#Shatterproof screens that save smartphones University of Akron polymer scientists have developed a transparent electrode that could change the face of smartphones, literally,
Taox-capped Pt nanoparticles as efficient catalysts for polymer electrolyte fuel cells More information: Covert thermal barcodes based on phase change nanoparticles Scientific Reports 4 Article number:
#Electrical cables that store energy? New nanotech may provide power storage in electric cables clothes Imagine being able to carry all the juice you needed to power your MP3 PLAYER, smartphone and electric car in the fabric of your jacket?
but it may become a reality thanks to breakthrough technology developed at a University of Central Florida research lab. So far electrical cables are used only to transmit electricity.
However, nanotechnology scientist and professor Jayan Thomas and his Ph d. student Zenan Yu have developed a way to both transmit and store electricity in a single lightweight copper wire.
special fibers could also be developed with nanostructures to conduct and store energy. More immediate applications could be seen in the design
and conduct energy on the same wire, heavy, space-consuming batteries could become a thing of the past.
It is possible to further miniaturize the electronic devices or the space that has been used previously for batteries could be used for other purposes.
In the case of launch vehicles that could potentially lighten the load, making launches less costly,
Two electrodes are needed for the powerful energy storage. So they had to figure out a way to create a second electrode.
the inner copper wire retains its ability to channel electricity, the layers around the wire independently store powerful energy.
In other words, Thomas and his team created a supercapacitor on the outside of the copper wire. Supercapcitors store powerful energy,
like that needed to start a vehicle or heavy-construction equipment. Although more work needs to be done,
if flexible solar cells and these fibers were used in tandem to make a jacket, it could be used independently to power electronic gadgets and other devices."
Semiconductors like silicon and gallium arsenide are excellent light absorberss is clear from their widespread use in solar panels.
The key was used that they a form of Tio2 known as leaky Tio2ecause it leaks electricity.
#New breed of solar cells: Quantum dot photovoltaics set new record for efficiency in such devices Solar-cell technology has advanced rapidly as hundreds of groups around the world pursue more than two dozen approaches using different materials technologies
and approaches to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Now a team at MIT has set a new record for the most efficient quantum dot cells a type of solar cell that is seen as especially promising because of its inherently low cost versatility and light weight.
While the overall efficiency of this cell is still low compared to other types about 9 percent of the energy of sunlight is converted to electricity the rate of improvement of this technology is one of the most rapid seen for a solar technology.
The development is described in a paper published in the journal Nature Materials by MIT professors Moungi Bawendi and Vladimir Buloviä#and graduate students Chia-Hao Chuang and Patrick Brown.
These minuscule particles are very effective at turning light into electricity and vice versa. Since the first progress toward the use of quantum dots to make solar cells Bawendi says The community in the last few years has started to understand better how these cells operate and
what the limitations are. The new work represents a significant leap in overcoming those limitations increasing the current flow in the cells
and thus boosting their overall efficiency in converting sunlight into electricity. Many approaches to creating low-cost large-area flexible and lightweight solar cells suffer from serious limitations such as short operating lifetimes
when exposed to air or the need for high temperatures and vacuum chambers during production. By contrast the new process does not require an inert atmosphere
The solar cell produced by the team has now been added to the National Renewable energy Laboratories'listing of record-high efficiencies for each kind of solar-cell technology.
The overall efficiency of the cell is still lower than for most other types of solar cells.
And the new technology has important advantages notably a manufacturing process that is far less energy-intensive than other types.
But his team's research since then has demonstrated clearly quantum dots'potential in solar cells he adds.
Arthur Nozik a research professor in chemistry at the University of Colorado who was involved not in this research says This result represents a significant advance for the applications of quantum dot films and the technology of low-temperature solution-processed quantum dot photovoltaic cells.#
#There is still a long way to go before quantum dot solar cells are commercially viable but this latest development is a nice step toward this ultimate goal.
Improved performance and stability in quantumâ dot solar cells through band alignmentâ engineering. Chia-Hao M. Chuang et al.
in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Michigan, have developed a 3-D artificial enzyme cascade that mimics an important biochemical pathway that could prove important for future biomedical and energy applications.
taking advantage of the binding properties of the chemical building blocks of DNA, twist and self-assemble DNA into evermore imaginative 2-and 3-dimensional structures for medical, electronic and energy applications.
used in our bodies for the digestion of food into sugars and energy during human metabolism, for example."
since they supply most of the energy of a cell, "said Walter."Work with these enzymes could lead to future applications in green energy production such as fuel cells using biomaterials for fuel."
