Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

Diagram showing a solar water heating system using nanoparticles. (b) Application of condensed light from a solar simulator to water with dispersed TiN nanoparticles. Note that rising water vapor can be seen even before the water temperature increases. Credit: Copyright NIMS

A research team in Japan discovered through numerical calculations that nanoparticles of transition metal nitrides and carbides absorb sunlight very efficiently, and confirmed experimentally that nitride nanoparticles, when dispersed in water, quickly raise water temperature. These nanoparticles may be applied for heating and distillation of water through efficient sunlight use.

The examples of sunlight use are power generation using solar cells and water heating through photothermal conversion, a process in which abso...

This is a Perovskite solar cell prototype. Credit: Copyright Alain Herzog / EPFL

EPFL researchers are pushing the limits of perovskite solar cell performance by exploring the best way to grow these crystals. Michael Graetzel and his team found that, by briefly reducing the pressure while fabricating perovskite crystals, they were able to achieve the highest performance ever measured for larger-size perovskite solar cells, reaching over 20% efficiency and matching the performance of conventional thin-film solar cells of similar sizes.
This is promising news for perovskite technology that is already low cost and under industrial development.

However, high performance in pervoskites does not necessarily herald the doom of silicon-based solar technology...

Conformal titanium nitride in a porous silicon matrix: A nanomaterial for in-chip supercapacitors

Efficient nanomaterial-based integrated energy. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland developed an extremely efficient small-size energy storage, a micro-supercapacitor, which can be integrated directly inside a silicon microcircuit chip. The high energy and power density of the miniaturized energy storage relies on the new hybrid nanomaterial developed recently at VTT. This technology opens new possibilities for integrated mobile devices and paves the way for zero-power autonomous devices required for the future Internet of Things (IoT).

Supercapacitors resemble electrochemical batteries...

How the catalyst works. Credit: University of Melbourne

A radical new process that allows hydrogen to be efficiently sourced from liquid formic acid could be one step forward in making the dream of hydrogen-powered cars an economic reality. Using formic acid to produce hydrogen has never been considered viable because it requires high temperatures to decompose and also produces waste by-products. But the Uni of Melbourne’s Professor Richard O’Hair has led an international team of scientists in designing a molecular catalyst that forces formic acid to produce only H2 and CO2 and at a low temperature of only 70°C.

It marks a new frontier in catalyst design at the molecular level...