Phys.org June 5, 2023 Some of the energy supply units cannot meet the energy requirements for wearable electronics which requires its energy supply part to be flexible, wearable, integratable and sustainable. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed wearable sustainable energy harvesting-storage hybrid self-charging power textile. The power textile consists of a coaxial fiber-shaped polylactic acid/reduced graphene oxide/polypyrrole (PLA-rGO-PPy), triboelectric nanogenerator (fiber-TENG) which is flexible can harvest low-frequency and irregular energy during human motion, and a novel coaxial fiber-shaped supercapacitor (fiber-SC) as an energy storage unit. The integrated power textile can provide an efficient route for sustainable working […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of June 2, 2023
01. All-optical, near-infrared imaging via ultra-thin structured films 02. Capturing non-transparent ultrafast scenes 03. China is Making the Largest Ocean Uranium Extraction Testing Facility 04. Hybrid bound states in the continuum in terahertz metasurfaces 05. Hydrogen battery: Storing hydrogen in coal may help power clean energy economy 06. In dust and clouds over Africa, scientists find clues to how hurricanes form 07. New-look infrared lens shines a light on future technology and manufacturing 08. Researchers build bee robot that can twist 09. Small fusion experiment hits temperatures hotter than the sun’s core 10. Telecom-wavelength quantum repeater node transmits quantum information […]
All-optical, near-infrared imaging via ultra-thin structured films
Phys.org May 26, 2023 Compared to metasurfaces composed of the periodic arrangement of nanoparticles, inverse membrane metasurfaces offer unique possibilities for supporting multipolar resonances, while maintaining small unit cell size, large mode volume and high field enhancement for enhancing nonlinear frequency conversion. An international team of researchers (UK, Australia, China, Hong Kong) theoretically and experimentally investigated the formation of bound states in the continuum (BICs) from silicon dimer-hole membrane metasurfaces, and demonstrated that BIC-formed resonance featured a strong and tailorable electric near-field confinement inside the silicon membrane films. They showed that by tuning the gap between the holes, it is […]
Capturing non-transparent ultrafast scenes
Phys.org May 26, 2023 Real-time imaging modalities with ultrahigh temporal resolutions are required for capturing ultrashort events on picosecond timescales for unveiling many fundamental mechanisms in physics, chemistry, and biology. Current single-shot ultrafast imaging schemes operate only at conventional optical wavelengths, being suitable solely within an optically transparent framework. Researchers in Canada leveraged the unique penetration capability of terahertz radiation to demonstrate a single-shot ultrafast terahertz photography system that could capture multiple frames of a complex ultrafast scene in non-transparent media with sub-picosecond temporal resolution. By multiplexing an optical probe beam in both the time and spatial-frequency domains, they encoded […]
China is Making the Largest Ocean Uranium Extraction Testing Facility
Next Big Future May 23, 2023 China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) will create a “world-leading” seawater uranium extraction technology development centre which is said to be the largest such test platform to be built in the South China Sea. The platform will form “two centres, one platform” seawater uranium extraction scientific research base together with a research and test centre and an international exchange centre. Construction has just got under way. It has the ability to carry out material verification and amplification experiments in real ocean conditions. The oceans are estimated to contain some 4 billion tons of the metal. […]
Emergence of solvated dielectrons observed for the first time
Phys.org May 26, 2023 Low-energy electrons dissolved in liquid ammonia or aqueous media are powerful reducing agents that promote challenging reduction reactions but can also cause radiation damage to biological tissue. An international team of researchers (France, Switzerland) undertook a study to better understand the underlying mechanistic processes with respect to the details and energetics of the electron transfer steps. They showed how UV photoexcitation of metal-ammonia clusters could be used to generate tunable low-energy electrons in situ, identified UV light-induced generation of spin-paired solvated dielectrons and their subsequent relaxation by an unconventional electron-transfer-mediated decay as an efficient low-energy electron […]
Fungal Infections Could Obliterate Our Food Supply, Scientists Warn
Science Alert May 26, 2023 Hundreds of fungal diseases affect the 168 crops listed as important in human nutrition by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. According to an international team of researchers (UK, Germany) despite widespread spraying of fungicides and the planting of cultivars bred to be more disease resilient, growers worldwide lose between 10% and 23% of their crops to fungal disease every year, and another 10–20% post-harvest. The five most important calorie crops — rice, wheat, maize (corn), soya beans and potatoes — can be affected by rice blast fungus, wheat stem rust, […]
Hybrid bound states in the continuum in terahertz metasurfaces
Phys.org May 26, 2023 The most common strategy to apply bound states in the continuum (BICs) in a metasurface is by breaking symmetry of resonators in the uniform array that leaks the otherwise uncoupled mode to free space and exhibits an inverse quadratic relationship between quality factor (Q) and asymmetry. Researchers in China have proposed a scheme to further reduce scattering losses and improve the robustness of symmetry protected BICs by decreasing the radiation density with a hybrid BIC lattice. They observed a significant increase of radiative Q in the hybrid lattice compared to the uniform lattice. In the hybrid […]
Hydrogen battery: Storing hydrogen in coal may help power clean energy economy
Science Daily May 26, 2023 Researchers at the State University of Pennsylvania found that coal may represent a potential way to store hydrogen gas. They analyzed eight types of coals from coalfields across the United States to better understand their sorption and diffusion potential, or how much hydrogen they can hold. All eight coals showed considerable sorption properties, with low-volatile bituminous coal from eastern Virginia and anthracite coal from eastern Pennsylvania performing the best in tests. Depleted coalbed methane reservoirs’ seams contain unconventional natural gas like methane and have become an important source of fossil fuel energy over the last […]
In dust and clouds over Africa, scientists find clues to how hurricanes form
Phys.org May 25, 2023 When the dust that wafts off the Sahel and Sahara regions of Africa mixes with tropical clouds, it creates rainy “disturbance” in the eastern Atlantic which are hurricanes in their youngest form. To study these infant storms, a group of NASA scientists spent a month flying off the northwestern coast of Africa aboard NASA’s research plane logging roughly 100 hours. The campaign encountered and measured one of the largest dust events the Airborne Laboratory capturing data with its instruments. Onboard remote sensing instruments captured detailed profiles of Saharan dust, wind speed and direction, temperature, moisture, and […]