the Modumetal method requires only electricity. The company hopes its technique will usher in a new era
#Transparent Batteries That Charge In The Sun A group of Japanese researchers have managed to improve the design of a transparent lithium-ion battery
when exposed to sunlight without the need for a separate solar cell. The transparent battery was developed first by the researchers,
led by Kogakuin University president and professor Mitsunobu Sato, back in 2013. The electrolyte used for the battery positive electrode is made mostly from lithium iron phosphate,
while the electrolytes used for the negative electrode include lithium titanate, and lithium hexafluorophosphate. Those are all common ingredients used in Li-ion rechargeable batteries
but the thickness of these electrodes are just 80 to 90 nanometers, which allows a lot of light to pass through
and makes these batteries almost completely transparent. But by changing the chemical makeup of the negative electrode,
the Japanese researchers have found a way to make these transparent batteries now recharge themselves in the presence of sunlight,
or other bright sources of illumination. The group hopes the improved transparent batteries could one day be used to make smarter windows for buildings
and vehicles that can auto-dim when it bright out, but also store power as theye recharged by the sun. And as an extension of that idea,
one day your smartphone display might even serve as an additional battery, harvesting sunlight to charge the device whenever youe outside t
They can use solar power or harvest energy from a beam of light. The patent does not mention batteries so these contacts have to constantly generate power.
In the patent the ability to measure body heat and blood alcohol content are mentioned as possible new features for the Google lenses.
The main energy cost in operating this kind of a sensor will be the high temperatures necessary to facilitate the chemical reactions for ensuring certain electrical response.
The main energy cost in operating this kind of a sensor will be the high temperatures necessary to facilitate the chemical reactions for ensuring certain electrical response.
and power of lithium-ion batteries One big problem faced by electrodes in rechargeable batteries, as they go through repeated cycles of charging
degrading the battery performance over time. Now a team of researchers at MIT and Tsinghua University in China has found a novel way around that problem:
and provide a dramatic boost in the battery capacity and power. The new findings, which use aluminum as the key material for the lithium-ion battery negative electrode,
or anode, are reported in the journal Nature Communications, in a paper by MIT professor Ju Li and six others.
Most present lithium-ion batteries the most widely used form of rechargeable batteries use anodes made of graphite, a form of carbon.
Lithium metal, for example, can store about 10 times as much energy per gram, but is extremely dangerous,
Also, the liquid electrolyte in contact with aluminum will always decompose at the required charge/discharge voltages,
forming a skin called solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer, which would be ok if not for the repeated large volume expansion and shrinkage that cause SEI particles to shed.
As a result, previous attempts to develop an aluminum electrode for lithium-ion batteries had failed.
hat separates the aluminum from the liquid electrolytebetween the battery two electrodes. The shell does not expand
and the aluminum inside is protected from direct contact with the electrolyte. The team didn originally plan it that way,
says Li, the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering, who has a joint appointment in MIT Department of Materials science and engineering. e came up with the method serendipitously,
For applications that require a high power-and energy density battery, he says, t probably the best anode material available.
There is much work in the battery field that uses omplicated synthesis with sophisticated facilities, Lou adds,
but such systems re unlikely to have impact for real batteries. Simple things make real impact in the battery field. e
#Narrowing the gap between synthetic and natural graphene Producing graphene in bulk is critical when it comes to the industrial exploitation of this exceptional two-dimensional material.
Graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms that is only one atom in thickness, conducts electricity and dissipates heat much more efficiently than silicon,
Plasmon energy expansion thermometry, inset, uses a beam of electrons to track where heat is produced
Electrons passing through a sample excite collective charge oscillations called plasmons. Monitoring the energy required to excite the plasmons enables measuring local variations in a sample density,
which are directly related to the local temperature within an integrated circuit or transistor. Based on these principles
the researchers developed a new technique called plasmon energy expansion thermometry, or PEET. It enables measuring local temperature with 3-5 K precision and 5 nm spatial resolution.
This research outcome potentially allows for great flexibility in the design and optimization of electronic and optoelectronic devices like solar panels and telecommunication lasers.
All these properties combined make it a tremendous conductor of heat and electricity. A defectree layer is also impermeable to all atoms and molecules.
because a jump between two tightly-packed stones requires less energy. A band gap is much the same;
as they are normally either purely organic, for example in solar cell conducting polymers, or entirely inorganic, such as oxide or metallic glasses.
director of Berkeley Lab Materials sciences Division and a world authority on metamaterials artificial nanostructures engineered with electromagnetic properties not found in nature. ur ultra-thin cloak now looks like a coat.
and is a member of the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute at Berkeley (Kavli ENSI), is the corresponding author of a paper describing this research in Science.
