With a bit of "metal whispering," Iowa State University engineers have developed technology capable of recovering pure and precious metals from the alloys in our old phones and other electrical waste. All it takes is the controlled application of oxygen and relatively low levels of heat.
ORNL story tips: Quantum building blocks, high-pressure diamonds, wildfire ecology, quick cooling tooling and printing on the fly
New 140,000-square-foot facility will advance fundamental chemistry and materials science for higher-performing, cost-effective catalysts and batteries, and other energy efficiency technologies.
A team from Cornell University's Environmental Systems Lab has put forth a new framework for injecting as much information as possible into the pre-design and early design phases of a building project, potentially saving architects and design teams time and money down the road.
Berkeley Lab scientists have captured real-time, high-resolution videos of liquid structures taking shape as nanoparticles form a solid-like layer at the interface between oil and water. Their findings could help advance all-liquid robotics for targeted cancer drug delivery and other applications.
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the partner institute Empa have started a joint initiative called SynFuels. The goal is to develop a process for producing kerosene from renewable resources. In this way liquid fuel mixtures of the highest quality, which would allow the most residue-free combustion possible and thus be suitable for aircraft propulsion, should be obtainable using carbon dioxide and hydrogen from renewable resources.
New hydrogel-based materials that can change shape in response to psychological stimuli, such as water, could be the next generation of materials used to bioengineer tissues and organs, according to a team of researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago.
A German-Polish research team has succeeded in creating a micrometer-sized space-time crystal consisting of magnons at room temperature. With the help of the scanning transmission X-ray microscope Maxymus at Bessy II at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, they were able to film the recurring periodic magnetization structure in a crystal.
Thomas H. Epps, III, the Allan and Myra Ferguson Distinguished Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware, has been named to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows. The AIMBE College of Fellows consists of the top 2% of medical and biological engineers in the United States.
A revolutionary machine-learning (ML) approach to simulate the motions of atoms in materials such as aluminum is described in this week’s Nature Communications journal.
A materials engineer at the University of California San Diego is leading the development of a new research platform for studying high-performance materials, in particular new materials that melt above 4000 degrees Celsius (C). UC San Diego nanoengineering professor Kenneth Vecchio is leading the project, which is funded by a new $800,000 grant from the US Office of Naval Research (ONR), through the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP).
A team of researchers designed and manufactured a new sodium-ion conductor for solid-state sodium-ion batteries that is stable when incorporated into higher-voltage oxide cathodes. This new solid electrolyte could dramatically improve the efficiency and lifespan of this class of batteries. A proof of concept battery built with the new material lasted over 1000 cycles while retaining 89.3% of its capacity--a performance unmatched by other solid-state sodium batteries to date.
A Florida State University research team has developed a way to use a material found in plants to help create safer batteries. Using the organic polymer lignin — a compound in the cell walls of plants that makes them rigid — the team was able to create battery electrolytes.
Biological systems can harness their living cells for growth and regeneration, but engineering systems cannot. Until now.
Mike Kirka, a researcher and group leader in Deposition Science and Technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been recognized by The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, or TMS, with the Young Innovator in the Materials Science of Additive Manufacturing Award.
A new paper by authors from Los Alamos and Argonne national laboratories sums up the recent progress in colloidal-quantum-dot research and highlights the remaining challenges and opportunities in the rapidly developing field, which is poised to enable a wide array of new laser-based and LED-based technology applications.
PNNL researchers discover a new route to forming complex crystals
A Fermilab scientist and his team have developed new way to make antireflective lenses, enabling big discoveries about the cosmic microwave background radiation and the fabric of the universe.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of California San Diego have discovered that a material that looks geometrically similar to rock salt could be an interesting candidate for lithium battery anodes that would be used in fast charging applications.
Researchers developed a low-cost, high-performance, sustainable lead-based anode for lithium-ion batteries that can power hybrid and all-electric vehicles. They also uncovered its previously unknown reaction mechanism during charge and discharge.
A holy grail for orthopedic research is a method for not only creating artificial bone tissue that precisely matches the real thing, but does so in such microscopic detail that it includes tiny structures potentially important for stem cell differentiation, which is key to bone regeneration.
Michigan Tech engineers look into the untapped potential of parking lots in a study that investigates the energy-related benefits of developing charging stations powered with solar canopies built into the parking infrastructure of large-scale retailers like Walmart.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University (SBU), and other collaborating institutions have uncovered dynamic, atomic-level details of how an important platinum-based catalyst works in the water gas shift reaction. The experiments provide definitive evidence that only certain platinum atoms play an important role in the chemical conversion, and could therefore guide the design of catalysts that use less of this precious metal.
New piezoelectric material is effective at elevated temperatures, along with demonstrating a surprisingly high level of electric production. This holds promise for a range of new uses including space exploration.
