Science Daily May 24, 2023 Previously described technologies for harvesting energy from air humidity are either not continuous or require unique material synthesis or processing, which has stymied scalability and broad deployment. Researchers at UMass developed a generic effect for continuous energy harvesting from air humidity which could be applied to a broad range of inorganic, organic, and biological materials. The materials were engineered with appropriate nanopores to allow air water to pass through and undergo dynamic adsorption–desorption exchange at the porous interface, resulting in surface charging. The top exposed interface experienced the dynamic interaction more than the bottom sealed […]
Eruption of Tonga underwater volcano found to disrupt satellite signals halfway around the world
Phys.org May 22, 2023 Equatorial plasma bubbles which impact satellite-based communications was observed in the Asia-Pacific region after the eruption of the Tonga volcano on January 15, 2022. Researchers in Japan used satellite and ground-based ionospheric observations to demonstrate that an air pressure wave triggered by the Tonga volcanic eruption could cause the emergence of an equatorial plasma bubble. The most prominent observation result showed a sudden increase of electron density and height of the ionosphere several ten minutes to hours before the initial arrival of the air pressure wave in the lower atmosphere. They also found that the propagation […]
Extended-range forecasts to be recast in next model upgrade
Phys.org May 18, 2023 In the next upgrade of European Centre for ECMWF’s (Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), extended-range forecasts will have 101 instead of 51 ensemble members and will run more frequently than before, at a consistent horizontal resolution of 36 km. The upgrade will lead to improvements in forecast performance across all parameters. The extended-range forecasts provide predictions up to 46 days ahead. The 51‑member ensemble in the current configuration cannot always properly capture small shifts in forecast probabilities. Doubling the ensemble size to 101 ensemble members will provide a more accurate representation of the forecast […]
A flexible near-infrared light-writing multicolor hydrogel system for on-demand information display
Nanowerk May 22, 2023 It is challenging to construct intelligent rewritable display systems with integrated functionality of remote control, rapid activation, multicolor and multimode display. Researchers in China developed a kind of rewritable hydrogel multicolor systems that can combine the merits of near-infrared (NIR) light-writing and projecting modes for on-demand information display. The systems have multilayer layout consisting of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS)-sealed carbon nanotubes (CNTs) film as photothermal control unit and embedded fluorescent hydrogels as multicolor display unit, in which thermoresponsive hydrogel is constrained within non-responsive hydrogel. The design resulted in rapid and reversible hand-written display of arbitrary information. They demonstrated […]
High-quality 2D films could be one-drop away
EurekAlert May 19, 2023 The effective application of 2D materials is strongly dependent on the mass production of high-quality large area 2D thin films. Researchers in Japan demonstrated a strategy for the automated manufacturing of high-quality 2D thin films using a modified drop-casting approach. They used an automated pipette to drop a dilute aqueous suspension onto a substrate heated on a hotplate, and controlled convection. Liquid removal caused the nanosheets to come together to form a tile-like monolayer film in 1–2 min. Ti0.87O2 nanosheets were utilized as a model system for investigating the control parameters such as concentrations, suction speeds, […]
Metal-filtering sponge removes lead from water
Science Daily May 11, 2023 In recent years great strides have been made to design adsorbents to detoxify water, as well as for a related challenge of recovering valuable metals at low concentrations. However, applying nanomaterials at scale and differentiating which nanomaterials are best suited for particular applications can be challenging. Researchers at the Northwestern University have developed a methodology for loading nanomaterial coatings onto adsorbent membranes, testing different coatings against one another, and leveraging these materials under a variety of conditions. The tailored coating for lead remediation, made from manganese-doped goethite nanoparticles, could filter lead from contaminated water to […]
Printing atom by atom
Nanowerk May 22, 2023 The constantly shrinking critical dimension in state-of-the-art technologies requires fabrication of complex conductive structures with nanometer resolution. Electrochemical techniques can produce impurity-free metallic conductors with superb electrical and mechanical properties, however, true nanoscale resolution (<100 nm) remained unattainable. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Singapore) employed nozzles with dimensions as small as 1 nm to demonstrate layer-by-layer manufacturing of 25 nm diameter voxels. Full control of the printing process allowed adjustment of the feature size on-the-fly, printing tilted, and overhanging structures. Based on experimental evidence, they estimated the limits of electrochemical 3D printing and discussed the […]
Researchers demonstrate novel way to convert heat to electricity
Nanowerk May 19, 2023 To compete with conventional energy-conversion technologies, a thermoelectric material must possess the mutually exclusive properties of both an electrical conductor and a thermal insulator. Recent theoretical investigations on sub-device scales have revealed that nanopillars attached to a membrane exhibit a multitude of local phonon resonances, spanning the full spectrum, that couple with the heat-carrying phonons in the membrane and cause a reduction in the in-plane thermal conductivity, with no expected change in the electrical properties because the nanopillars are outside the pathway of voltage generation and charge transport. A team of researchers in the US (NIST, […]
Smart material prototype challenges Newton’s laws of motion
Nanowerk May 18, 2023 The conventional mechanical metamaterials with inner resonators are characterized as homogenized solids with symmetric effective mass density tensors to interpret subwavelength wave attenuation mechanism. A team of researchers at the University of Missouri has presented a class of active metamaterials described by an odd mass density tensor which is no longer symmetric and whose nonzero asymmetric part arises from active and nonconservative forces. The unconventional wave phenomena caused by the odd mass density were demonstrated experimentally and numerically. The directional wave amplification was also illustrated by controllable feed-forward electric circuits. According to the researchers their findings […]
Study reveals generation mechanism of radiative effects on novel active optical hyperspectral LiDAR system
Phys.org May 21, 2023 According to a team of researchers in China the current radiometric correction algorithms used is Lidar has some problems. They proposed an algorithm to overcome the problems. According to the researchers it provides correction equations for intensity and reflectance data recorded by hyperspectral LiDAR. In their tests, according to them, the algorithm achieved good performances by comparing the intensity and reflectance changes before and after removing the leaf incidence angle effect… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 1 , 2