The rules that govern these interactions in natural materials can be circumvented in metamaterials whose optical properties arise from their physical structure rather than their chemical composition.
For the past ten years, Zhang and his research group have been pushing the boundaries of how light interacts with metamaterials,
In the past, their metamaterial-based optical carpet cloaks were bulky and hard to scale up and entailed a phase difference between the cloaked region
and metamaterials offers tantalizing future prospects for technologies such as high resolution optical microscopes and superfast optical computers.
Surface plasmons are electromagnetic waves propagating along a metal-dielectric interface (e g.,, gold/air) and having the amplitudes exponentially decaying in the neighbor media.
The working principle used in this case is similar to the concept of lithium-ion batteries. There are several possibilities to create
but the coil continuously consumes energy. Another possibility is to polarize the ferromagnet, which means to align the magnetic structures in the material in parallel,
No energy is required for maintaining this magnetic field, but it is permanent and cannot easily be removed.
and consumption of energy. housands of charge-discharge cycles of lithium-ion batteries used in mobile phones, for instance,
This led us to the idea to exploit similar structures such as the lithium-ion batteries
When charging and discharging a lithium-ion accumulator, the ions migrate from one electrode to the other
The team of scientists around Dasgupta has produced now a lithium-ion accumulator, in which one electrode is made of maghemite, a ferromagnetic iron oxide(?
and discharging the accumulator, magnetization of maghemite can be controlled. Similar to conventional lithium-ion accumulators, this effect can be repeated.
In the experiments reported, the researchers reached a variation of magnetization by up to 30%.%In the long term, complete on
where single atoms connect to each other in a diamond-like grid structure, each face of a crystal (1, 1,
"In contrast to other semiconductors like silicon or gallium arsenide, graphene can pick up light with a very large range of photon energies and convert it into electric signals.
thereby transferring the energy of the photons to the electrons in the graphene. These"hot electrons"increase the electrical resistance of the detector
"In contrast to other semiconductors like silicon or gallium arsenide, graphene can pick up light with a very large range of photon energies and convert it into electric signals.
thereby transferring the energy of the photons to the electrons in the graphene. These"hot electrons"increase the electrical resistance of the detector
) Plasmonic devices harness clouds of electrons called surface plasmons to manipulate and control light. Potential applications for the nanotweezer include improved-sensitivity nanoscale sensors
"The local electromagnetic field intensity is enhanced highly, over 200 times, at the plasmonic hotspot. The interesting thing about this system is that not only can we trap particles
and energy to perform. What are these functions? Well, you're 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."
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,
and memory storage devices users will continue to seek long after the proliferation of digital transistors predicted by Moore's Law becomes too unwieldy for conventional electronics."
Where solar panels are concerned, the suppression of reflected light translates into a 3-6 percent relative increase in light-to-electricity conversion efficiency and power output of the cells.
Coupled with the superhydrophobic self-cleaning ability, this could also substantially reduce maintenance and operating costs of solar panels.
In addition the coating is highly effective at blocking ultraviolet light. Other potential applications include goggles, periscopes, optical instruments, photodetectors and sensors.
STEM research was supported by the DOE Office of Science Basic energy Sciences. A portion of the research was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials sciences, a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
if you hold two electrodes into an aqueous electrolyte and apply a sufficient voltage, gas bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen are formed.
If this voltage is generated by sunlight in a solar cell, then you could store solar energy by generating hydrogen gas.
and using"chemical energy"."Research teams all over the world are therefore working hard to develop compact, robust,
because an efficient hydrogen generation preferably proceeds in an acidic electrolyte corroding very fast solar cells. Electrodes that so far have been used are made of very expensive elements such as platinum or platinum-iridium alloys.
it consists of chalcopyrite (a material used in device grade thin film solar cells) that has been coated with a thin, transparent, conductive oxide film of titanium dioxide (Tio2.
leading to the observed high photocurrent density and photovoltage comparable with those of a conventional device-grade thin-film solar cell.
the majority of the required voltage between the composite photocathode and a platinum counter electrode of around 1. 8 volts is still coming from a battery.
