Science Daily October 12, 2022 Using massive batteries to alleviate range anxiety is ineffective for mainstream EV adoption due to the limited raw resource supply and high cost. Fast charging enables downsizing of EV batteries for both affordability and sustainability, without causing range anxiety. However, fast charging of energy-dense batteries remains a challenge. A team of researchers in the US (Pennsylvania State College, State College (PA)) combined materials based on asymmetric temperature modulation with a thermally stable dual-salt electrolyte to achieve charging of a 265 Wh kg−1 battery to 75% (or 70%) state of charge in 12 (or 11) minutes for more […]
The battery that runs 630 km on a single charge
Science Daily October 6, 2022 Anode-free Li metal batteries can increase energy density beyond that of standard lithium-ion batteries. The absence of Li reservoir generates unwarranted volume expansion, permitting electrolyte depletion and rapid cathode capacity consumption. To address this issue researchers in South Korea developed an anode-free Li metal battery with an ion-conductive layer coated with Cu current collector Ag/L in typical carbonate-based electrolytes. The ion-conducting layer causes stable solid electrolyte interphase development and allows for minimal volume expansion when utilizing stable Li hosts. Via density functional theory calculation and experimental measurements and analysis, they demonstrated the beneficial effect of […]
California Quakes Mysteriously Preceded by Shifts in Earth’s Magnetic Field
Science Alert October 10, 2022 Magnetic field changes as earthquake precursors have been the subject of numerous studies and some controversy. Infrequent large earthquakes and sparse magnetometer coverage along fault zones complicate statistical analysis. A team of researchers in the US (Google Research, industry) analyzed ground-based magnetic time-series measurements before 19 earthquakes in California drawing from over 330,000 site-days of measurement spanning a decade. They applied a pre-specified statistical analysis with two key ideas – combining signals from nearby sites via spectral cross-power, and then looking for large spikes in frequency domain 0.016–25 Hz. They used the machine learning concept […]
Getting it to stick: Designing optimal core-shell MOFs for direct air capture
Phys.org October 11, 2022 MOFs utilize porous membranes to capture large volumes of gasses and can be designed via computational modeling rather than traditional trial-and-error. However, adsorbents designed to strongly bind CO2 nearly always bind H2O strongly. A team of researchers in the US (University of Pittsburgh, DOE) has a direct air capture (DAC) strategy to remove carbon dioxide from the air using core–shell MOF design, where a high-CO2-capacity MOF “core” is protected from competitive H2O-binding via a MOF “shell” that has very slow water diffusion. They considered a high-frequency adsorption/desorption cycle that regenerates the adsorbents before water can pass […]
Materials science engineers work on new material for computer chips
Science Daily October 11, 2022 To save energy in computing by co-locating computation and memory elements in an integrated circuit manufacturing, a team of researchers in the US (University of Virginia, Washington State University, North Carolina State University, Sandia National Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, Brown University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory) explained how to engineer and enhance the stability of ferroelectric hafnium oxides, which are compatible with mainstream semiconductors. They showed that the presence of the top electrode during thermal processing results in larger tensile biaxial stress magnitudes and concomitant increases in ferroelectric phase fraction and polarization response, whereas film chemistry, […]
A new method to enable efficient interactions between photons
Phys.org October 6, 2022 Photonics stands out as fundamental to realize the full potential of quantum technology. It provides a modular approach where the main challenges lie in the construction of high-quality building blocks and in the development of methods to interface the modules. In a review article an international team of researchers (France, UK, Canada, Germany, Denmark, South Korea) used the example of quantum dot devices to present the physics of deterministic photon–emitter interfaces, including the main photonic building blocks required to scale up, and discuss quantitative performance benchmarks. While their focus is on quantum dot devices, the presented […]
A new process to build 2D materials made possible by quantum calculations
Phys.org October 10, 2022 Ultra-thin 2D materials are frequently grown by exposing a hot metal surface to a specific gas, which results in the gas decomposing on the metal and forming the desired 2D material. Due to the hot temperatures involved, it is difficult to monitor the growth of 2D materials during the several intermediate steps involved before the 2D material is completed. An international team of researchers (Austria, UK) utilized helium atom scattering to discover and control the growth of novel 2D h-BN nanoporous phases during the CVD process. They found that prior to the formation of h-BN from […]
New technique to trap soundwaves and light on a chip in large-scale circuits
Phys.org October 10, 2022 The filtering, amplifying, and processing of optical signals is essential in the development of new telecommunication techniques, quantum optics and sensors. One pathway to do this effectively is by using Brillouin scattering. However, Brillouin scattering (SBS) in the emerging silicon nitride (Si3N4) photonic integration platform is currently out of reach because of the lack of acoustic guidance. An international team of researchers (the Netherlands, Switzerland) demonstrated advanced control of backward SBS in multilayer Si3N4 waveguides. By optimizing the separation between two Si3N4 layers, they unlocked acoustic waveguiding in this platform, potentially leading up to 15× higher […]
New tool helps researchers investigate clouds, rain, and climate change
Phys.org October 12, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (Pennsylvania State University, Argonne National Laboratory, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, Texas A&M, College Station) developed the Earth Model Column Collaboratory (EMC2), an open-source ground-based lidar and radar instrument simulator and subcolumn generator, specifically designed for large-scale models, in particular climate models, but also applicable to high-resolution model output. It provides a flexible framework enabling direct comparison of model output with ground-based observations, including generation of subcolumns that may statistically represent finer model spatial resolutions and EMC2 large-scale models’ physical assumptions implemented in their cloud or […]
New weather prediction model produces more accurate typhoon intensity forecasts
Phys.org October 12, 2022 Researchers in China cycled and evaluated western North Pacific (WNP) typhoons of 2016 using Kalman filter (EnKF) combined with the Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF). For all TC categories, the 6-h ensemble priors from the WRF/EnKF system had an appropriate amount of variance for TC tracks but had insufficient variance, they overestimated the intensity for weak storms but underestimated the intensity for strong storms. Comparison with the 5-d deterministic forecasts compared to the NCEP [US] and ECMWF [European] operational control forecasts showed that the WRF/EnKF forecasts generally had larger track errors than the […]