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[Image above] Credit: NIST

Capture sunlight with your window

A luminescent solar concentrator is an emerging sunlight harvesting technology that could turn any window into a daytime power source. Now work at Los Alamos National Lab is integrating photovoltaics into quantum dot solar windows. “Our new devices use quantum dots of a complex composition which includes copper, indium, selenium, and sulfur…the quantum dots provide a uniform coverage of the solar spectrum, thus adding only a neutral tint to a window without introducing any distortion to perceived colors,” one of the researchers says.

Research may solve lunar fire fountain mystery

Tiny beads of volcanic glass found on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions are a sign that fire fountain eruptions took place on the Moon’s surface. Now, scientists from Brown University and the Carnegie Institution for Science have identified the volatile gas that drove those eruptions. The research suggests that lava associated with lunar fire fountains contained significant amounts of carbon. As it rose from the lunar depths, that carbon combined with oxygen to make substantial amounts carbon monoxide gas, which was responsible for the fire fountains that sprayed volcanic glass over parts of the lunar surface.

ASU chosen to lead lunar CubeSat mission

A spacecraft the size of a shoebox with Arizona origins will soon be orbiting our nearest neighbor to create a map of water-ice on the moon. The NASA-selected CubeSat will be designed, built, and operated at Arizona State University and is one piece of the agency’s larger mission to fully characterize the water content at the lunar South Pole in preparation for exploration, resource utilization, and improved understanding of the moon’s geologic history.

Successful boron-doping of graphene nanoribbons

Physicists at the University of Basel succeed in synthesizing boron-doped graphene nanoribbons and characterizing their structural, electronic, and chemical properties. The researchers synthesized boron-doped graphene nanoribbons with various widths. They used an on-surface chemical reaction with a newly synthesized precursor molecule on an atomically clean gold surface. The chemical structures were directly resolved by state-of-the-art atomic force microscopy at low temperature.

Hydrogen sulfide exhibits record high superconductivity

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz observed that hydrogen sulfide becomes superconductive at minus 70 degree Celsius—when the substance is placed under a pressure of 1.5 million bar. This corresponds to half of the pressure of the earth’s core. With their high-pressure experiments the researchers in Mainz have thus not only set a new record for superconductivity, their findings have also highlighted a potential new way to transport current at room temperature with no loss.

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