01. Modular, scalable hardware architecture for a quantum computer 02. Researchers create materials with unique combination of stiffness, thermal insulation 03. Carbon dioxide, the main culprit of global warming, reborn as an antioxidant substance 04. Carbon-capture batteries developed to store renewable energy, help climate 05. New metal-free porous framework materials may have potential for hydrogen storage 06. Omnidirectional color wavelength tuning method unlocks new possibilities for smart photonics 07. Researchers create new type of composite material for shielding against neutron and gamma radiation 08. Researchers create the world’s strongest ionizing terahertz radiation 09. Charge your laptop in a minute? Supercapacitors […]
Carbon dioxide, the main culprit of global warming, reborn as an antioxidant substance
Phys.org May 24, 2024 Microbial CO2 electroreduction (mCO2ER) offers a promising approach for producing high value multicarbon reductants from CO2 by combining CO2 fixing microorganisms with conducting materials. The solubility and availability of CO2 in an aqueous electrolyte pose significant limitations in this system. A team of researchers in South Korea demonstrated the efficient production of long-chain multicarbon reductants within a wet amine-based catholyte medium during mCO2ER. Optimizing the concentration of the biocompatible CO2 absorbent, monoethanolamine (MEA) led to enhanced CO2 fixation in the electroautotroph bacteria. MEA in the catholyte medium redirected the carbon flux towards carotenoid biosynthesis during mCO2ER. […]
Carbon-capture batteries developed to store renewable energy, help climate
Science Daily May 15, 2024 To investigate the deactivation and reactivation mechanisms of the aqueous Na–CO2 battery during extended cycling, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed the cathode to include non-precious intermetallic catalysts. As the cell underwent repeated cycles, the voltage polarization during discharge progressively rose, eventually led to the cell’s deactivation and formation of decomposition products clogging the electrode surface. Results obtained from comprehensive characterization techniques provided insight into the decomposition products. They showed an electrochemical approach for regeneration of the aqueous cells. According to the researchers their findings provide a path toward creating long-duration systems with self-healing […]
Charge your laptop in a minute? Supercapacitors can help; new research offers clues
Phys.org May 25, 2024 The current understanding of electric double layer (EDL) charging is limited to simple geometries. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Colorado, Poland) introduced a model to predict electrolyte transport in complex networks of slender pores. Their methodology accurately captures the spatial and temporal dependencies of charge density and electric potential, matching results obtained from computationally intensive direct numerical simulations. Their network model provided results up to six orders of magnitude faster. They used the framework to study the impact of pore connectivity and polydispersity on electrode charging dynamics for pore networks and discussed […]
Earth scientists describe a new kind of volcanic eruption
Science Daily May 27, 2024 Explosive volcanic eruptions driven by magmatic fragmentation or steam expansion produce hazardous atmospheric plumes composed of tephra particles, hot gas, and entrained air. However, an eruption mechanism outside this phreatic–magmatic spectrum was suggested by a sequence of 12 explosive eruptions in May 2018 at Kīlauea, Hawaii, that occurred during the early stages of caldera collapse and produced atmospheric plumes reaching 8 km above the vent. A team of researchers in the US (US Geological Survey Volcano Science Center California Volcano Observatory, University of Oregon, USGS Portland, USGS Vancouver, WA) used seismic inversions for reservoir pressure as […]
The Earth’s changing, irregular magnetic field is causing headaches for polar navigation
Phys.org May 27, 2024 Researchers at the University of Michigan statistically studied large magnetic field vector residuals between Swarm observations and the 13th generation International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF-13) model under quiet to moderate geomagnetic conditions. All large residuals appeared in the high latitude auroral zone region peaking around 70° magnetic latitude (MLAT) with a secondary occurrence peak just below 80° MLAT. However, the two hemispheres showed clear asymmetries in the magnetic longitude and magnetic local time distribution where both hemispheres showed high concentration of large residuals around the geographic poles. Since polar satellite’s orbits give rise to highly biased […]
‘Invisible tweezers’ use robotics and acoustic energy to achieve what human hands cannot
Science Daily May 24, 2024 Existing robotic platforms have difficulty achieving contactless, high-resolution, 4-degrees-of-freedom (4-DOF) manipulation of small objects, and noninvasive maneuvering of objects in regions shielded by tissue and bone barriers. A team of researchers in the US (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, University of North Carolina, University of Michigan) has developed programmable, chirality-tunable acoustic vortex tweezers that could tune acoustic vortex chirality, transmit through biological barriers, trap single micro- to millimeter-sized objects, and control object rotation. Assisted by programmable robots, the acoustic systems further enabled contactless, high-resolution translation of single objects. They demonstrated the systems by tuning […]
Modular, scalable hardware architecture for a quantum computer
MIT News May 29, 2024 Colour centres in diamond have emerged as a leading solid-state platform for advancing quantum technologies and recently achieved quantum advantage in secret key distribution. Blueprint studies indicate that general-purpose quantum computing using local quantum communication networks will require millions of physical qubits to encode thousands of logical qubits, presenting an open scalability challenge. An international team of researchers (MIT, DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory, The MITRE Corporation, Cornell University, the Netherlands, Germany) introduced a modular quantum system-on-chip (QSoC) architecture that integrated thousands of individually addressable tin-vacancy spin qubits in two-dimensional arrays of quantum microchiplets into an […]
New metal-free porous framework materials may have potential for hydrogen storage
Phys.org May 22, 2024 The isoreticular principle, which allows families of structurally analogous frameworks to be built in a predictable strategies do not translate to other common crystalline solids, such as organic salts, in which the intermolecular ionic bonding is less directional. Researchers in the UK showed that chemical knowledge could be combined with computational crystal-structure prediction (CSP) to design porous organic ammonium halide salts that contain no metals. The nodes in the salt frameworks were tightly packed ionic clusters that directed the materials to crystallize in specific ways on the predicted lattice energy landscapes. The energy landscapes allowed them […]
Omnidirectional color wavelength tuning method unlocks new possibilities for smart photonics
Phys.org May 22, 2024 Ideally, on-demand omnidirectional wavelength control is highly desirable from the perspective of wavelength-tuning freedom. However, despite numerous previous research efforts on tunable chiral liquid crystals (CLCs) structural colors, only mono-directional wavelength tuning toward shorter wavelengths has been employed in most studies to date. Researchers in South Korea demonstrated the ideally desired omnidirectional wavelength control toward longer and shorter wavelengths with significantly improved tunability over a broadband wavelength range. They achieved simultaneous and omnidirectional structural color-tuning control by using areal expanding and contractive strain control of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) with chiral liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs). According […]