i e to chemical energy for storage. As a consequence we have developed successfully and tested a demonstrator device for solar hydrogen production with a company in Schwerin under the Light2hydrogen project, according to Schedel-Niedrig g
using a laser as the energy source. The novelty of this study is that it shows that it is possible to use diamond nanocrystals as hypersensitive temperature sensors with a high spatial resolution-ranging from 10 to 100 nanometers-to monitor the amount of heat delivered to cancer cells s
or differences in how much energy it takes to excite an electron in the material.""When we put them together,
graphene's flat sheet conducts electricity quickly, and the atomic structure in the nanotubes halts electric currents.
or stopping electricity, the resulting switching ratio is high. In other words, how fast the materials can turn on
which requires 100 times less energy than present devices, has the potential to hit all the marks."
The first application as part of DOE's Bioenergy Science Center was in the examination of plant cell walls under several treatments to provide submicron characterization.
Scientists want to convert such biopolymers to free the useful sugars and release energy An earlier instrument,
"The focused light delivers energy to the sample, creating a special interaction between the point and the sample in
Graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms that is only one atom in thickness, conducts electricity and dissipates heat much more efficiently than silicon,
The research was supported primarily by the Department of energy's Basic energy Sciences program m
#Flexible, biodegradable device can generate power from touch (video) Longstanding concerns about portable electronics include the devices'short battery life and their contribution to e waste.
One group of scientists is now working on a way to address both of these seeming unrelated issues at the same time.
& Interfaces the development of a biodegradable nanogenerator made with DNA that can harvest the energy from everyday motion and turn it into electrical power.
and tapping on our keyboards release energy that largely dissipates, unused. Several years ago, scientists figured out how to capture some of that energy
and convert it into electricity so we might one day use it to power our mobile gadgetry.
Achieving this would not only untether us from wall outlets, but it would also reduce our demand on fossil-fuel-based power sources.
To improve the material's energy harvesting ability, they added DNA, which has good electrical properties
For energy devices we have demonstrated solution-processable approaches to fabricate organic photovoltaic devices on nearly arbitrary surfaces including PET and polymer reinforced polymer composites.
We have fabricated also Li-ion batteries based on structurally resilient carbon nanotube-based electrodes that have survived thousands of flexing cycles.
such as solar or wind power, is a key barrier to a clean energy economy. When the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) was established at Caltech
the U s. Department of energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub had one main goal: a cost-effective method of producing fuels using only sunlight, water,
and storing energy in the form of chemical fuels for use on demand. Over the past five years, researchers at JCAP have made major advances toward this goal,
or artificial leaf, is described in the August 24 online issue of the journal Energy and Environmental science.
and are used therefore in solar panels. However, these materials also oxidize (or rust) on the surface
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
Vermont scientists invent new approach in quest for organic solar panels and flexible electronics University of Vermont scientists have invented a new way to create
and farther--aiding the hunt for flexible electronics, organic solar cells, and other low-cost alternatives to silicon.
And then, with this enhanced view,"this energy barrier can be eliminated entirely, "the team writes.
BETTER SOLAR CELLS Though the Nature Communications study focused on just one organic material, phthalocyanine, the new research provides a powerful way to explore many other types of organic materials, too--with particular promise for improved solar cells.
A recent U s. Department of energy report identified one of the fundamental bottlenecks to improved solar power technologies as"determining the mechanisms by
which the absorbed energy (exciton) migrates through the system prior to splitting into charges that are converted to electricity."
--and can't be pushed by voltage like the electrons flowing in a light bulb--they can, in a sense, bounce from one of these tightly stacked molecules to the next.
This allows organic thin films to carry energy along this molecular highway with relative ease,
"One of today's big challenges is how to make better photovoltaics and solar technologies,"says Furis,
who directs UVM's program in materials science, "and to do that we need a deeper understanding of exciton diffusion.
and as hydrogen storage materials in next generation batteries
#Targeted drug delivery with these nanoparticles can make medicines more effective: Nanoparticles wrapped inside human platelet membranes serve as new vehicles for targeted drug delivery The research,
the sensor is very sensitive to changes in electromagnetic fields that are dispersed with different tissues (normal and tumor.
#Stanford engineers invent transparent coating that cools solar cells to boost efficiency: The quandary: The hotter solar cells get,
the less efficiently they convert sunlight to electricity; The fix: A new transparent overlay allows light to hit the cells
while shunting heat away Now three Stanford engineers have developed a technology that improves on solar panel performance by exploiting this basic phenomenon.
