Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

Can we survive three minutes without air or three days without water? How about without batteries? Imagine not having a battery for three hours.

Lightweight, high-capacity lithium-ion batteries are widely used in mobile phones, laptops, and other necessities in today’s world. However, the organic electrolytes in conventional lithium-ion batteries are highly flammable, leading to fatal fires or explosions. As lithium-ion batteries are widely used in our lives, such accidents can cause direct damage to users, which has led to a demand for a safer battery system.

Professor Soojin Park and Gyujin Song (Post-doc fellow) in the Department of Chemistry and Ph.D...

Engineering researchers have developed a new self-healing composite that allows structures to repair themselves in place, without having to be removed from service. This latest technology resolves two longstanding challenges for self-healing materials, and can significantly extend the lifespan of structural components such as wind-turbine blades and aircraft wings.

“Researchers have developed a variety of self-healing materials, but previous strategies for self-healing composites have faced two practical challenges,” says Jason Patrick, corresponding author of the research paper and an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University.

“First, the materials ofte...

Researchers develop new technique that charges EV battery in just 10minutes. The record-breaking combination of a shorter charge time and more energy acquired for longer travel range was announced today (Oct. 12) in the journal Nature.

“The need for smaller, faster-charging batteries is greater than ever,” said Chao-Yang Wang, the William E. Diefenderfer Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State and lead author on the study. “There are simply not enough batteries and critical raw materials, especially those produced domestically, to meet anticipated demand.”

In August, Californ...

One of the leading causes of water pollution is heavy metal contamination which has profound adverse effects on human health and the environment. That’s why Clarkson University researchers have developed a cost-effective, 3D printing technology to create sustainable bio-based adsorbents that can effectively remove toxic heavy metal ions from contaminated environments. The 3D printing technique offers a cost-effective, scalable and simple approach to creating tunable adsorbents for environmental remediation that can be used broadly by the community for environmental remediation and sensing applications.

The work performed in the laboratory of Professor Silvana Andreescu, the Egon Matijevic Chair in Chemistry, was recently featured on the front ...