Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

This is a flowchart of energy storage and carbon fixation using Li-CO2 technology. Credit: Qiao et al.

Scientists working toward the elusive lithium-air battery discovered an unexpected approach to capturing and storing CO2 away from the atmosphere. Using a design intended for a lithium-CO2 battery, researchers in Japan and China have developed a way to isolate solid carbon dust from CO2, with the potential to also separate out oxygen gas through the same method. Converting carbon dioxide emissions into other carbon-containing compounds is desirable due to CO2’s contribution to the greenhouse effect and global warming...

The compact pilot plant used in the SOLETAIR project is designed for decentralized production, fits into a shipping container, and can be extended modularly. (Photo: VTT)

Pilot plant produces first synthetic fuel from solar power and the air’s carbon dioxide/KIT spin-off ineratec supplied key component. Production of liquid fuels from regenerative electric power is a major component of the energy turnaround. The first 200 l of synthetic fuel have now been produced from solar energy and the air’s carbon dioxide by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis under the SOLETAIR project. Here, INERATEC, a spinoff of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), cooperates with Finnish partners...

The folds of 3-D graphene make mesopore channels that work with the surface’s micropores to increase the material’s supercapacitive properties.

Tiny dents in the surface of graphene greatly enhances its potential as a supercapacitor. Even better, it can be made from CO2. A material scientist at Michigan Technological University invented a novel approach to take carbon dioxide and turn it into 3D graphene with micropores across its surface. The conversion of carbon dioxide to useful materials usually requires high energy input due to its ultrahigh stability. However, materials science professor Yun Hang Hu and his research team created a heat-releasing reaction between carbon dioxide and sodium to synthesize 3D surface-microporous graphene.

“3D surface-microporous graphene is a brand-new ma...

Confining metal-halide perovskites in nanoporous thin films. Science Advances, 2017; 3 (8): e1700738 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700738 Foto: Foto Ruhrgebiet / fotolia.com

The color of the light emitted by an LED can be tuned by altering the size of their semiconductor crystals. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich researchers have now found a clever and economical way of doing just that, which lends itself to industrial-scale production. Unlike incandescent lightbulbs, light-emitting diodes produce light of a defined color within the spectral range from the infrared to the ultraviolet. The exact wavelength of the emission is determined by the chemical composition of the semiconductor, the crucial component...