Category Technology/Electronics

This image shows the apparatus that is proving the efficacy of a double-layered rooftop panel. The top layer uses the standard semiconductor materials that go into energy-harvesting solar cells, the novel materials on the bottom layer perform the cooling task. CREDIT Linda Cicero, Stanford News

Scientists at Stanford University have demonstrated for the first time that heat from the sun and coldness from outer space can be collected simultaneously with a single device. Their research, published November 8 in the journal Joule, suggests that devices for harvesting solar and (space energy will not compete for land space and can actually help each other function more efficiently.

Renewable energy is increasingly popular as an economical and efficient alternative to fossil fuels, with solar en...

T-shirt with charge-storing system.
Credit: UMass Amherst/Trisha Andrew

A major factor holding back development of wearable biosensors for health monitoring is the lack of a lightweight, long-lasting power supply. Now scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by materials chemist Trisha L. Andrew report that they have developed a method for making a charge-storing system that is easily integrated into clothing for “embroidering a charge-storing pattern onto any garment.”

As Andrew explains, “Batteries or other kinds of charge storage are still the limiting components for most portable, wearable, ingestible or flexible technologies. The devices tend to be some combination of too large, too heavy and not flexible.”

Their new method uses a micro-supercapacitor and combines vapo...

This is a white button mushroom equipped with 3D- printed graphene nanoribbons (black), which collect electricity generated by densely packed 3D-printed cyanobacteria (green).
Credit: Sudeep Joshi, Stevens Institute of Technology

In their latest feat of engineering, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have taken an ordinary white button mushroom from a grocery store and made it bionic, supercharging it with 3D-printed clusters of cyanobacteria that generate electricity and swirls of graphene nanoribbons that can collect the current.

The work, reported in the Nov...

Simultaneous photocatalytic hydrogen generation and dye degradation using a visible light active metal-organic framework.
Credit: Alina-Stavroula Kampouri/EPFL

Researchers have developed a photocatalytic system based on a material in the class of metal-organic frameworks. The system can be used to degrade pollutants present in water while simultaneously producing hydrogen that can be captured and used further.

Some of the most useful and versatile materials today are the metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). MOFs are a class of materials demonstrating structural versatility, high porosity, fascinating optical and electronic properties, all of which makes them promising candidates for a variety of applications, including gas capture and separation, sensors, and photocatalysis.

Because MOFs are so...