The silver electrical contacts that carry electricity out of about 90 percent of the solar modules on the market are also one of their most expensive parts. Now scientists from two Department of Energy national laboratories have used X-rays to observe exactly how those contacts form during manufacturing.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have demonstrated that the design and placement of a tiny measurement device called a reference electrode enhances the quantity and quality of information that can be extracted from lithium-ion battery cells during cycling.
Ionic transport has been studied extensively over the years for energy devices such as fuel cells and batteries using Li+, H+, Ag+, Cu+, F-, and O2-. Yet as Genki Kobayashi and Ryoji Kanno point out in a recent report, hydride ions (H-) may be particularly useful for high-energy-density storage and conversion devices. Using an oxyhydride solid state cell they have now demonstrated pure H- conduction in an oxide for the first time.
Chemists at The University of Texas at Arlington have devised a safer, more environmentally friendly, less expensive and more efficient water-based system for the synthesis of organic compounds typically used in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, cosmetics, plastics, textiles and household chemicals.
With people wanting to use smaller electronic devices, smaller energy storage systems are needed. Researchers of Aalto University in Finland have demonstrated the fabrication of electrochemically active organic lithium electrode thin films, which help make microbatteries more efficient than before. Researchers used a combined atomic/molecular layer deposition (ALD/MLD) technique, to prepare lithium terephthalate, a recently found anode material for a lithium-ion battery.
High-tech metal alloys are widely used in important materials such as the cladding that protects the fuel inside a nuclear reactor. But even the best alloys degrade over time, victims of a reactor’s high temperatures, radiation, and hydrogen-rich environment. Now, a team of MIT researchers has found a way of greatly reducing the damaging effects these metals suffer from exposure to hydrogen.
Prof. Ju-Young Kim (School of Materials Science and Engineering)’s research team developed an ultralight nanoporous gold with high strength. This newly developed material is twice more solid than a regular gold and it is 30% lighter. This research outcome was selected to introduce on the online version of Nano Letters on March 22, 2016.
An international team of scientists led by Artem Oganov, Head of Computational Materials Discovery at MIPT, has proven that technetium carbide does not exist — what previous researchers had obtained was pure technetium that was mistakenly considered as carbide. This is important from the view point of chemistry of transition metal carbides which for many applications are considered as promising substances. The article was published in RSC Advances.
Precise control of an individual particle or molecule is a difficult task. Controlling multiple particles simultaneously is an even more challenging endeavor. Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new method that relies on fluid flow to manipulate and assemble multiple particles. This new technique can trap a range of submicron- to micron-sized particles, including single DNA molecules, vesicles, drops or cells.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a huge particle accelerator, which played a key role in the detection of the elusive particle, Higgs boson. The LHC, buried beneath the Swiss-French border, requires a track extending 27 km for particle acceleration close to the velocity of light before the collision of the particles.
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