A surprising way to jump-start battery performance

First charge determines lifespan of lithium-ion batteries

03-Sep-2024 - A lithium-ion battery’s very first charge is more momentous than it sounds. It determines how well and how long the battery will work from then on – in particular, how many cycles of charging and discharging it can handle before deteriorating. In a study published inJoule, researchers at the ...

A battery’s hopping ions remember where they’ve been

Seen in atomic detail, the seemingly smooth flow of ions through a battery’s electrolyte is surprisingly complicated

22-Feb-2024 - Solid-state batteries store and release charge by nudging ions back and forth between two electrodes. From our usual point of view, the ions flow through the battery’s solid electrolyte like a gentle stream. But when seen on an atomic scale, that smooth flow is an illusion: Individual ions hop ...

Watching electrons at work

Looking inside nanocrystals

06-Dec-2023 - Researchers from ETH Zurich, Empa - Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology, and Stanford have taken snapshots of the crystal structure of perovskite nanocrystals as it was deformed by excited electrons. To their surprise, the deformation straightened out the skewed crystal ...

Study finds nickelate superconductors are intrinsically magnetic

Waves of magnetic excitation sweep through this exciting new material whether it’s in superconducting mode or not

03-Aug-2022 - Electrons find each other repulsive. Nothing personal – it’s just that their negative charges repel each other. So getting them to pair up and travel together, like they do in superconducting materials, requires a little nudge. In old-school superconductors, which were discovered in 1911 and ...

A new leap in understanding nickel oxide superconductors

27-Jul-2022 - A new study shows that nickel oxide superconductors, which conduct electricity with no loss athigher temperatures than conventional superconductors do, contain a type of quantum matter called charge density waves, or CDWs, that can accompany superconductivity. The presence of CDWs shows that ...

How a soil microbe could rev up artificial photosynthesis

The secret is an enzyme that “juggles” reaction ingredients

04-May-2022 - Plants rely on a process called carbon fixation – turning carbon dioxide from the air into carbon-rich biomolecules ­– for their very existence. That’s the whole point of photosynthesis, and a cornerstone of the vast interlocking system that cycles carbon through plants, animals, microbes and the ...

In a first, scientists capture a ‘quantum tug’ between neighboring water molecules

The work sheds light on the web of hydrogen bonds that gives water its strange properties, which play a vital role in many chemical and biological processes

27-Aug-2021 - Wateris the most abundant yet least understood liquid in nature. It exhibits many strange behaviors that scientists still struggle to explain. While most liquids get denser as they get colder, water is most dense at 39 degrees Fahrenheit, just above its freezing point. This is why ice floats to ...

Scientists discover how oxygen loss saps a lithium-ion battery's voltage

Measuring the process in unprecedented detail gives them clues to how to minimize the problem and protect battery performance

16-Jun-2021 - 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 ...

First closeups of how a lithium-metal electrode ages

Scientists have documented a process that makes these next-gen batteries lose charge - and eventually some of their capacity for storing energy - even when a device is turned off

26-Mar-2021 - The same process that drains the battery of your cell phone even when it's turned off is even more of a problem for lithium-metal batteries, which are being developed for the next generation of smaller, lighter electronic devices, far-ranging electric vehicles and other uses. Now scientists at ...

Scientists home in on pairs of atoms that boost a catalyst's activity

They discovered that the messy environment of a chemical reaction can actually change the shape of a catalytic nanoparticle in a way that makes it more active

24-Jun-2020 - Replacing the expensive metals that break down exhaust gases in catalytic converters with cheaper, more effective materials is a top priority for scientists, for both economic and environmental reasons. Catalysts are required to perform chemical reactions that would otherwise not happen, such as ...