The idea of harnessing photons rather than electricity to produce heat has gained increasing attention in recent years. In a new research brief, ACerS Fellow Akio Ikesue and colleagues describe a photonic heating system based on transparent yttria alumina garnet ceramics.
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In their search for places to install PV infrastructure, solar companies have taken several creative approaches, including floating solar panels on reservoirs and co-locating them with crops. Space-based solar power is another concept studied since the 1970s, and this May, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory launched the first orbital experiment with space-based solar power.
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Artificial intelligence techniques hasten the process of identifying new ceramic and glass compositions, but current synthesis methods limit how quickly new compositions can be experimentally tested. University of Maryland researchers and colleagues developed a new ultrafast high-temperature sintering method that could greatly speed up ceramic synthesis.
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Lithium-sulfur batteries could enable the next generation of high-energy-density rechargeable batteries—but only if lithium deposition is stabilized. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found adding elemental tellurium to the cathode may solve this challenge.
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Controlling the chirality of light is important in many fundamental and applied studies. An international research collaboration designed and fabricated a metasurface that can control chirality by breaking the symmetry of light’s orbital angular momentum.
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Since 2000, infrared photodetector technology has experienced rapid development—particularly quantum-based detectors. Now, researchers in Russia, Japan, and the United States developed a model for a detector that could operate in the far-infrared and even terahertz spectral ranges.
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In response to COVID-19, many companies and individual researchers are turning to additive manufacturing to quickly produce essential medical devices. An EU-funded project is using ceramic 3D printing to create devices used in vaccine purification processes.
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Rapid improvement of perovskites in photovoltaic applications over the past decade has caught the attention of scientists in other fields, sparking research there as well. Now, researchers from Los Alamos and Argonne National Laboratories developed perovskite-based X-ray detectors that are a hundred times more sensitive than conventional silicon-based detectors.
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A new book out this month, The Alchemy of Us by Ainissa Ramirez, tells the story of materials science through a perhaps unexpected lens—by sharing not only the stories of materials discoveries but also how those discoveries shaped us, society, and history.
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For self-driving vehicles to become a common reality, the laser surveying system LiDAR must be improved. Researchers from Alfred University developed a transparent ceramic that could prove to be an ideal lasing material for LiDAR.
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