They posses a high surface area for better electron transfer which can lead to the improved performance of an electrode in an electric double capacitor or battery.
These metals open the application space to areas such as energy harvesting sensing and electrochemical studies. The lift off technique is a method of patterning target materials on the surface of a substrate by using a sacrificial material.
Other applications of nanoporous metals include supporting the development of new metamaterials (engineered materials) for radiation-enhanced filtering
(or reflected light through the tunneling of surface plasmons a feature widely usable by light-emitting devices plasmonic lithography refractive-index-based sensing and all-optical switching.
which display processor memory and energy devices are integrated. The high temperature processes essential for high performance electronic devices have restricted severely the development of flexible electronics because of the fundamental thermal instabilities of polymer materials.
and inorganic-based energy devices such as battery solar cell and self-powered devices that require high temperature processes s
but this costs more and requires more energy to run. Color IQ is a thin glass tube,
all youe doing is replacing the light bulb, and yet the entire display looks much better.
Using the components in 20 million TVS is projected to save 600 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year worldwide enough electricity to power 50,000 average U s. homes. ee been able to show, cradle to grave,
When electrically charged, the dots illuminated a light bulb 25 times more efficiently than traditional devices.
In 2010, the company launched its first product, a QD light bulb, with partner Nexxus Lighting.
However, realizing this $100 light bulb would soon need to sell for $10 to remain competitive
QD light bulbs. he market has stabilized quite a bit, he says. omewhere down the line, we think there an application
#Streamlining thin film processing saves time energy Energy storage devices and computer screens may seem worlds apart but they're not.
When associate professor Qi Hua Fan of the electrical engineering and computer science department set out to make a less expensive supercapacitor for storing renewable energy he developed a new plasma technology that will streamline the production of display screens.
and plasma technologies Fan was named researcher of the year for the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering.
His research focuses on nanostructured materials used for photovoltaics energy storage and displays. Last spring Fan received a proof-of-concept grant from the Department of energy through the North Central Regional Sun Grant Center to determine
and commercialize renewable bio-based energy technologies. The proof-of-concept grants allow researchers to advance promising research to the next level of toward product development and commercialization.
Through this project Fan developed a faster way of treating the biochar particles using a new technology called plasma activation.
Treating means you use plasma to change the material surface such as creating pores Fan said.
The plasma treatment activates the biochar in five minutes and at room temperature Fan explained. Conventional chemical activation takes several hours to complete
This saves energy and is much more efficient Fan said. In this project he has been collaborating with assistant professor Zhengrong Gu in the agricultural
Plasma processing is a very critical technology in modern optoelectronic materials and devices Fan explained.
The high-energy plasma can deposit highly transparent and conductive thin films create high quality semiconductors and pattern micro-or nanoscale devices thus making the display images brighter and clearer.
Fan will work with Wintek to develop a prototype plasma system. The activation method has the potential to improve production efficiency saving time and energy he noted d
#New nanocomposites for aerospace and automotive industries The Center for Research in Advanced Materials (CIMAV) has developed reinforced graphite nanoplatelets seeking to improve the performance of solar cell materials.
The work done by Liliana Licea Jimenez uses this material because it has a large power capacity.
#Graphene/nanotube hybrid benefits flexible solar cells Rice university scientists have invented a novel cathode that may make cheap, flexible dye-sensitized solar cells practical.
The Rice lab of materials scientist Jun Lou created the new cathode, one of the two electrodes in batteries,
The discovery was reported online in the Royal Society of Chemistry's Journal of Materials Chemistry A. Dye-sensitized solar cells have been in development
a return line completes the circuit to the cathode that combines with an iodine-based electrolyte to refresh the dye.
While they are not nearly as efficient as silicon-based solar cells in collecting sunlight and transforming it into electricity,
dye-sensitized solar cells have advantages for many applications, according to co-lead author Pei Dong, a postdoctoral researcher in Lou's lab."The first is that they're low-cost,
because they can be fabricated in a normal area, "Dong said.""There's no need for a clean room.
and mice so you never have to install batteries. Normal room light is sufficient to keep them alive."
The hybrid material solves two issues that have held back commercial application of dye-sensitized solar cells,
the hybrid also has less contact resistance with the electrolyte, allowing electrons to flow more freely.
which determines how well electrons cross from the electrode to the electrolyte, was found to be 20 times smaller than for platinum-based cathodes,
This gives the electrolyte plenty of opportunity to make contact and provides a highly conductive path for electrons.
