Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

Lithium-sulfur battery with Mixed Conduction Membrane barrier to stop polysulfide shuttling. Credit: Sri Narayan and Derek Moy

USC researchers may have just found a solution for one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the next wave of rechargeable batteries—small enough for cellphones and powerful enough for cars. In a paper published in the January issue of the Journal of the Electrochemical Society, Sri Narayan and Derek Moy of the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute outline how they developed an alteration to the lithium-sulfur battery that could make it more than competitive with the industry standard lithium-ion battery.

The lithium-sulfur battery, long thought to be better at energy storage capacity than its more popular lithium-ion counterpart, was hampered by its short cycle ...

The new perovskite solar cells have achieved an efficiency of 20.1 per cent and can be manufactured at low temperatures, which reduces the cost and expands the number of possible applications. (Photo: Kevin Soobrian)

Research removes a key barrier to large-scale manufacture of low-cost, printable perovskite solar cells. A U of T Engineering innovation could make printing solar cells as easy and inexpensive as printing a newspaper. “Economies of scale have greatly reduced the cost of silicon manufacturing,” said Professor Ted Sargent, Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. “Perovskite solar cells can enable us to use techniques already established in the printing industry to produce solar cells at very low cost...

Schematic shows the components of a CHAMP cylinder-piston assembly used to create hydrogen from methane and steam via variable volume catalytic reaction. The process also concentrates carbon dioxide emissions from the process. (Credit: David Anderson, Georgia Tech) DOW

When is an internal combustion engine not an internal combustion engine? When it’s been transformed into a modular reforming reactor that could make hydrogen available to power fuel cells wherever there’s a natural gas supply available...

A new bilayer material, with each layer measuring less than one nanometer in thickness, someday could lead to more efficient and versatile light emission, such as bendy LED screens. Credit: Matthew Bellus

A new bilayer material, with each layer measuring < 1nm in thickness could lead to more efficient and versatile light emission. Researchers working at the Ultrafast Laser Lab at the University of Kansas successfully created the material by combining atomically thin layers of molybdenum disulfide and rhenium disulfide. “Both absorb light very well as semiconductors, and they’re both very flexible can be stretched or compressed,” said Hui Zhao, associate professor of physics and astronomy at KU...