01. Carbon-coated nickel enables fuel cell free of precious metals 02. Decoding a material’s ‘memory’ 03. Development of stretchable and printable free-form lithium-ion batteries 04. DNA computer using glass beads increases parallel processing power 05. Engineering the quantum states in solids using light 06. Heat storage: Scientists develop material that is stable, efficient, and eco-friendly 07. Printing circuits on rare nanomagnets puts a new spin on computing 08. Study shows how superconductivity can be switched on and off in superconductors 09. Team achieves 30-fold enhancement of thermoelectric performance in polycrystalline tin selenide 10. Water as a ‘glue’ for elasticity enhanced, […]
Carbon-coated nickel enables fuel cell free of precious metals
Science Daily March 24, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – Cornell University, University of Madison, Japan, China) designed a nickel-based electrocatalyst with a 2-nanometer shell made of nitrogen-doped carbon. Their hydrogen fuel cell has an anode catalyst consisting of a solid nickel core surrounded by the carbon shell. When paired with a cobalt-manganese cathode, the resulting completely precious-metal-free hydrogen fuel cell outputs more than 200 milliwatts per square centimeter. The nickel oxide species on the surface of the nickel electrode slows the hydrogen oxidation reaction dramatically. The nitrogen-doped carbon coating serves as a protection layer and enhances the […]
Decoding a material’s ‘memory’
Science Daily March 24, 2022 While it has been known that individual particle distribution influences yield point, or flow, in disordered materials, it has been challenging to study this phenomenon since the field lacks ways to “quantify” disorder in such materials. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania tracked individual particles on top of a liquid-air interface. Then, they used a magnetic needle that moves back and forth to apply a shearing force. With this system, the researchers can systematically apply forces to 50,000 particles, track their detailed movement, and use complex image analysis to see if two neighboring particles remain […]
Development of stretchable and printable free-form lithium-ion batteries
Nanowerk March 25, 2022 Researchers in South Korea have developed a fully stretchable lithium-ion battery system using stretchable electrode. It acquires intrinsic stretchability and improved interfacial adhesion with the active materials via a functionalized physically cross-linked organogel as a stretchable binder and separator. The stretchable current collectors are fabricated in the form of nanocomposites consisting of a matrix with excellent barrier properties without swelling in organic electrolytes and nanostructure-controlled multimodal conductive fillers. They demonstrated several types of stretchable lithium-ion batteries that reliably operated under various stretch deformations with capacity and rate capability comparable with a nonstretchable batteries even under high […]
DNA computer using glass beads increases parallel processing power
Phys.org March 29, 2022 In general, DNA computation conducted in individual tubes is slow in generating chemical outputs in response to chemical inputs and requires fluorescence readout. Researchers at Emory University have introduced a new paradigm for DNA computation where the chemical input is processed and transduced into a mechanical output using dynamic DNA-based motors operating far from equilibrium. They applied DNA as a coating to extremely small glass beads. In practice, the glass beads either roll across the surface of a base of gold or hold steady, depending on how the DNA coating interacts with molecules that have been […]
Engineering the quantum states in solids using light
Science Daily March 30, 2022 In previous experiments, the light intensity for realizing Floquet state (where the original quantum state is replicated when light is irradiated on matters) in solids was enormous due to the high frequency of light. An international team of researchers (South Korea, Japan) succeeded in the experimental realization of the steady Floquet state in a graphene Josephson junction (GJJ) by irradiating continuous microwaves on it. The intensity of the light was decreased to one trillionth the value of previous experiments, significantly reducing the heat generation and enabling continuously long-lasting Floquet states. They also developed a novel […]
Heat storage: Scientists develop material that is stable, efficient, and eco-friendly
Phys.org March 29, 2022 Researchers in Germany have developed shape-stabilized phase change material which can absorb large amounts of heat by changing its physical state from solid to liquid. The stored heat is then re-released when the material hardens. They describe the steps involved in creating the structure of the material and how the different chemicals influence each other. Large panels of the material could be integrated into walls. These would then absorb heat during the sunny hours of the day and release it again later when the temperature goes down. Under the right conditions it could store up to […]
New Kind of Ultraviolet Light Safely Kills Airborne Pathogens Indoors, Scientists Say
Science Alert March 28, 2022 One potential solution for controlling airborne pathogens is Krypton Chloride (KrCl) excimer lamps (often referred to as Far-UVC), which can efficiently inactivate pathogens, such as coronaviruses and influenza, in air. Research has demonstrated that Krypton Chloride (KrCl) lamps do not induce acute reactions in the skin or eyes, nor delayed effects such as skin cancer. An international team of researchers has shown that Far-UVC deployed in a room-sized chamber effectively inactivates aerosolized Staphylococcus aureus. At a room ventilation rate of 3 air-changes-per-hour (ACH), with 5 filtered-sources the steady-state pathogen load was reduced by 98.4% providing […]
Printing circuits on rare nanomagnets puts a new spin on computing
Phys.org March 28, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland) combined theoretical and experimental work to fabricate and observe the artificial spin glass as a proof-of-principle. Hopfield neural network mathematically models associative memory to guide the disorder of the artificial spin systems. They performed temperature-dependent imaging of thermally driven moment fluctuations within these networks and observed characteristic features of a two-dimensional Ising spin glass. They observed clear signatures of the hard-to-observe rugged spin glass free energy in the form of sub-aging, out-of-equilibrium autocorrelations and a transition from stable […]
Rescued Victorian rainfall data smashes former records
Science Daily March 25, 2022 An international team of researchers (UK, Ireland) led the rainfall Rescue Project to digitize 5.2 million rainfall observations, recorded by hand on paper sheets now stored in the Met Office archives. The UK National Meteorological Archive recently scanned more than 66,000 paper sheets containing 5.28 million hand-written monthly rainfall observations taken across the UK and Ireland between 1677 and 1960. Only a small fraction of these observations was previously digitally available for climate scientists to analyze. More than 16,000 volunteer citizen scientists completed the transcription of these sheets of observations during early 2020 using the […]