Lou's lab built and tested solar cells with nanotube forests of varying lengths The shortest,
When combined with an iodide salt-based electrolyte and an anode of flexible indium tin oxide,
Tests found that solar cells made from the longest nanotubes produced the best results and topped out at nearly 18 milliamps of current per square centimeter
The new dye-sensitized solar cells were as much as 20 percent better at converting sunlight into power,
Current computer systems represent bits of informationhe 1's and 0's of binary codeith electricity Circuit elements,
and energy materials said co-author Volker Rose. Both that remarkable resolution and the precise chemical fingerprinting of individual nickel nanoclusters were also clearly evident in the topographic images of the sample surface even down to the height of a single atom.
Today it signals a promising discovery in materials science research that could help next-generation technology-like wearable energy storage devices-get off the ground.
They believe it can be used to improve electrical energy storage water filtration and radiofrequency shielding in technology from portable electronics to coaxial cables.
and disbursing an electric charge and can be contorted into a variety of shapes is a rarity in the field of materials science.
Take the electrode of the small lithium-ion battery that powers your watch for example ideally the conductive material in that electrode would be very small
-and hold enough energy to run your watch for a long period of time said Michel Barsoum Phd Distinguished Professor in the College of Engineering.
But what if we wanted to make the watch's wristband into the battery? Then we'd still want to use a conductive material that is very thin
and can store energy but it would also need to be flexible enough to bend around your wrist.
When mixing MXENE with PVA containing some electrolyte salt the polymer plays the role of electrolyte
With these conductive electrodes and no liquid electrolyte we can eventually eliminate metal current collectors and make lighter and thinner supercapacitors.
Crumpled graphene could provide an unconventional energy storag g
#Microtubes create cozy space for neurons to grow and grow fast Tiny, thin microtubes could provide a scaffold for neuron cultures to grow
#A billion holes can make a battery Researchers at the University of Maryland have invented a single tiny structure that includes all the components of a battery that they say could bring about the ultimate miniaturization of energy storage components.
a tiny hole in a ceramic sheet that holds electrolyte to carry the electrical charge between nanotube electrodes at either end.
but the bitsy battery performs well. First author Chanyuan Liu a graduate student in materials science & engineering says that it can be charged fully in 12 minutes
Many millions of these nanopores can be crammed into one larger battery the size of a postage stamp.
which allows them to pack the tiny thin batteries together efficiently. Coauthor Eleanor Gillette's modeling shows that the unique design of the nanopore battery is responsible for its success. The space inside the holes is so small that the space they take up all added together would be no more than a grain of sand.
Now that the scientists have the battery working and have demonstrated the concept they have identified also improvements that could make the next version 10 times more powerful.
The next step to commercialization: the inventors have conceived strategies for manufacturing the battery in large batches s
#Team grows uniform nanowires A researcher from Missouri University of Science and Technology has developed a new way to grow nanowire arrays with a determined diameter length and uniform consistency.
This approach to growing nanomaterials will improve the efficiency of various devices including solar cells and fuel cells.
These semiconducting nanowires could also replace thin films that cover today's solar panels. Current panels can process only 20 percent of the solar energy they take in.
In fuel cells these nanowire arrays can be used to lower production expenses by relying on more cost-efficient catalysts.
who is also a member of the Kavli Energy Nanoscience Institute (Kavli ENSI). Nanopore sequencing of DNA, in
The secret of such an imaginary non-stop vibrating system relies on the fact that it dissipates very little energy.
The energy dissipation of a vibrating system is quantified by the quality factor. In laboratories, by knowing the quality factor,
and how much energy is lost in the process. This allows them to determine how precise the resonator can be at measuring
#Method for symmetry-breaking in feedback-driven self-assembly of optical metamaterials (Phys. org) If you can uniformly break the symmetry of nanorod pairs in a colloidal solution you're a step ahead of the game toward achieving new and exciting metamaterial properties.
But traditional thermodynamic-driven colloidal assembly of these metamaterials which are defined materials by their non-naturally-occurring properties often result in structures with high degree of symmetries in the bulk material.
