Lifeboat Foundation

In solar cells and light-emitting diodes, maintaining the excited state kinetics of molecules against annihilation is a race against time. These systems need to strike a careful balance between different processes that lead to loss of energy and those that lead to the desired outcome.

CU Boulder scientists have found how ions move in tiny pores, potentially improving energy storage in devices like supercapacitors. Their research updates Kirchhoff’s law, with significant implications for energy storage in vehicles and power grids.

Imagine if your dead laptop or phone could be charged in a minute, or if an electric car could be fully powered in just 10 minutes. While this isn’t possible yet, new research by a team of scientists at CU Boulder could potentially make these advances a reality.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers in Ankur Gupta’s lab discovered how tiny charged particles, called ions, move within a complex network of minuscule pores. The breakthrough could lead to the development of more efficient energy storage devices, such as supercapacitors, said Gupta, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering.

“The moment when we wrote down the terms of this equation and saw that it all clicked together, it felt pretty incredible,” Wordsworth said. “It’s a result that finally shows us how directly the quantum mechanics links to the bigger picture.”

In some ways, he said, the calculation helps us understand climate change better than any computer model. “It just seems to be a fundamentally important thing to be able to say in a field that we can show from basic principles where everything comes from.”

Scientists propose a new way of implementing a neural network with an optical system which could make machine learning more sustainable in the future. The researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light have published their new method in Nature Physics, demonstrating a method much simpler than previous approaches.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly widespread with applications ranging from computer vision to text generation, as demonstrated by ChatGPT. However, these complex tasks require increasingly complex neural networks; some with many billion parameters. This rapid growth of neural network size has put the technologies on an unsustainable path due to their exponentially growing energy consumption and training times. For instance, it is estimated that training GPT-3 consumed more than 1,000 MWh of energy, which amounts to the daily electrical energy consumption of a small town. This trend has created a need for faster, more energy-and cost-efficient alternatives, sparking the rapidly developing field of neuromorphic computing. The aim of this field is to replace the neural networks on our digital computers with physical neural networks.

Even if we can dodge a disaster in orbit by responsibly de-orbiting derelict satellites, many scientists are concerned that the number of objects circling our planet could still do harm: When they deorbit, they could deposit a significant flux of metals that could alter the chemical makeup of Earth’s atmosphere.

“Effects on astronomy are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Barentine, who says we may be fast approaching a turning point where tragedy becomes imminent, either in space due to a collision or on the ground from falling debris. “Space policy-making moves far too slowly to effectively deal with all of this.”

“Right now, there’s not a lot to look forward to that is positive,” he added. “If the New Space Age goes badly in the end, history will not look favorably on it.”

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a rapidly growing global problem, and it’s expected to worsen with the production of new kinds of flexible electronics for robotics, wearable devices, health monitors, and other new applications, including single-use devices.

A new kind of flexible substrate material developed at MIT, the University of Utah, and Meta has the potential to enable not only the recycling of materials and components at the end of a device’s useful life, but also the scalable manufacture of more complex multilayered circuits than existing substrates provide.

The development of this new material is described in the journal RSC Applied Polymers (“Photopatternable, Degradable, and Performant Polyimide Network Substrates for E-Waste Mitigation”), in a paper by MIT Professor Thomas J. Wallin, University of Utah Professor Chen Wang, and seven others.

The higher cost of owning an electric versus a gas-powered vehicle is a sticking point for many would-be buyers of EVs. Now, the price of a key EV component is falling, raising hopes that automakers could close the gap as they grapple with waning demand.

Batteries make up about one-third to one-fourth of the cost of producing an electric vehicle, according to Goldman Sachs analysts. The firm predicts the global average cost to automakers for batteries in 2024 will average about $115 per kilowatt hours, about 23% lower than last year. Prices are expected fall another 20% in 2025.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk (TSLA) recently noted costs have come down for lithium-ion cells used in EV batteries, a big reversal from the “massive spike” during the pandemic when car manufacturers put in “giant, giant orders.”

Lithium (Li) secondary batteries, commonly used in electric vehicles, store energy by converting electrical energy to chemical energy and generating electricity to release chemical energy to electrical energy through the movement of Li-ions between a cathode and an anode. These secondary batteries mainly use nickel (Ni) cathode materials due to their high lithium-ion storage capacity. Traditional nickel-based materials have a polycrystalline morphology composed of many tiny crystals which can undergo structural degradation during charging and discharging, significantly reducing their lifespan.

One approach to addressing this issue is to produce the cathode material in a “single-crystal” form. Creating nickel-based cathode materials as single large particles, or “single crystals,” can enhance their structural and chemical stability and durability. It is known that single-crystal materials are synthesized at high temperatures and become rigid. However, the exact process of hardening during synthesis and the specific conditions under which this occurs remain unclear.

To improve the durability of nickel cathode materials for electric vehicles, the researchers focused on identifying a specific temperature, referred to as the “critical temperature,” at which high-quality single-crystal materials are synthesized. They investigated various synthesis temperatures to determine the optimal conditions for forming single crystals in synthesis of a nickel-based cathode material (N884). The team systematically observed the impact of temperature on the material’s capacity and long-term performance.

Space-based solar power, an innovative concept that involves capturing solar energy in space and transmitting it to Earth, offers limitless opportunities in system design, manufacturing and deployment. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the energy industry, addressing global clean energy demands while minimizing environmental impact.

The availability of space resources, such as asteroid mining and lunar regolith utilization, presents opportunities for companies that invest in technologies and techniques to extract and process these resources, including precious metals, water and rare minerals.

The importance of continued investment in space exploration cannot be overstated. As space technology advances, businesses must consider potential applications in their industries. Collaboration between space agencies and private companies is key to driving innovation and economic growth, offering countless opportunities for the future.