Their invention shunts away the heat generated by a solar cell under sunlight and cools it in a way that allows it to convert more photons into electricity.
The work by Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, research associate Aaswath P. Raman and doctoral candidate Linxiao Zhu is described in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences. The group's discovery tested on a Stanford rooftop, addresses a problem that has bedeviled long the solar industry:
The hotter solar cells get, the less efficient they become at converting the photons in light into useful electricity.
The Stanford solution is based on a thin, patterned silica material laid on top of a traditional solar cell.
The material is transparent to the visible sunlight that powers solar cells, but captures and emits thermal radiation,
or heat, from infrared rays.""Solar arrays must face the sun to function, even though that heat is detrimental to efficiency,
"Fan said.""Our thermal overlay allows sunlight to pass through, preserving or even enhancing sunlight absorption,
In their new paper, the researchers applied that work to improve solar array performance when the sun is beating down.
The Stanford team tested their technology on a custom-made solar absorber-a device that mimics the properties of a solar cell without producing electricity-covered with a micron-scale pattern designed to maximize the capability to dump heat
Their experiments showed that the overlay allowed visible light to pass through to the solar cells, but that it also cooled the underlying absorber by as much as 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
For a typical crystalline silicon solar cell with an efficiency of 20 percent, 55 F of cooling would improve absolute cell efficiency by over 1 percent,
a figure that represents a significant gain in energy production. The researchers said the new transparent thermal overlays work best in dry, clear environments,
which are preferred also sites for large solar arrays. They believe they can scale things up so commercial and industrial applications are feasible
In many conventional techniques such as transmission electron microscopy, the possible resolution is limited by high-energy electrons'radiation damage to biological samples.
#Extending a battery's lifetime with heat: Researchers from California Institute of technology find that heat can break down the damaging branch-like structures that grow inside batteries,
which may possibly be used to extend battery lifetimes A battery cell consists of a positive and negative electrode,
called the cathode and anode. As the battery produces electrical current, electrons flow from the anode through a circuit outside the battery and back into the cathode.
Having lost the electrons that are generating the current, some of the atoms in the anode--an electrically conductive metal like lithium--become ions that then travel to the cathode,
moving through a conductive liquid medium called an electrolyte. Recharging the battery reverses the process,
and the ions travel back and stick onto the anode. But when they do, the ions don't attach evenly.
Instead, they form microscopic bumps that eventually grow into long branches after multiple recharging cycles. When these dendrites reach
rendering the battery useless and dead. The current also heats up the dendrites, and because the electrolyte tends to be flammable,
the dendrites can ignite. Even if the dendrites don't short circuit the battery, they can break off from the anode entirely
and float around in the electrolyte. In this way, the anode loses material, and the battery can't store as much energy."
"Dendrites are hazardous and reduce the capacity of rechargeable batteries, "said Asghar Aryanfar, a scientist at Caltech, who led the new study that's published this week on the cover of The Journal of Chemical Physics, from AIP Publishing.
Although the researchers looked at lithium batteries, which are among the most efficient kind, their results can be applied broadly."
"The dendrite problem is general to all rechargeable batteries, "he said. The researchers grew lithium dendrites on a test battery
and heated them over a couple days. They found that temperatures up to 55 degrees Celsius shortened the dendrites by as much as 36 percent.
To figure out what exactly caused this shrinkage, the researchers used a computer to simulate the effect of heat on the individual lithium atoms that comprise a dendrite,
which was modeled with the simple, idealized geometry of a pyramid. The simulations showed that increased temperatures triggered the atoms to move around in two ways.
By quantifying how much energy is needed to change the structure of the dendrite, Aryanfar said, researchers can better understand its structural characteristics.
And while many factors affect a battery's longevity at high temperatures--such as its tendency to discharge on its own
or the occurrence of other chemical reactions on the side--this new work shows that to revitalize a battery,
In traditional microelectronics information is coded via the electric charges. In spin electronics-or spintronics-information is coded via the electron spin,
or against particular axis."Superconducting spintronic devices will demand far less energy and emit less heat.
whose energy consumption and heat emission create much more problems than in case of ordinary desktop computers.""Development of computer technologies was based on semiconductors.
#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,
but also in transportation industry power backup, micro grid storage, and for the wider use of renewable energy. OSU officials say they are seeking support for further research
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.
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