Category Technology/Electronics

Fabrication schematic of ordered mesoporous fewlayer carbon (OMFLC). Credit: Science (2015). DOI: 10.1126/science.aab3798

Like a battery, a capacitor is able to hold a charge, unlike a battery, however, it is able to be charged and discharged very quickly—the down side to capacitors is that they cannot hold nearly as much charge/ kg as batteries. The work by the team in China is a step towards increasing the amount of charge that can be held by supercapacitors (capacitors that have much higher capacitance than standard capacitors—they generally employ carbon-based electrodes)—in this case, they report a 3X increase using their new method—noting also that that their supercapacitor was capable of storing 41 watt-hours per kilogram and could deliver 26 kilowatts per kilogram to a device...

This packaged electronic-photonic processor microchip under illumination reveals the chip’s primary features. The light rays emanating from the chip are drawn to show that the processor talks to the outside world using light. Credit: Glenn J. Asakawa, University of Colorado Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-demo-processor-ultrafast.html#jCp

Engineers have successfully married electrons and photons within a single-chip microprocessor, a landmark development that opens the door to ultrafast, low-power data crunching. The researchers packed 2 processor cores with >70 million transistors and 850 photonic components onto a 3-by-6-millimeter chip...

At left, a deformed sample of pure metal; at right, the strong new metal made of magnesium with silicon carbide nanoparticles. Each central micropillar is about 4 micrometers across. Credit: UCLA Scifacturing Laboratory

Mg infused with dense ceramic Silicon Carbide nanoparticles could be used for airplanes, cars, mobile electronics, spacecraft, and cars, helping to improve fuel efficiency, as well as in mobile electronics and biomedical devices. It has extremely high specific strength and modulus, or stiffness-to-weight ratio. To create the super-strong but lightweight metal, the team found a new way to disperse and stabilize nanoparticles in molten metals. They also developed a scalable manufacturing method that could pave the way for more high-performance lightweight metals.

“It’s been p...

Water reduction by a p-GaInP2 photoelectrode stabilized by an amorphous TiO2 coating and a molecular cobalt catalyst: Surface modification strategies for the p-GaInP2 photoelectrodes.

This work shows that molecular catalysts can be as highly active as the precious metal-based catalysts. NREL’s scientists took a different approach to the PEC process, which uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The process requires special semiconductors, the PEC materials and catalysts to split the water. Previous work used precious metals such as platinum, ruthenium and iridium as catalysts attached to the semiconductors. A large-scale commercial effort using those precious metals wouldn’t be cost-effective, however.

The use of cheaper molecular catalysts instead of precious metals has...