"In the pathway, G6pdh uses the glucose sugar substrate and a cofactor called NAD to strip hydrogen atoms from glucose and transfer to the next enzyme, MDH,
This intriguing prospect is one of the reasons for the current interest in building the capacity to store electrical energy directly into a wide range of products,
such as a laptop whose casing serves as its battery, or an electric car powered by energy stored in its chassis,
or a home where the dry wall and siding store the electricity that runs the lights and appliances.
It also makes the small dull grey wafers that graduate student Andrew Westover and Assistant professor of Mechanical engineering Cary Pint have made in Vanderbilt's Nanomaterials
and Energy Devices Laboratory far more important than their nondescript appearance suggests.""These devices demonstrate for the first time as far as we can tell that it is possible to create materials that can store
and discharge significant amounts of electricity while they are subject to realistic static loads and dynamic forces,
"Andrew has managed to make our dream of structural energy storage materials into a reality.""That is important because structural energy storage will change the way in
which a wide variety of technologies are developed in the future.""When you can integrate energy into the components used to build systems,
it opens the door to a whole new world of technological possibilities. All of a sudden, the ability to design technologies at the basis of health, entertainment,
The new device that Pint and Westover has developed is a supercapacitor that stores electricity by assembling electrically charged ions on the surface of a porous material,
instead of storing it in chemical reactions the way batteries do. As a result supercaps can charge
and operate for millions of cycles, instead of thousands of cycles like batteries. In a paper appearing online May 19 in the journal Nano Letters, Pint and Westover report that their new structural supercapacitor operates flawlessly in storing
Furthermore, the mechanical robustness of the device doesn't compromise its energy storage capability.""In an unpackaged, structurally integrated state our supercapacitor can store more energy
and operate at higher voltages than a packaged, off-the-shelf commercial supercapacitor, even under intense dynamic and static forces,
One area where supercapacitors lag behind batteries is in electrical energy storage capability: Supercaps must be larger and heavier to store the same amount of energy as lithium-ion batteries.
However, the difference is not as important when considering multifunctional energy storage systems.""Battery performance metrics change when you're putting energy storage into heavy materials that are needed already for structural integrity,
"said Pint.""Supercapacitors store ten times less energy than current lithium-ion batteries, but they can last a thousand times longer.
That means they are suited better for structural applications. It doesn't make sense to develop materials to build a home, car chassis,
or aerospace vehicle if you have to replace them every few years because they go dead."
Sandwiched between the two electrodes is a polymer film that acts as a reservoir of charged ions, similar to the role of electrolyte paste in a battery.
"Combining nanoporous material with the polymer electrolyte bonds the layers together tighter than superglue.""The use of silicon in structural supercapacitors is suited best for consumer electronics and solar cells,
but Pint and Westover are confident that the rules that govern the load-bearing character of their design will carry over to other materials, such as carbon nanotubes and lightweight porous metals like aluminum.
The intensity of interest in"multifunctional"devices of this sort is reflected by the fact that the U s. Department of energy's Advanced Research Project Agency for Energy is investing $8. 7 million in research projects that focus specifically on incorporating energy storage into structural materials.
There have also been recent press reports of several major efforts to develop multifunctional materials or structural batteries for use in electric vehicles and for military applications.
However Pint pointed out that there have not been any reports in the technical literature of tests performed on structural energy storage materials that show how they function under realistic mechanical loads l
because it can absorb up to 90%of the energy it receives. However, over time, the effects of light
Martin Joly, of the Laboratory of Solar energy and Building Physics, researched a novel process for the conversion of solar thermal energy.
"The durability of our materials at temperatures exceeding 360°C could also be of interest to thermal power plants,
One in Solar energy, on the black chromium-free components and their optical properties, won the best paper award from 2012013
#Silly Putty material inspires better batteries Using a material found in Silly Putty and surgical tubing, a group of researchers at the University of California,
Riverside Bourns College of Engineering have developed a new way to make lithium-ion batteries that will last three times longer between charges compared to the current industry standard.
