex neural networks to do the same kinds of things we can do with barely any effort and energy,
ability to conduct electricity and heat and many interesting optical, magnetic and chemical properties. However, early studies of the behavior of electrons in graphene were hampered by defects in the material.
it takes an increase in energy for the electron to continue flowing. As a result, they are reflected often,
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