Category Physics

Thermoelectric paint being applied to an alumina hemisphere. The paint provides closer contact with the heat-emitting surface than conventional planar thermoelectric devices do. Credit: Park et al. ©2016 Nature Communications

Paint these days is becoming much more than it used to be. Already researchers have developed photovoltaic paint, which can be used to make “paint-on solar cells” that capture the sun’s energy and turn it into electricity. Now in a new study, researchers have created thermoelectric paint, which captures waste heat from hot painted surfaces and converts it into electrical energy.

“I expect that the thermoelectric painting technique can be applied to waste heat recovery from large-scale heat source surfaces, such as buildings, cars, and ship vessels,” said Jae Sung Son...

An artistic representation of the data showing the breaking of spatial inversion and rotational symmetries in the pseudogap region of superconducting materials — evidence that the pseudogap is a distinct phase of matter. Rings of light reflected from a superconductor reveal the broken symmetries. Credit: Hsieh Lab/Caltech

One of the greatest mysteries of experimental physics is how high-temperature superconducting materials work. They still operate at chilly temperatures < -135C or 138K, but higher than 0K. They can be used to make superefficient power cables, medical MRIs, particle accelerators, and other devices. Cracking the mystery of how these materials actually work could lead to superconducting devices that operate at room temperatures—and could revolutionize laptops and phones etc...

Berkeley Lab researchers (from left) Kristin Persson, Gerbrand Ceder and Wenhao Sun used the Materials Project to reach a new understanding of metastable materials. Credit: Marilyn Chung, Berkeley Lab

Data-mining used to quantify thermodynamics for nearly 30,000 materials. They say diamonds are forever, but diamonds in fact are a metastable form of carbon that will slowly but eventually transform into graphite, another form of carbon. Berkeley Lab has now quantified the thermodynamic scale of metastability for almost 30,000 known materials. This paves the way for designing and making promising next-generation materials for use in everything from semiconductors to pharmaceuticals to steels...

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a combination of software and hardware that will allow them to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and insect cyborgs, or biobots, to map large, unfamiliar areas — such as collapsed buildings after a disaster. Credit: Edgar Lobaton

North Carolina State Uni researchers have developed a combination of software and hardware that will allow them to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and insect cyborgs, or biobots, to map large, unfamiliar areas – such as collapsed buildings after a disaster...