Category Technology/Electronics

The porosity of the nanostructured Tantalum (in black) enables the formation of silicon channels (in blue) allowing lithium ions to travel faster within the battery. The rigidity of the tantalum scaffold also limits the expansion of the silicon and preserve structural integrity. Credit: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University Nanoparticles by Design Unit

Scientists have designed a novel silicon-based anode to provide lithium batteries with increased power and better stability. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) power most of our portable electronics, but they are flammable and can even explode, as it happened to a recent model of smartphone...

Schematic of a two-step method for the synthesis of transition metal carbide nanoparticles dispersed on a carbon material

Researchers have developed a new technology that could speed up the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles. A team of engineers at the University of Delaware has made a catalyst of tungsten carbide, which goes for around $150/kg instead of using expensive platinum at $30,000/kg. They produced tungsten carbide nanoparticles in a novel way, much smaller and more scalable than previous methods.

“The material is typically made at very high temperatures, about 1,500 Celsius, and at these temperatures, it grows big and has little surface area for chemistry to take place on,” said Dionisios Vlachos, director of UD’s Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation...

A fluid-cooling panel designed by Shanhui Fan, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, and former research associates Aaswath Raman and Eli Goldstein being tested on the roof of the Packard Electrical Engineering Building. This is an updated version of the panels used in the research published in Nature Energy. Credit: Aaswath Raman

It looks like a regular roof, but the top of the Packard Electrical Engineering Building at Stanford University has been the setting of many milestones in the development of an innovative cooling technology that could someday be part of our everyday lives...

The research study contributes to our basic understanding of random matrices and the theory of quantum chaos.

Researchers have now succeeded in formulating a mathematical result that provides an exact answer to the question of how chaos actually behaves. The researchers have analyzed chaotic states at the atomic level. The world in there behaves a lot differently to the world that we experience; the protons and neutrons in the nucleus are waves. In this microcosmos, the so-called quantum world, the normal rules of nature do not apply, but in terms of the state called chaos, there are universal features that are present, regardless of the level of existence.

In a new study, a research group including researchers from Lund University, has therefore set out to tackle the theory of quantum cha...