Solar cell keeps working long after sun sets

Harvesting energy from the temperature difference between photovoltaic cell, surrounding air leads to a viable, renewable source of electricity at night

12-Apr-2022 - About 750 million people in the world do not have access to electricity at night. Solar cells provide power during the day, but saving energy for later use requires substantial battery storage. In Applied Physics Letters, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Stanford University constructed a ...

Turning plastic grocery bags into sustainable fuel

Using pyrolysis, dewaxing catalyst to upcycle plastic waste into fuel source

05-Nov-2021 - More than 300 million tons of plastic waste are produced annually, which causes serious environmental issues because of plastic's life cycle and the difficulty of eliminating it. Consequently, most plastic waste ends up in either a landfill or the ocean. A significant number of plastics break ...

Turning hazelnut shells into potential renewable energy source

26-Aug-2021 - Biomass is attracting growing interest from researchers as a source of renewable, sustainable, and clean energy. It can be converted into bio-oil by thermochemical methods, such as gasification, liquefaction, and pyrolysis, and used to produce fuels, chemicals, and biomaterials. In Journal for ...

Improving high-energy lithium-ion batteries with carbon filler

Conductive carbon fillers in lithium-ion batteries allow high power output with reversible energy storage

13-Nov-2020 - Lithium-ion batteries are the major rechargeable power source for many portable devices as well as electric vehicles, but their use is limited, because they do not provide high power output while simultaneously allowing reversible energy storage. Research reported in Applied Physics Reviews, by ...

Strain enables new applications of 2D materials

Application of mechanical strain appears to manipulate the conductivity of low-dimensional materials

23-May-2019 - Superconductors' never-ending flow of electrical current could provide new options for energy storage and superefficient electrical transmission and generation, to name just a few benefits. But the signature zero electrical resistance of superconductors is reached only below a certain critical ...

A 'recipe book' that creates color centers in silicon carbide crystals

Different temperature and proton dosages for the generation of defects

05-Oct-2018 - Silicon carbide (SiC), a material known for its toughness with applications from abrasives to car brakes, to high-temperature power electronics, has enjoyed renewed interest for its potential in quantum technology. Its ability to house optically excitable defects, called color centers, has made ...

A new method to detect nucleation

27-Jul-2018 - As a solution evaporates, the dissolved chemicals concentrate until they begin forming a crystal through a process called nucleation. Industries that use small crystals in pharmaceuticals, food and microelectronics are seeking to understanding this nucleation event. Scientists studying nucleation ...

Modelling how fracturing metallic glass releases energy at the atomic level

20-Jul-2018 - Metallic glasses -- alloys lacking the crystalline structure normally found in metals -- are an exciting research target for tantalizing applications, including artificial joints and other medical implant devices. However, the difficulties associated with predicting how much energy these ...

The culprit of some GaN defects could be nitrogen

04-Jul-2018 - As silicon-based semiconductors reach their performance limits, gallium nitride (GaN) is becoming the next go-to material to advance light-emitting diode (LED) technologies, high-frequency transistors and photovoltaic devices. Holding GaN back, however, is its high numbers of defects. This ...

THz spectroscopy could help Explain water's anomalies

29-Jun-2018 - Liquid water sustains life on earth, but its physical properties remain mysterious among scientific researchers. Recently, a team of Swiss researchers used existing THz spectroscopy techniques to measure liquid water's hydrogen bonding. Future efforts with this technique could one day help ...