Science

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New Nanostructures Improve Performance of Lithium Ion Batteries

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Iranian researchers from Amirkabir University of Technology synthesized new nanostructures that have application in the production of lithium ion batteries.

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Artificial photosynthesis: New, stable photocathode with great potential

Many of us are familiar with electrolytic splitting of water from their school days: 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.This is because hydrogen is a versatile medium of storing and using "chemical energy". Research teams all over the world are therefore working hard to develop compact, robust, and cost-effective systems that can accomplish this challenge. But it is not that simple, 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.

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A scanning electron microscopy shows a cross section of the composite photocathode (left). By TEM analysis, nanoparticles of Pt could be identified in the TiO2 thin film (right).

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Magic wavelengths: Tuning up Rydberg atoms for quantum information applications

Rydberg atoms, atoms whose outermost electrons are highly excited but not ionized, might be just the thing for processing quantum information. These outsized atoms can be sustained for a long time in a quantum superposition condition -- a good thing for creating qubits -- and they can interact strongly with other such atoms, making them useful for devising the kind of logic gates needed to process information. Scientists at JQI (*) and at other labs are pursuing this promising research area.

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Rubidium atoms are held in place using a pair of laser beams at a wavelength of 1064 nm. Two other beams, promote the atoms from their ground state (5s) first to the 5p state and then to the still higher 18 s state.

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Pixelligent Technologies Announces $1M Phase-II OLED Lighting Award From the US Department of Energy

Pixelligent Technologies announced today that it has been selected for a Phase II Solid State Lighting award from the US Department of Energy to support the development of advanced light-extraction materials for OLED Lighting. Pixelligent has partnered with OLEDWorks for this grant, which follows work on a Phase I award from September 2014.

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LED Bulb

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Scientists control the flow of heat and light in photonic crystals

Scientists from the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and Thales Research & Technology, France, have found a way to control heat propagation in photonic nano-sized devices, which will be used for high speed communications and quantum information technologies. Their results are published in the leading American journal Applied Physics Letters on 30 April 2015.

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Once the laser beam hits the surface of a sample it starts to generate heat which diffuses along the membrane but also it diffuses to the ambient gas. That effect reduces the width of the temperature distribution in the photonic crystal membrane.

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Diagnostics of quality of graphene and spatial imaging of reactivity centers on carbon surface

A convenient procedure to visualize defects on graphene layers by mapping the surface of carbon materials with an appropriate contrast agent was introduced by a team of researchers from Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry of Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) involved in international collaborative project. Developed imaging (tomography) procedure has revealed organized patterns of defects on large areas of carbon surfaces. Several types of defects on the carbon surface can be "caught" and captured on the microscopic image within a few minutes. The article describing the research was published in Chemical Science journal of Royal Society of Chemistry

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Location of defects is important to estimate the quality of carbon materials and to predict physical and chemical properties of graphene systems.

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NASA's Curiosity Rover Views Serene Sundown on Mars

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NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded this view of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day, or sol (April 15, 2015), from the rover's location in Gale Crater.

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Scientists' Efforts Lead to Increased Stability of Anticancer Drug Nanocarriers in Blood

anian researchers from the University of Tabriz succeeded in the production of nanocarriers for a type of anticancer drug, which significantly decreases the side effects of the drug.

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Quick Detour by NASA Mars Rover Checks Ancient Valley

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This map shows the route on lower Mount Sharp that NASA's Curiosity followed in April and early May 2015, in the context of the surrounding terrain. Numbers along the route identify the sol, or Martian day, on which it completed the drive reaching that point, as counted since its 2012 landing.

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Penn and UC Merced researchers match physical and virtual atomic friction experiments

Technological limitations have made studying friction on the atomic scale difficult, but researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Merced, have now made advances in that quest on two fronts.

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Studying atomic scale friction, teams from Penn and UC Merced helped slow experiments and fast simulations meet in the middle.

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