The team created silicon dioxide (Sio2) nanotube anodes for lithium-ion batteries and found they had over three times as much energy storage capacity as the carbon-based anodes currently being used.
This has significant implications for industries including electronics and electric vehicles which are always trying to squeeze longer discharges out of batteries."
"We are taking the same material used in kids'toys and medical devices and even fast food and using it to create next generation battery materials,
"said Zachary Favors, the lead author of a just-published paper on the research. The paper,"Stable Cycling of Sio2 Nanotubes as High-performance Anodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries,"was published online in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
It was authored co by Cengiz S. Ozkan, a mechanical engineering professor, Mihrimah Ozkan, an electrical engineering professor,
Silicon dioxide has previously been used as an anode material in lithium ion batteries, but the ability to synthesize the material into highly uniform exotic nanostructures with high energy density
There key finding was that the silicon dioxide nanotubes are extremely stable in batteries, which is important
Specifically, Sio2 nanotube anodes were cycled 100 times without any loss in energy storage capability and the authors are highly confident that they could be cycled hundreds more times.
Synthetic natural gas from excess electricity More information: In situ Imaging of Silicalite-1 Surface Growth Reveals the Mechanism of Crystallization Science 2014
#Flexible supercapacitor raises bar for volumetric energy density Scientists have taken a large step toward making a fiber-like energy storage device that can be woven into clothing
The device is a supercapacitor cousin to the battery. This one packs an interconnected network of graphene and carbon nanotubes so tightly that it stores energy comparable to some thin-film lithium batteriesn area where batteries have held traditionally a large advantage.
The product's developers engineers and scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore Tsinghua University in China and Case Western Reserve University in the United states believe the storage capacity by volume
(called volumetric energy density) is reported the highest for carbon-based microscale supercapacitors to date: 6. 3 microwatt hours per cubic millimeter.
The device also maintains the advantage of charging and releasing energy much faster than a battery.
and serve as energy-carrying wires in medical implants. Yuan Chen a professor of chemical engineering at NTU led the new study working with Dingshan Yu Kunli Goh Hong Wang Li Wei and Wenchao Jiang at NTU;
Conversely batteries have high energy density and low power density which means they can last a long time
but don't deliver a large amount of energy quickly. Microelectronics to electric vehicles can benefit from energy storage devices that offer high power and high energy density.
That's why researchers are working to develop a device that offers both. To continue to miniaturize electronics industry needs tiny energy storage devices with large volumetric energy densities.
By mass supercapacitors might have comparable energy storage or energy density to batteries. But because they require large amounts of accessible surface area to store energy they have lagged always badly in energy density by volume.
To improve the energy density by volume the researchers designed a hybrid fiber. A solution containing acid-oxidized single-wall nanotubes graphene oxide and ethylenediamine
which promotes synthesis and dopes graphene with nitrogen is pumped through a flexible narrow reinforced tube called a capillary column and heated in an oven for six hours.
Sheets of graphene one to a few atoms thick and aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes self-assemble into an interconnected prorous network that run the length of the fiber.
and remain so as they're pumped out resulting in the high volumetric energy density. The process using multiple capillary columns will enable the engineers to make fibers continuously
When they integrate multiple pairs of fibers between two electrodes the ability to store electricity called capacitance increased linearly according to the number of fibers used.
Using a polyvinyl alcohol/phosphoric acid gel as an electrolyte a solid-state micro-supercapacitor made from a pair of fibers offered a volumetric density of 6. 3 microwatt hours per cubic millimeter
which is comparable to that of a 4-volt-500-microampere-hour thin film lithium battery. The fiber supercapacitor demonstrated ultrahigh energy density value
while maintaining the high power density and cycle stability. We have tested the fiber device for 10000 charge/discharge cycles
while conventional rechargeable batteries have a lifetime of less than 1000 cycles. The team also tested the device for flexible energy storage.
The device was subjected to constant mechanical stress and its performance was evaluated. The fiber supercapacitor continues to work without performance loss even after bending hundreds of times Yu said.
Woven into uniforms the battery-like supercapacitors could power displays or transistors used for communication.