In this case the energy requirement does not allow the structure to break its symmetry. In a study led by Xiang Zhang director of Berkeley Lab's Materials sciences Division he
and his research group at the University of California (UC) Berkeley achieved symmetry-breaking in a bulk metamaterial solution for the first time.
The widely used method of metamaterial synthesis is top-down fabrication such as electron beam or focus ion beam lithography that often results in strongly anisotropic and small-scale metamaterials.
People build metamaterials using top-down methods that include light exposure and electron beam exposure which are inefficient and costly says Xingjie Ni another lead author on the paper.
If we want to use metamaterials we need to develop a way to build them cheaply and efficiently.
The bottom-up route fills these requirements. Starting with a solution of colloidal nanorods Yang and Ni built on the common self-assembly technique used to build nanoparticles.
Chemists gain edge in next-gen energy Rice university scientists who want to gain an edge in energy production and storage report they have found it in molybdenum disulfide.
but previous studies determined the material's edges are highly efficient catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) a process used in fuel cells to pull hydrogen from water.
and have potential for a variety of energy-oriented applications. The Rice research appears in the journal Advanced Materials.
which store energy quickly as static charge and release it in a burst. Though they don't store as much energy as an electrochemical battery they have long lifespans
and are in wide use because they can deliver far more power than a battery. The Rice lab built supercapacitors with the films;
in tests they retained 90 percent of their capacity after 10000 charge-discharge cycles and 83 percent after 20000 cycles.
We see anodization as a route to materials for multiple platforms in the next generation of alternative energy devices Tour said.
These could be fuel cells supercapacitors and batteries. And we've demonstrated two of those three are possible with this new material l
and high electrical conductivity and are used in products from baseball bats and other sports equipment to lithium-ion batteries and touchscreen computer displays.
The new kind of nanotubes also could lead to flexible solar panels that can be rolled up and stored or even"painted"on clothing such as a jacket,
#Tracking heat-driven decay in leading electric vehicle batteries Rechargeable electric vehicles are one of the greatest tools against rising pollution and carbon emissions and their widespread adoption hinges on battery performance.
Scientists specializing in nanotechnology continue to hunt for the perfect molecular recipe for a battery that drives down price increases durability and offers more miles on every charge.
One particular family of lithium-ion batteries composed of nickel cobalt and aluminum (NCA) offers high enough energy density a measure of the stored electricity in the battery that it works well in large-scale and long-range vehicles including electric cars and commercial aircraft.
There is however a significant catch: These batteries degrade with each cycle of charge and discharge.
As the battery cycles lithium ions shuttle back and forth between cathode and anode and leave behind detectable tracks of nanoscale damage.
Crucially the high heat of vehicle environments can intensify these telltale degradation tracks and even cause complete battery failure.
The relationship between structural changes and the catastrophic thermal runaway impacts both safety and performance said physicist Xiao-Qing Yang of the U s. Department of energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
To get a holistic portrait of the NCA battery's electrochemical reactions researchers in Brookhaven Lab's Chemistry department
During this transformation oxygen leaves the destabilized battery compound. This excess oxygen leached at faster and faster rates over time actually contributes to the risk of failure and acts as fuel for a potential fire.
These new and fundamental insights may help engineers develop superior battery chemistries or nanoscale architectures that block this degradation.
X-ray snapshots of heat-driven decompositionthe first study published in Chemistry of Materials explored the NCA battery using combined x-ray diffraction
We were able to test the battery cycling in situ meaning we could watch the effects of increasing heat in real time said Brookhaven Lab chemist and study coauthor Seong Min Bak.
We pushed the fully charged NCA coin-cell battery out of thermal equilibrium by heating it all the way to 500 degrees Celsius.
But that temperature threshold dropped for a highly charged battery suggesting that operating at full energy capacity accelerates structural degradation and vulnerability.
The next study also published in Chemistry of Materials used transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to pinpoint the effect of an initial charge on the battery's surface structure.
The highly focused electron beams available at CFN revealed individual atom positions as an applied current pushed pristine batteries to an overcharged state.
and Technology (KIST Even with just one charge on the NCA battery we saw changes in the crystalline structure
To capture the atoms'electronic structures the scientists used electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS. In this technique measurements of the energy lost by a well-defined electron beam reveal local charge densities and elemental configurations.