A multi-institutional team became the first to generate accurate results from materials science simulations on a quantum computer that can be verified with neutron scattering experiments and other practical techniques.
Six groups that included seventeen scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory were recent recipients of the DOE’s 2020 Secretary of Energy’s Honor Awards.
The UC Santa Cruz professor uses computing resources at Brookhaven Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials to run calculations for quantum information science, spintronics, and energy research.
New computer design methods pave the way for scientists to design and assemble bundles of peptides with specific size, shape, and display characteristics. Scientists can then link these customizable building blocks, called bundlemers, to produce a huge array of polymers.
Scientists recently investigated the factors that control fluorescent light signals from metal organic frameworks (MOFs). The light may turn on due to structural changes in the MOF and turn off due to reorganization of the electrons in the MOF. Understanding these factors advances researchers’ ability to design and use MOFs as chemical sensors.
Scientists have created a new type of electricity-conducting polymer containing both linear and ring elements. The new polymers have very different electronic properties than scientists would expect if the polymers simply added the contributions from each linear and ring component. The polymers open new avenues for moving energy within and between polymers.
Using high-speed X-ray tomography, researchers captured images of solid-state batteries in operation and gained new insights that may improve their efficiency.
Three technologies developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have won National Technology Transfer Awards from the Federal Laboratory Consortium. The annual FLC Awards recognize significant accomplishments in transferring federal laboratory technologies to the marketplace.
Scientists from MIPT, Moscow Pedagogical State University and the University of Manchester have created a highly sensitive terahertz detector based on the effect of quantum-mechanical tunneling in graphene. The sensitivity of the device is already superior to commercially available analogs based on semiconductors and superconductors, which opens up prospects for applications of the graphene detector in wireless communications, security systems, radio astronomy, and medical diagnostics. The research results are published in a high-rank journal Nature Communications.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have developed a new method for 3D printing living microbes in controlled patterns, expanding the potential for using engineered bacteria to recover rare-earth metals, clean wastewater, detect uranium and more.
ORNL story tips: COVID breath-sampling, welding advances and powered by water
Topological insulators are electron are superhighways on their edges and insulators everywhere else. Researchers used a process called high harmonic generation to separately probe electron behavior in both of those domains.
Florida State University researchers seeking to make newer, more energy efficient materials have made a breakthrough in understanding how structure dictates electron transfer across surfaces. It all has to do with how the molecules are positioned. Ken Hanson, associate professor of chemistry, and his colleagues found that the way molecules assemble on an inorganic material plays a key role in how energy and electrical current move across these interfaces, thus driving the functionality.
A calculation so complex that it takes twenty years to complete on a powerful desktop computer can now be done in one hour on a regular laptop.
Sandia National Laboratories and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. have developed a virtual means of showing a tire’s performance before the first prototypes are ever built. Computer simulations test a virtual tire on a virtual test machine that simulates actual road conditions.
Where do the greatest risks of infection lurk? How can you protect yourself and others even better? Scientists all over the world are working to expand knowledge about Covid-19 – including at Empa. Researchers are now using measurements and simulations to take a close look at cable cars and cabins in ski resorts.
An international team of researchers produced islands of amorphous, non-crystalline material inside a class of new metal alloys known as high-entropy alloys. This discovery opens the door to applications in everything from landing gears, to pipelines, to automobiles. The new materials could make these lighter, safer, and more energy efficient.
Supercomputers funded by the National Science Foundation are being used to develop more reliable and efficient electric vehicles and other products by focusing on the batteries that power them.
Single-use plastic bags continue to pose a global environmental challenge, as their composition and form makes them difficult to recycle, and hundreds of years are required for them to degrade fully in the environment. While reusabable shopping bags offer an earth-friendly option, what if plastic bags could be recycled or placed in our composts?
After more than 15 years of work, scientists at three DOE national laboratories have succeeded in creating and testing an advanced, more powerful superconducting magnet made of niobium and tin for use in the next generation of light sources.
Using X-ray tomography, a research team has observed the internal evolution of the materials inside solid-state lithium batteries as they were charged and discharged. Detailed three-dimensional information from the research could help improve the reliability and performance of the batteries, which use solid materials to replace the flammable liquid electrolytes in existing lithium-ion batteries.
Funds from an NSF $500,000 grant will be used to bring together an interdisciplinary team of researchers with complementary expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and material science to lay the groundwork for an AI-Enabled Materials Discovery, Design, and Synthesis (AIMS) Institute.
Copper oxides have the highest superconducting transition temperatures under normal conditions, but physicists aren’t sure why. A group of international researchers may have stumbled upon a major clue that could help revolutionize our understanding of these superconductive materials.
Researchers perform experiments that can add or subtract a single quantum of sound--with surprising results when applied to noisy sound fields.
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