Three years ago, Arthur Ashkin won the Nobel Prize for inventing optical tweezers, which use light in the form of a high-powered laser beam to capture and manipulate particles. Despite being created decades ago, optical tweezers still lead to major breakthroughs and are widely used today to study biological systems. However, optical tweezers do have flaws. The prolonged interaction with the laser beam can alter molecules and particles or damage them with excessive heat. Researchers at The University of Texas…

Energy storage is one of the key issues for a sustainable energy supply in the future. Thousands of researchers around the world are currently working on this issue. An exciting project is also currently underway at the Münchberg campus of Hof University of Applied Sciences. Here, new types of ice batteries for cooling applications are being researched, which can help to sustainably reduce energy and CO2. They are powered by surplus solar energy. We talked about this with Tushar Sharma,…

Researchers from the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) in Berlin, the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg have provided important new insights into a key process for the development of more efficient solar cells and other light-based technologies, called singlet exciton fission. They have managed to track how molecules of a promising material, single crystals comprised of pentacene molecules, move in real time as singlet fission takes place, showing that…

In a new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; DOI https://doi.org/10.29026/oea.2021.200006, Researchers led by Professor Junsuk Rho from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), South Korea consider switchable diurnal radiative cooling by doped VO2. As the impacts of climate change are increasingly felt, thermoregulation technologies that do not consume external energy have attracted considerable attention in the field of energy-saving applications. Radiative cooling has received much research interest for its ability to cool an object even under direct solar illumination. Nanostructured…

Engineers create seeds for growing near-perfect 2D perovskite crystals. Rice University engineers have created microscopic seeds for growing remarkably uniform 2D perovskite crystals that are both stable and highly efficient at harvesting electricity from sunlight. Halide perovskites are organic materials made from abundant, inexpensive ingredients, and Rice’s seeded growth method addresses both performance and production issues that have held back halide perovskite photovoltaic technology. In a study published online in Advanced Materials, chemical engineers from Rice’s Brown School of Engineering…

University of Bayreuth has large-scale device at its disposal. The engineering sciences at the University of Bayreuth recently acquired a unique laser device equipped with an ultra-short pulse laser source for material processing. In the fields of gas sensor technology, high-frequency technology, and microsystems technology, the device opens up unimagined research possibilities. It can structure layers and coatings on sensitive surfaces with great precision. Hardened or fired technical substrates of all kinds can be precisely cut or milled. The device…

Jian Shi Research Group engineers material into promising optoelectronic. Optoelectronic materials that are capable of converting the energy of light into electricity, and electricity into light, have promising applications as light-emitting, energy-harvesting, and sensing technologies. However, devices made of these materials are often plagued by inefficiency, losing significant useful energy as heat. To break the current limits of efficiency, new principles of light-electricity conversion are needed. For instance, many materials that exhibit efficient optoelectronic properties are constrained by inversion symmetry,…

‘Every droplet effectively removed from indoor air would eliminate a potential source of transmission’. Although plexiglass barriers are seemingly everywhere these days — between grocery store lanes, around restaurant tables and towering above office cubicles — they are an imperfect solution to blocking virus transmission. Instead of capturing virus-laden respiratory droplets and aerosols, plexiglass dividers merely deflect droplets, causing them to bounce away but remain in the air. To enhance the function of these protective barriers, Northwestern University researchers have…

In battery-powered applications, in the automotive sector and in IT infrastructures 48 V technology is on the rise. In this voltage class, gallium nitride (GaN) power transistors offer the best compromise between safety, compactness and efficiency. Now, scientists at Fraunhofer IAF have presented pioneering integration concepts with GaN-based integrated circuits (ICs) for low-voltage applications. Whether battery-powered applications such as e-bikes, robotics or drones, drive and board systems in mobility, or IT infrastructures—all these sectors rely on cost-effective, efficient and compact…

Measuring the process in unprecedented detail gives them clues to how to minimize the problem and protect battery performance. When lithium ions flow in and out of a battery electrode during charging and discharging, a tiny bit of oxygen seeps out and the battery’s voltage – a measure of how much energy it delivers – fades an equally tiny bit. The losses mount over time, and can eventually sap the battery’s energy storage capacity by 10-15%. Now researchers have measured…

A new high-performance plastic foam developed from whey proteins can withstand extreme heat better than many common thermoplastics made from petroleum. A research team in Sweden reports that the material, which may be used for example in catalysts for cars, fuel filters or packaging foam, actually improves its mechanical performance after days of exposure to high temperatures. Reporting in Advanced Sustainable Systems, researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm say the research opens the door to using protein-based…

Researchers of the 3D matter made to order cluster of excellence use rotons for metamaterials – Nature Communications publishes first results. Acoustic waves in gases, liquids, and solids usually travel at an almost constant speed of sound. So-called rotons are an exception: their speed of sound changes significantly with the wavelength, and it is also possible that the waves travel backwards. Researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are studying the possibilities of using rotons in artificial materials. These computer-designed…

A team at Landshut University of Applied Sciences has developed a low-cost, mobile near-infra-red spectrometer which provides information about different substances; the goal is its further development up to and including the classification of substances. Sugar or sweetener? Cotton or wool? Fake or genuine? At first glance, the average consumer finds it hard to tell the substances that food or textile products actually contain. Equipment which uses infra-red measurement to identify materials can provide quick answers to these questions, though….

Insulator strings connect the live conductor to overhead-line towers. Researchers at TU Graz simulated for the first time when and under what conditions different loads act on these strings. Overhead lines will thus be made even safer. Though small and inconspicuous, they literally play a supporting role in the operational safety of high-voltage lines: insulator strings. They connect the live conductor to the overhead-line towers. Due to their low conductivity, they prevent the circuit from being closed via the towers…

A research team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst has created an electronic microsystem that can intelligently respond to information inputs without any external energy input, much like a self-autonomous living organism. The microsystem is constructed from a novel type of electronics that can process ultralow electronic signals and incorporates a device that can generate electricity “out of thin air” from the ambient environment. The groundbreaking research was published June 7 in the journal Nature Communications. Jun Yao, an assistant…

A new technology could dramatically improve the safety of lithium-ion batteries that operate with gas electrolytes at ultra-low temperatures. Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego developed a separator–the part of the battery that serves as a barrier between the anode and cathode–that keeps the gas-based electrolytes in these batteries from vaporizing. This new separator could, in turn, help prevent the buildup of pressure inside the battery that leads to swelling and explosions. “By trapping gas molecules, this separator…