We found a decrease in nickel and an increase in the electron density of oxygen Hwang said.
and leave holes in the NCA surface permanently damaging the battery's capacity and performance.
and began to shift toward disorder down at temperatures below 100 degrees Celsius definitely plausible for a lithium-ion battery's normal operation.
and that free oxygen would feed the fire springing from an overheated battery. The corroborating data in the three studies points to flaws in the chemistry
and architecture of NCA batteries including the surprising atomic asymmetries and suggests new ways to enhance durability including the use of nanoscale coatings that reinforce stable structures.
We plan to push these investigative techniques even further to track the battery's structure in real-time as it charges
Danny Porath, the Etta and Paul Schankerman Professor in Molecular Biomedicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reports reproducible and quantitative measurements of electricity flow through long molecules made of four
When the solid surface is charged just like an electrode in a working battery it can drive further changes in the interfacial liquid.
Miquel Salmeron a senior scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials sciences Division (MSD) and professor in UC Berkeley's Materials science and engineering Department explains this in the context of a battery.
(or voltage) produces a strong electric field that drives molecular rearrangements in the electrolyte next to the electrode.
With gold as a chemically inert electrode and slightly-saline water as an electrolyte Salmeron and colleagues used a new twist on x-ray absorption spectroscopy XAS) to probe the interface
In this process a material absorbs x-ray photons at a specific rate as a function of photon energy.
A plot of the absorption intensity as a function of energy is referred to as a spectrum
The x-ray photons used in this study have energies that are about 250 times higher than those of visible light
and the interior electrolyte molecules says Salmeron. The challenge therefore was to collect a signal that would be dominated by the interfacial region.
This avoids confusion with signals from the interior electrolyte because electrons emitted from interior molecules don't travel far enough to be detected.
because they carry a steady current as in batteries and other electrochemical systems. While the emitted electrons from nearby molecules are indeed detectable this contribution to the current is dwarfed by the normal Faradaic current of the battery at finite voltages.
When measuring current off the electrode it is critical to determine which part is due to the x-rays and
which is due to the regular battery current. To overcome this problem the researchers pulsed the incoming x-rays from the synchrotron at a known frequency.
These experiments result in absorption vs. x-ray energy curves (spectra) that reflect how water molecules within nanometers of the gold surface absorb the x-rays.
's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) he conducted large molecular dynamics simulations of the gold-water interface
-when compared to other energy sources.""The first tests conducted with Biogàsplus demonstrated that product increases up to 200%the production of this combustible gas.
-and it conducts heat and electricity with great efficiency. The global market for graphene is reported to have reached US$9 million this year with most sales concentrated in the semiconductor electronics battery energy and composites.
Assistant professor Karton said the current investigation showed that graphene nonoflakes could efficiently catalyse a range of chemical reactions.
This progress has important applications in sectors such as chemical, petrochemical and energy, thus becoming a useful technology in all industrial applications using heat transfer systems such as solar power plants, nuclear power plants, combined-cycle power plants and heating, among other.
The nanofluid developed by the Multiphase Fluids research group at the UJI is the first capable of working at high temperatures (up to 400°C
These fluids are employed to transport energy in the form of heat from the point where the heat is generated (burners
to the system that is going to use it (thermal storage systems, steam generators, chemical reactors, etc..The most widely used thermal fluids are water, ethylene glycol, thermal oils and molten salts.
This technology provides the capability to modulate neural function by applying programmed pulses of electricity
#Materials for the next generation of electronics and photovoltaics One of the longstanding problems of working with nanomaterials substances at the molecular and atomic scale is controlling their size.
and tablets smart phones and other portable devices photovoltaics batteries and bioimaging. The technique has proved so successful that Hersam
He and his colleagues also are working on energy technologies such as solar cells and batteries that can improve efficiency
and reduce the cost of solar cells and increase the capacity and reduce the charging time of batteries he says.
The resulting batteries and solar cells are also mechanically flexible and thus can be integrated with flexible electronics.
They likely even will prove waterproof. It turns out that carbon nanomaterials are hydrophobic so water will roll right off of them he says.
Materials at the nanometer scale now can realize new properties and combinations of properties that are unprecedented he adds.