In addition The team is interested also in testing these fibers for multifunctional applications including batteries solar cells biofuel cells
Scalable synthesis of hierarchically structured carbon nanotuberaphene fibres for capacitive energy storage dx. doi. org/10.1038/nnano. 2014.9 n
You could print a MASSIVE heat exchanger to reclaim heat from waste water power plants your house...You like fresh air
the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Since then multiple earthquakes have struck this region including a M7. 3 quake in December of last year
As the scorching-hot air moves through the exchanger the chilled tubing absorbs the energy cooling the air to minus 238 degrees Fahrenheit in a fraction of a second.
If it were in a power station it would probably be a 200-ton heat exchanger he says.
They get more energy out of the liquid hydrogen than you can get just burning it.
so using much of the energy that went into making it a liquid is very effective.
The intent is to save energy by controlling the temperature of an individual person rather than an entire building a goal that anyone who's ever turned on a personal space heater in a frigid office building in July can get behind.
So researchers sent down pulses of radio energy of this particular frequency. By analysing this radar data the team were able to map the topography of the underlying bedrock.
The light enters the water it hands off part of its energy to the medium and inside it exists as light
and a lot more energy is given away than during refraction. The result of that process? As the photons exited the cloud they were clumped together.
#Device Could Harvest Wasted Energy From Wi-fi, Satellite Signals A wireless device developed by researchers at Duke university that converts microwaves into electricity could eventually harvest Wi-fi or satellite signals for power according to its creators.
It could also one day be built into cell phones to let them charge while not in use they say.
Its energy harvesting capabilities come courtesy of a metamaterial a synthetic material engineered with characteristics not found in nature like the ability to bend light the wrong way
In this case the microwave-harvesting metamaterial that acts kind of like a solar panel converting microwaves into up to 7. 3 volts of electricity enough to charge small electronics.
and make lost energy usable. â##It s possible to use this design for a lot of different frequencies
and types of energy including vibration and sound energy harvestingâ#according to Duke graduate student Alexander Katko one of the inventors. â##Until now a lot of work with metamaterials has been theoretical.
The device is described in the journal Applied Physics Letters c
#Planet Without A Star Found â##We have seen never before an object free-floating in space that that looks like this.
The habitable zone includes orbits where planets receive the same amount of stellar energy from a star as the Earth receives from the sun. Earth-size planets include those that are between one and two times the size of Earth.
State-run news agency Ria Novosti has said that it will carry dust monitors and plasma sensors to sense high-energy cosmic rays as well.
Kacyra's company built a scanner that could work outside off battery power and didn't require special protective shielding for eyes.
#The Quest To Harness Wind energy At 2, 000 Feet To be more precise it's a stabilizing fin part of a tube-shaped robotic airship designed to tap the power of high-altitude winds.
The blade tips of today's tallest conventional wind turbine installed at a test center in Denmark this year stretch to 720 feet.
One contains copper conductors that transmit power collected as high as 2000 feet down to a battery or the grid.
There is more than enough energy in high-altitude winds to power all of civilization says Ken Caldeira a Stanford university climate scientist who co-authored a 2012 study that ballparked the potential at 1800 terawatts--more than four times the estimate near the surface.
Altaeros Energies the company behind that BAT is poised to prove that it's already done so.
While typical wind turbines of similar scale require a large crew and several days to install the BAT is ready to fly
Often they must rely on diesel generators--one of the least-efficient power sources --because renewable energy systems are not economically feasible.
In the Arctic for example there isn't enough sunlight to justify solar power for months at a time
and a combination of permafrost and snowed-in roads complicates the installation of standard wind turbines.
Many sites in Alaska fit this description and so the Alaska Energy Authority awarded Altaeros a $740000 grant to demonstrate its technology.
The company plans to start flying its first commercial-scale BAT a 30-kilowatt system that could reduce diesel consumption by 11000 gallons annually near Fairbanks next year.
We're not trying to replace wind turbines Rein says. We're trying to expand wind energy to places where it doesn't work today.
In 2010 when Rein and cofounder Ben Glass were fresh out of MIT and building their first balsa-wood prototype high-altitude wind energy was still largely unknown.
Altaeros has grown now to a 10-person operation and a half dozen or so competitors are racing to market with roughly a dozen more working on designs.
A megawatt-class BAT anchored 10 miles off the coast would need significantly smaller foundations than traditional offshore wind systems
and the future of wind energy it would seem floats in our fingertips. Altaeros has a handful of competitors.
As the Airborne wind turbine makes giant vertical loops air spins four rotors which drive generators. A tether sends the power to a ground station.
