[Images above] Credit: NIST
NANOMATERIALS
Fullerene-pillared porous graphene with high water adsorption capacity
Researchers from Chiba University, Japan, developed fullerene-pillared porous graphene with high designability and controllability of pore structures using a bottom-up approach. The graphene with a 25% fullerene filling ratio is shown to exhibit the best adsorption capacity and nanopore uniformity.
Programmable nanoclays: An innovative addition to the chemist’s ‘toolbox’
University of Missouri researchers invented programmable nanoclays that allow researchers to produce chemical layers tailor-made to deliver specific tasks. A fundamental part of the material is its electrically charged surface.
ENERGY
Advancing heteroatom-doped porous carbon nanomaterials for Li-based energy storage
Researchers used a one-pot in-situ expansion and heteroatom doping strategy to create a dual-carbon lithium-ion capacitor. The capacitor showed a high specific energy and outstanding cycling life.
Cracking in lithium-ion batteries speeds up electric vehicle charging
University of Michigan researchers showed that cracks in the positive electrode of lithium-ion batteries, rather than being solely detrimental, reduce battery charge time.
Researchers improve management of electric vehicle charging through machine learning
Argonne National Laboratory researchers and University of Chicago graduate students are training an algorithm to help schedule and manage the charging of a diverse set of electric vehicles. The first group of vehicles they are studying are being charged at Argonne’s Smart Energy Plaza, which offers both AC regular chargers and DC fast chargers.
Researchers advance electric vehicle battery safety with new energy absorption design
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. They used paraffin wax-filled, thin-walled aluminum tubes as protection against an impact.
Blue Origin receives funding to develop technology for making solar cells on the moon
Blue Origin was granted $34.7 million in funding from NASA to support development of a system that could produce solar cells on the moon from materials that are available on site.
MANUFACTURING
Researchers grow high-quality superconductor, find resilience against magnetic fields
Researchers demonstrated the ability to grow high-quality thin films of potassium tantalate, a recently discovered superconductor material. They also discovered that the material retains its superconductive characteristics even when exposed to extremely high magnetic fields.
OTHER STORIES
Strong, lightweight material created out of glass-coated DNA
University of Connecticut researchers and colleagues developed a strong, lightweight material using two unlikely building blocks: DNA and glass. They are now working with the same DNA structure but substituting even stronger carbide ceramics for glass.
Breakthrough in Monte Carlo simulations
Leipzig University researchers developed a new algorithm for performing Monte Carlo simulations and showed how it can be efficiently applied to nonequilibrium processes in systems with long-range interactions.
‘Perfectly preserved’ glassware recovered from 2,000-year-old shipwreck
Archaeologists have recovered thousands of pieces of glassware—many of them “perfectly preserved”—from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck in the waters between Italy and France. The Roman vessel, called the Capo Corso 2, is located 1,148 feet below the surface between France’s Cap Corso peninsula and Italy’s Capraia island.