Breakthrough for carbon nanotube solar cell l
#See-through one-atom-thick carbon electrodes powerful tool to study brain disorders Researchers from the Perelman School of medicine and School of engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have used graphene
#Flexible paper electrodes with ultra-high loading for lithium-sulfur batteries With the rapid development of portable electronic devices, electric automobiles,
and renewable energy storage, high-density energy storage systems are needed. Lithium-ion batteries, though mature and widely utilized, have encountered the theoretical limit
and therefore can not meet the urgent need for high energy density. Lithium-sulfur batteries, owning a theoretical energy density of 2600 Wh kg-1,
which are approximately 4 times as much as commercially used lithium-ion batteries, are considered to be strong candidates.
The abundance and environmentally friendly nature of the element sulfur as cathode material are factors in the huge potential of lithium-sulfur batteries.
The combination of nanocarbon and sulfur is effective at overcoming the insulating nature of sulfur for lithium sulfur batteries."
"Due to excellent electrical conductivity, mechanical strength and chemical stability, nanocarbon materials have played an essential role in the area of advanced energy storage,
"The areal capacity of commercially used lithium-ion batteries is about 4 mah cm-2,
and therefore, the areal loading of sulfur in the cathode of lithium-sulfur batteries needs to be improved greatly,
Recently, scientists from Tsinghua University have created a freestanding carbon nanotube paper electrode with high sulfur loading for lithium-sulfur batteries.
"The as-obtained freestanding paper electrode is promising for the ubiquitous applications of Li-S batteries with low cost,
This new method of graphene fabrication by self-assembly is a stepping stone toward the production of self-assembled graphene devices that will vastly improve the performance of data storage circuits batteries and electronics.
three-dimensional (3d) structures for applications in devices such as batteries and supercapacitors. Their study was published recently in the journal Nature Communications.
and energy sectors as we know them. However the thin structure of graphene also acts as a major obstacle for practical uses.
which will be highly useful as electrodes and membranes for energy generation or storage. While we have demonstrated only the construction of graphene-based structures in this study we strongly believe that the new technique will be able to serve as a general method for the assembly of a much wider range of nanomaterials concluded Franklin Kim the principal investigator of the study y
Brighter new energy saving flat panel lights based on carbon nanotubes Even as the 2014 Nobel prize in Physics has enshrined light emitting diodes (LEDS) as the single most significant and disruptive energy-efficient lighting solution of today scientists
when consuming a unit amount of electric power which is an important index to compare the energy-efficiency of different lighting devices Shimoi said.
Thus the new flat-panel device has compared smaller energy loss with other current lighting devices which can be used to make energy-efficient cathodes that with low power consumption.
The ability to mold inorganic nanoparticles out of materials such as gold and silver in precisely designed 3-D shapes is a significant breakthrough that has the potential to advance laser technology microscopy solar cells electronics environmental testing
This capability should open up entirely new strategies for fields ranging from computer miniaturization to energy and pathogen detection n
and replace them with synthetic components to create a new generation of solar cells. Professor Evans concludes:"
whether it is for energy capture, or to create artificial noses for the early detection of disease
because scaling down emitters implies less power consumption less bias voltage to operate them and higher throughput says Velsquez-Garca a principal research scientist at MTL.
Then they expose the array to a plasma rich in carbon. The nanotubes grow up under the catalyst particles
a plasma then etches the material away according to the pattern. The recipe is the gases power pressure level time
In the near future carbon nanotube fibers have potential to significantly enhance the performance and energy efficiency of electrical machines.
If we keep the electrical machine design parameters unchanged and only replace copper with future carbon nanotube wires it is possible to reduce the Joule losses in the windings to half of the present-day machine losses.
For this reason the Joule losses are referred often to as copper losses. The carbon nanotube yarn does not have a definite upper limit for conductivity (e g. values of 100 MS/m have already been measured.
Aydin said this design can also be used in applications for photothermal therapy thermophotovoltaics heat-assisted magnetic recording thermal emission and solar-steam generation.
Researchers seek broadband/multiband electromagnetic absorbers based on plasmonic and metamaterial structure r
#'Stealth'nanoparticles could improve cancer vaccines Cancer vaccines have emerged recently as a promising approach for killing tumor cells before they spread.
They found that the particles which have no electric charge or surface molecules that would attract the attention of circulating immune cells were able to enter the mice's lymph nodes.
diffusive theory over-predicted the amount of energy carried away from the heated surface.""We discovered fundamental differences in how heat is transported over short versus long distances.
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