Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

Coulomb blockade currents measured in a conducting polymer monolayer and a 2D charge transport model. Background is schematic of the monolayer on electrodes. Credit: Image courtesy of Osaka University

Generally, organic conductors has disorder structures so charge transfers from one place with high conductivity to another place with high conductivity. In such occasions, Coulomb blockade of charge transport takes place. It was thought Coulomb blockade took place in low dimensional aggregates of inorganic particulates only at very low temps.

Osaka Uni researchers succeeded in showing experimental evidence to prove Coulomb blockade taking place on 2D organic conducting polymer films...

Ferromagnetism mediated by Sb or Te atoms. Credit: Hiroshima University

A group of researchers in Japan and China identified the requirements for the development of new types of extremely low power consumption electric devices by studying Cr-doped (Sb, Bi)2Te3 thin films.

At extremely low temperatures, an electric 3current flows around the edge of the film without energy loss, and under no external magnetic field. This attractive phenomenon is due to the material’s ferromagnetic properties. For the first time, researchers have revealed the mechanism by which this occurs. “Hopefully, this achievement will lead to the creation of novel materials that operate at room temperature in the future,” said Prof Akio Kimura.

Their achievement can be traced back to the discovery of the quantum Hall ef...

Water reduction by a p-GaInP2 photoelectrode stabilized by an amorphous TiO2 coating and a molecular cobalt catalyst: Surface modification strategies for the p-GaInP2 photoelectrodes.

This work shows that molecular catalysts can be as highly active as the precious metal-based catalysts. NREL’s scientists took a different approach to the PEC process, which uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The process requires special semiconductors, the PEC materials and catalysts to split the water. Previous work used precious metals such as platinum, ruthenium and iridium as catalysts attached to the semiconductors. A large-scale commercial effort using those precious metals wouldn’t be cost-effective, however.

The use of cheaper molecular catalysts instead of precious metals has...

PNNL’s all-organic aqueous flow battery uses two inexpensive and readily available electrolytes, one containing methyl viologen and another with 4-HO-TEMPO.

Organic battery will be 60% cheaper than standard vanadium flow battery. The organic aqueous flow battery is expected to cost $180 per kilowatt-hour once the technology is fully developed. The lower cost is due to the battery’s active materials being inexpensive organic molecules, compared to the commodity metals used in today’s flow batteries.

“Moving from transition metal elements to synthesized molecules is a significant advancement because it links battery costs to manufacturing rather than commodity metals pricing” said Imre Gyuk...