Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

Purdue researcher Jialiang Tang helped resolve charging issues in sodium-ion batteries that have prevented the technology from advancing to industry testing and use.
Credit: Purdue University Marketing and Media photo

Worldwide efforts to make sodium-ion batteries just as functional as lithium-ion batteries have long since controlled sodium’s tendency to explode, but not yet resolved how to prevent sodium-ions from ‘getting lost’ during the first few times a battery charges and discharges. Now, researchers made a sodium powder version that fixes this problem and holds a charge properly.

Most of today’s batteries are made up of rare lithium mined from the mountains of South America. If the world depletes this source, then battery production could stagnate...

Formation of the layered conductive magnet CrCl2(pyrazine)2 through redox-active coordination chemistry. Nature Chemistry, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41557-018-0107-7

An international team led by Assistant Professor Kasper Steen Pedersen, DTU Chemistry, has synthesized a novel nano material with electrical and magnetic properties making it suitable for future quantum computers and other applications in electronics.

Chromium-Chloride-Pyrazine (chemical formula CrCl2(pyrazine)2) is a layered material, which is a precursor for a so-called 2D material. In principle, a 2D material has a thickness of just a single molecule and this often leads to properties very different from those of the same material in a normal 3D version. Not least will the electrical properties differ...

Experimental two-electrode setup showing the photoelectrochemical cell illuminated with simulated solar light.
Credit: Katarzyna Sokól

New research in the field of semi-artificial photosynthesis. They used natural sunlight to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen using a mixture of biological components and humanmade technologies. The research could now be used to revolutionise the systems used for renewable energy production.

A new paper, published in Nature Energy, outlines how academics at the Reisner Laboratory in Cambridge developed their platform to achieve unassisted solar-driven water-splitting. Their method also managed to absorb more solar light than natural photosynthesis...

Rows of photovoltaic cells are shown atop a building on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus in Atlanta.
Credit: John Toon, Georgia Tech

A team of semiconductor researchers based in France has used a boron nitride separation layer to grow indium gallium nitride (InGaN) solar cells that were then lifted off their original sapphire substrate and placed onto a glass substrate.

By combining the InGaN cells with photovoltaic (PV) cells made from materials such as silicon or gallium arsenide, the new lift-off technique could facilitate fabrication of higher efficiency hybrid PV devices able to capture a broader spectrum of light. Such hybrid structures could theoretically boost solar cell efficiency as high as 30% for an InGaN/Si tandem device.

The technique is the third major application f...