Nanowerk November 15, 2021 Nanosizing of active electrode material is a common strategy to increase the effective lithium-ion diffusion transport rate, but it also decreases the volumetric energy/power density and stability of the battery. An international team of researchers (the Netherlands, China, Germany) has demonstrated nickel niobate (NiNb2O6) as a new intrinsic high-rate anode material for lithium-ion batteries without the requirement of realizing nano-architectures. The NiNb2O6 host crystal structure exhibits only a single type of channel for lithium-ion intercalation and can be fully lithiated with a capacity of about 244 mAh g−1 at low current densities. A high diffusion coefficient […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of November 12, 2021
01. Electron family creates previously unknown state of matter 02. Ultra-thin crystals as light sources in lasers 03. New phonon-based and magneto-tunable monochromatic terahertz source 04. Nuclear radiation used to transmit digital data wireless 05. These Engineers May Have Come Up With The Perfect Material For Unbreakable Screens 06. The hidden behavior of supercapacitor materials 07. How a novel radio frequency control system enhances quantum computers 08. Key witness helps scientists detect ‘spooky’ quantum entanglement in solid materials 09. Weather balloon data shows troposphere getting thicker, pushing tropopause higher over past 40 years 10. In Science magazine, scholars call for […]
Calling all ‘fusioneers’! New US fusion energy website launches
Phys.org November 8, 2021 The U.S. fusion community has just completed a two-year strategic planning process to focus on a bold new direction: the construction of a prototype fusion power plant by 2035. Following a recommendation from the consensus reports created by researchers a diverse committee of stakeholders from the U.S. fusion energy community has collaborated to build usfusionenergy.org. The website will feature the latest fusion news and informative articles, events, and resources that will help anyone, anywhere, understand the promise of fusion energy. The National Ignition Facility in California announced a significant step forward for laser-driven fusion this August. […]
Electron family creates previously unknown state of matter
Science Daily November 5, 2021 What distinguishes a superconducting state from a normal state is a spontaneously broken symmetry corresponding to the long-range coherence of pairs of electrons, leading to zero resistivity and diamagnetism. An international team of researchers (Germany, Sweden, Japan, France) was investigating the superconducting metal Ba1-xKxFe2As2 from the class of iron pnictides when they discovered that four electrons instead of two were forming a bond. It was scrutinized for two years using seven different methods to confirm the result. All data were consistent with the same result. Thus, they concluded that the four-particle electron family in certain […]
These Engineers May Have Come Up With The Perfect Material For Unbreakable Screens
Science Alert November 5, 2021 Lead halide perovskite (LHP) semiconductors show exceptional optoelectronic properties. Barriers for their applications, however, lie in their polymorphism, instability to polar solvents, phase segregation, and susceptibility to the leaching of lead ions. An international team of researchers (Australia, Slovenia, China, UK, France, Japan, Singapore) has developed a process to wrap or bind the nanocrystals in porous glass to stabilize the material, enhance its efficiency, and inhibit the toxic lead ions from leaching out from the materials. The product showed high stability when exposed to heat, light, air, and humidity, and was able to retain 80 […]
The hidden behavior of supercapacitor materials
Phys.org November 9, 2021 Polyaniline (PANI) is conductive and can be used as the electrode in a supercapacitor device, storing charge by trapping ions. To maximize energy storage, an international team of researchers (UK, Brazil) developed a novel method of depositing a thin layer of PANI onto a forest of conductive carbon nanotubes. This composite material makes an excellent supercapacitive electrode. However, as the composite is made up of different materials, it is difficult to separate and fully understand the complex processes which occur during charging and discharging. The researchers used Distribution of Relaxation Times analysis technique to examine complex […]
How a novel radio frequency control system enhances quantum computers
Phys.org November 9, 2021 Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have demonstrated a new way to control qubits by substituting the larger, more costly traditional RF control systems with smaller interactive mixing modules. The modular system has high -reliability, delivering high-resolution, low-noise RF signals needed to manipulate and measure the superconducting qubit at room temperature. To do so, they shifted the qubit manipulation and measurement signal frequency between the electronics baseband and the quantum system. According to the researchers their system could be expanded to other quantum information science platforms, and RF mixing can be expanded to higher frequencies. […]
In Science magazine, scholars call for more comprehensive research into solar geoengineering
Phys.org November 11, 2021 As the prospect of average global warming exceeding 1.5°C becomes increasingly likely, interest in supplementing mitigation and adaptation with solar geoengineering (SG) responses will almost certainly rise. For example, stratospheric aerosol injection to cool the planet could offset some of the warming for a given accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases. However, the physical and social science literature on SG remains modest compared with mitigation and adaptation. An international team of researchers (USA – Harvard university, Duke University, research organization, American University, Georgia State University, UC San Diego, Yale University, NCAR, Duke University, Italy, India, Switzerland, Germany, […]
Key witness helps scientists detect ‘spooky’ quantum entanglement in solid materials
Phys.org November 8, 2021 The lack of methods to experimentally detect and quantify entanglement in quantum matter impedes our ability to identify materials hosting highly entangled phases, such as quantum spin liquids. An international team of researchers (USA – Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Drew School, Germany, UK, France, Poland) tested three entanglement witnesses using a combination of neutron scattering experiments and computational simulations. Entanglement witnesses are techniques that act as data analysis tools to determine which spins cross the threshold between the classical and quantum realms. To ensure that the witnesses could be trusted, the team applied all three of them […]
New database of 660,000 assembled bacterial genomes sheds light on the evolution of bacteria
Phys.com November 10, 2021 Open sharing of genomic data consists of genomes assembled with different tools and levels of quality checking, and large volumes of completely unprocessed raw sequence data. Considerable computational effort is required before biological questions can be addressed. Researchers in the UK assembled and characterized 661,405 bacterial genomes retrieved from the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) using a uniform standardized approach and produced a searchable COmpact Bit-sliced Signature (COBS) index, facilitating the easy interrogation of the entire dataset for a specific sequence. Additional MinHash and pp-sketch indices support genome-wide comparisons and estimations of genomic distance. 639,981 high-quality genomes […]