MIT News March 27, 2024 For electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide with a small-molecule catalyst, the catalyst must be proximal to an electrode surface. Efforts to immobilize molecular catalysts on electrodes have been stymied by the need to optimize the immobilization chemistries on a case-by-case basis. Researchers at MIT applied DNA as a molecular-scale “Velcro” to investigate the tethering of three porphyrin-based catalysts to electrodes improving both the stability of the catalysts and their Faradaic efficiencies (FEs). Immobilization resulted in higher catalyst stability at relevant potentials. Lower overpotentials were required for the generation of CO. High FE for CO generation […]
Tag Archives: Energy
Energy-saving electrochemical hydrogen production via co-generative strategies in hybrid water electrolysis
Phys.org February 26. 2024 Coupling the kinetically favorable anodic electrooxidation reactions of easily oxidizable substances with the hydrogen evolution reaction in a hybrid water electrolysis (HWE) configuration solves the pollutant emission and biomass recycling problems and maximizes the return on energy profiteering. An international team of researchers (China, Egypt, Singapore) has provided an overview of HWE system, design, and engineering of high reactive/selective/stable electrodes/electrocatalysts for anodic oxidation of organic/biomass substrates. They provided possible reaction mechanisms from both experimental and theoretical perspectives to promote the efficiency of synergistic electrocatalysis. They reviewed, the recent research breakthroughs in the field of HWE technology […]
New ionic MOF materials boost hydrogen fuel cell efficiency
Nanowerk September 11, 2023 A few MOFs which typically use strong acids as proton sources, display superprotonic conductivity. However, they are rare due to the instability of MOFs in highly acidic conditions. Researchers in South Korea have shown superprotonic conductivity using a moderately acidic guest, zwitterionic sulfamic acid (HSA), which was encapsulated in MOF-808 and MIL-101. HSA acted not only as a proton source but also as a proton-conducting medium due to its extensive hydrogen bonding ability and zwitterion effect. A new sustained concentration gradient method resulted in higher HSA encapsulation compared to conventional methods. The MOFs showed impressive superprotonic […]
Energy storage in molecules
Science Daily August 30, 2023 Photoswitches are molecular systems that are chemically transformed after interaction with light and they find potential application in many new technologies. The design and discovery of photoswitch candidates require intricate molecular engineering of a range of properties to optimize a candidate to a specific application. An international team of researchers (Denmark, Spain) performed a large-scale screening of approximately half a million bicyclic diene photoswitches in the context of molecular solar thermal energy storage using ab initio quantum chemical methods. They devised an efficient strategy for scoring the systems based on their predicted solar energy conversion […]
Engineers harvest abundant clean energy from thin air, 24/7
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 […]
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, […]
Nanoparticles self-assemble to harvest solar energy
Science Daily February 21, 2023 Most disordered organic polymers are almost incapable of limiting the absorption in the desired cutoff wavelength range, which is detrimental to the design of selective absorbers. An international team of researchers (China, Singapore) reports a scalable selective absorber with a quasiperiodic nanostructure composed by an economical widespread surface self-assembly of densely arranged Fe3O4 nanoparticles, possessing a high-performance energy conversion for low-grade solar energy. By investigating the scale effect of the quasiperiodic densely arranged plasmonic nanostructure, a significant solar absorption >94% and ideal passive suppression of thermal emissivity <0.2 could be obtained simultaneously. With the synergy […]
A quasiparticle that can transfer heat under electrical control
Science Daily February 1, 2023 An international team of researchers (USA – Ohio State University, Japan) has experimentally shown that an external electric field affects the velocity of the longitudinal acoustic phonons (vLA), thermal conductivity (κ), and diffusivity (D) in a bulk lead zirconium titanate–based ferroelectric. They found that phonon conduction dominates κ due to changes in the phonon dispersion, not in the phonon scattering. Since the ferron carries heat, that makes the amount of heat carried dependent on the electrical field. They wrote a new theory that relates an external electric field, the strain it induces in a ferroelectric, […]
Researchers generate fusion at 100 million Kelvin for 20 seconds
Phys.org September 8, 2022 An international team of researchers (South Korea, Princeton University, Columbia University) generated plasmas at a temperature of 100 million kelvin lasting up to 20 seconds without plasma edge instabilities or impurity accumulation. They used edge-transport barrier which shapes the plasma in a way that prevents it from escaping, and an internal transport barrier that works by creating an area of high pressure near the center of the plasma to keep it under control. According to the researchers use of the internal transport barrier resulted in much denser plasma than the other approach. A higher density made it easier […]
A new heat engine with no moving parts is as efficient as a steam turbine
MIT News April 13. 2022 Thermophotovoltaics (TPVs) can enable approaches to energy storage and conversion that use higher temperature heat sources than the turbines. However, despite predictions that TPV efficiencies can exceed 50% the demonstrated efficiencies are still only as high as 32%. A team of researchers in the US (MIT, National Renewable Energy Laboratory) has fabricated TPV cells with efficiencies of more than 40% and experimentally demonstrated the efficiency of high-bandgap tandem TPV cells. The TPV cells comprising III–V materials with bandgaps between 1.0 and 1.4 eV are optimized for emitter temperatures of 1,900–2,400 °C. The cells exploit the concept […]