Kick-off meeting for the “ScaleH2” project. Shipping the sunshine – How can green hydrogen be transported cost-efficiently from Australia to Germany? This question is being addressed by the Fraunhofer IST in collaboration with German and Australian project partners. The consortium plans to go beyond feasibility studies and to transport green hydrogen from Australia to Germany by means of validated developments in electrolysis technology and model-based evaluations of the hydrogen value chain. The objective of the “ScaleH2” project within the BMBF’s…

New charging technology to make e-cars suitable for mass use as mobile power storage units. Bidirectional charging enables electric vehicles to be both charged and discharged as needed. E-cars can thus serve as mobile electricity storage units and contribute to increasing the flexibility of the energy system. To ensure that bidirectional charging can be used on a broad scale, a consortium led by Fraunhofer IAF is researching innovative charging technologies: In the recently launched project GaN4EmoBiL, the partners are developing…

An international team finds new single-crystalline oxide thin films with fast and dramatic changes in electrical properties via Li-ion intercalation through engineered ionic transport channels. An international research team from the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Halle (Saale), Germany, the University of Cambridge, UK and the University of Pennsylvania, USA reported the first realization of single-crystalline T-Nb2O5 thin films having two-dimensional (2D) vertical ionic transport channels, which results in a fast and colossal insulator-metal transition via Li ion intercalation…

Made of cement, carbon black, and water, the device could provide cheap and scalable energy storage for renewable energy sources. Two of humanity’s most ubiquitous historical materials, cement and carbon black (which resembles very fine charcoal), may form the basis for a novel, low-cost energy storage system, according to a new study. The technology could facilitate the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and tidal power by allowing energy networks to remain stable despite fluctuations in renewable…

You know that freeze-ray gun that “Batman” villain Mr. Freeze uses to “ice” his enemies? A University of Virginia professor thinks he may have figured out how to make one in real life. The discovery – which, unexpectedly, relies on heat-generating plasma – is not meant for weaponry, however. Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Patrick Hopkins wants to create on-demand surface cooling for electronics inside spacecraft and high-altitude jets. “That’s the primary problem right now,” Hopkins said. “A lot of…

Researchers fabricate moisture-adsorbent porous graphene using a bottom-up process, with high designability and controllability of pore structures. Separation processes are essential in the purification and concentration of a target molecule during water purification, removal of pollutants, and heat pumping, accounting for 10–15% of global energy consumption. To make the separation processes more energy efficient, improvement in the design of porous materials is necessary. This could drastically reduce energy costs by about 40–70%. The primary approach to improving the separation performance…

Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering are improving the safety and performance of electric vehicles through a new design that protects their batteries. Their design uses tubes filled with paraffin wax, which is a type of phase change material, or PCM. These materials are commonly used to store and dissipate heat, making them useful for protecting a battery from overheating. The researchers’ new method uses PCM-filled tubes in another way, exploring their application as protection against an impact. The…

The device is printed all in one go and can pick and release objects. This soft robotic gripper is not only 3D printed in one print, it also doesn’t need any electronics to work. The device was developed by a team of roboticists at the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with researchers at the BASF corporation, who detailed their work in a recent issue of Science Robotics. The researchers wanted to design a soft gripper that would be…

New Method to Assemble Unconventional Materials. A hot bath is a place to relax. For scientists, it is also where molecules or tiny building blocks meet to form materials. Researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) take it to the next level and use the energy of swimming bacteria to forge materials. A recent study in Nature Physics shows us how this works and the potential sustainability benefits that may arise from this innovative approach. You never…

Predicting molecular rotational temperature for enhanced plasma recombination. Humans may never be able to tame the Sun, but hydrogen plasma — making up most of the Sun’s interior — can be confined in a magnetic field as part of fusion power generation: with a caveat. The extremely high temperature plasmas, typically as high as 100 million degrees Celsius, confined in the tokamaks — donut-shaped fusion reactors — cause damage to the containment walls of these mega devices. Researchers inject hydrogen and…

SUTD researchers uncover the promising capability of chitin as a sustainable smart biomaterial. Through water exchange with the environment, humidity-responsive chitinous films can generate energy for potential use in engineering applications. The wings of a butterfly are made of chitin, an organic polymer that is the main component of the shells of arthropods like crustaceans and other insects. As a butterfly emerges from its cocoon in the final stage of metamorphosis, it will slowly unfold its wings into their full…

Dr. Amir Asadi, an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University, is making groundbreaking strides in the field of composite materials. His research explores embedding patterned nanostructures composed of multiple materials into high-performance composites to achieve the desired multifunctionality without sacrificing any other properties. This could lead to advancements in various fields, including electronics, energy storage, transportation and consumer products. Asadi’s work has significant implications, as it addresses the challenge of simultaneously…

New material concept eliminates unwanted effects by impurities in organic light-emitting diodes. Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are now widely used. For use in displays, blue OLEDs are additionally required to supplement the primary colours red and green. Especially in blue OLEDs, impurities give rise to strong electrical losses, which could be partly circumvented by using highly complex and expensive device layouts. A team from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research has now developed a new material concept that potentially…

Accounting for radiation loss is the key to efficient wireless power transfer over long distances. A better way to wirelessly charge over long distances has been developed at Aalto University. Engineers have optimized the way antennas transmitting and receiving power interact with each other, making use of the phenomenon of “radiation suppression”. The result is a better theoretical understanding of wireless power transfer compared to the conventional inductive approach, a significant advancement in the field. Charging over short distances, such…

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) celebrated the ribbon-cutting of its new Microgrid in a Box, which was deployed in partnership with the Fall River Electric Cooperative at its hydropower plant in rural Idaho. Using newly developed technologies, INL researchers demonstrated that hydropower, coupled with a mobile microgrid, can enable small communities to maintain critical services during emergencies. During today’s ribbon-cutting, power from the Microgrid in a Box was combined with power generated from the hydropower plant to restore electrical supply after…

Self-folding origami sheets create 3D shapes quickly, cheaply and efficiently. 3D printing of complex objects typically takes a long time due to the printing process necessarily laying down a large number of 2D layers to build up the object. The process usually wastes a lot of material required to support the unfinished object. Some novel ways to make flat materials self-fold into 3D shapes exist, but have shortcomings. For the first time, researchers combined 2D printing, origami, and chemistry to…