Category Physics

By doping thermoelectric materials with minute amounts of sulfur, researchers have found a new approach to materials for solid-state heating and cooling, and waste energy recapture. Credit: Image courtesy of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

By doping a thermoelectric material with minute amounts of sulfur, a team has found a new path to large improvements in the efficiency of materials for solid-state heating and cooling and waste energy recapture...

With four moving rows of magnets, the Delta undulator can create circularly polarized, or spiraling, light. Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

A new device at the Dept of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Lab allows researchers to explore the properties and dynamics of molecules with circularly polarized, or spiraling, light. The use of polarized light is important in the study of many molecules and processes that affect our everyday lives...

Moderate heating up to 80 °Celsius tilts the magnetic moment associated to a single bit into the plane. Upon cooling to room temperature, the magnetic moment stays in plane, until it is overwritten by a magnetic writing head. Credit: HZB

It paves the way to fast and energy efficient ultrahigh density data storage. Scientists have examined thin films of Dysprosium-Cobalt sputtered onto a nanostructured membrane at BESSY II. New patterns of magnetization could be written in a quick and easy manner after warming the sample to only 80C, which is a much lower temperature as compared to conventional Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording systems.

To increase data density further in storage media, materials systems with stable magnetic domains on the nanoscale are needed...

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...