From the sci-tech perspective important energy and conservation agreements were announced. Now the hard work of putting them into action begins for the pledgers and signers as well as those watchdogging that process.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced that it is dropping all of its investments in fossil fuels-about $60. 2 million or 7 percent of the total $860 million endowment in favor of renewable energy.
-or no-carbon economic development projects such as expanding their energy generation capacity with renewables like sun and wind instead of fossil fuels.
#An All-Liquid Battery For Storing Solar And Wind energy You could call it a rainy-day fund.
A team of MIT researchers has built an all-liquid battery prototype that's designed to store excess energy from solar and wind power plants.
or the wind isn't blowing future versions of this battery could release energy captured during more productive times into nations'power grids.
Cheaper more efficient energy storage would be a big boost for alternative energy technologies. It would help solar panels
and wind turbines provide grids with steady electricity instead of surges during sunny or windy times so it's always there in case of high demand.
It also might make sun-and wind-produced electricity cheaper; by storing extra energy that isn't being used less electricity is wasted in the long run.
There are already solid batteries sold now to store energy from solar panels. They're mostly used in single homes however.
As solar facilities get larger solid batteries get more expensive and less efficient compared to how much energy the whole facility makes.
The MIT team thinks an all-liquid battery filled with searingly hot molten metals might be a good alternative.
Liquid batteries may be easier (and thus cheaper) to manufacture in larger sizes and they're expected to last longer than solid ones.
The team previously made a prototype all-liquid battery filled with magnesium and an element called antimony.
With this latest version the team has made a battery with lithium and antimony mixed with lead.
It has compared some advantages to its predecessor. Mixing the antimony with lead makes the materials cheaper.
Plus the battery can be kept at lower temperatures. It works at 450 degrees Celsius versus 700 degrees Celsius.
The team even conducted a durability test charging and discharging the liquid battery for 1800 hours.
From that data it predicts that the battery would lose 15 percent of its capacity after 10 years of daily use.
Engineers have known long about how important storage is to solar and wind energy given their unreliable natures.
For example evenings can be a high-demand time for electricity but they're not particularly sunny.
Additionally there can be an overproduction of solar energy during daylight hours meaning valuable electricity goes to waste frequently.
Research groups are working on a number of storage schemes to fix these issues from flywheels to liquid nitrogen and oxygen.
The MIT team published its work yesterday in the journal Nature e
#U s army Wants A Parachuting Tank After years of service in wars--from Iraq to Afghanistan to Iraq again--the Humvee is on its way out.
though energy use payload capacity and speed counted as well. The question to answer according to Jordy de Renet one of Stella s drivers was Do you want it in your daily life?
It also allowed for more surface area for solar cells which cover 6 square meters. The 60-kw battery sheathed in a bright yellow casing runs down the center of the vehicle
and provides up to about 400 km of range or 800 km when the solar panel is providing maximum juice.
On Stella s best day during the competition Solar Team Eindhoven was able to drive 500 km at an average of 100 km/hr.
The solar array charges while the car is in motion as well as when it is parked. We get more energy out of the car than is needed to drive it said de Renet.
That power as much as twice what the car uses can be returned to the grid. The system uses a Wi-fi protocol for vehicles 802. 11p to see where the driver cannot.
Motors batteries sensors and electronic control systems located at the ends of the rods can loosen or tighten the tension of the cables.
#Turning Old Lead Batteries Into New Solar energy Used car batteries can leech chemicals and create lead pollution
--and put to good use creating emissions-free energy. In newly published research the scientists show that recycled lead from car batteries works as well as fresh lead
when used in solar cells made with organolead halide perovskite film a compound that is fast becoming competitive with silicon in solar power technology.
Quoting MIT energy professor Angela Belcher a study co-author an MIT press release notes that with time ticking down on lead-acid batteries in favor of lithium ion cells we need to be thinking ahead on handling a looming toxic waste problem:
The group's work demonstrates that the perovskite created from the lead in just one old car battery could provide materials for 30 households-worth of solar energy cells.
Perovskite solar panels are also less energy-intensive to build compared to silicon-based cells and the leaded film would be contained completely within other materials.
The research Environmentally-responsible fabrication of efficient perovskite solar cells from recycled car batteries was published recently online by the journal Energy and Environmental science.
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