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Category: chemistry – Page 88

Georgia Tech engineers are working to make fertilizer more sustainable—from production to productive reuse of the runoff after application—and a pair of new studies is offering promising avenues at both ends of the process.

In one paper, researchers have unraveled how , water, carbon, and light can interact with a catalyst to produce ammonia at and pressure, a much less energy-intensive approach than current practice. The second paper describes a stable catalyst able to convert waste back into nonpolluting nitrogen that could one day be used to make new fertilizer.

Significant work remains on both processes, but the senior author on the papers, Marta Hatzell, said they’re a step toward a more sustainable cycle that still meets the needs of a growing worldwide population.

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face_with_colon_three year 2022.

One of the biggest concerns about EVs is that the batteries will need replacing after a few years, at great expense. After all, your smartphone battery is likely to have seen better days within as little as three years. But a Tesla researcher is getting ready to kick this idea into touch once and for all, after demonstrating batteries that could potentially outlive most human beings.

Tesla enthusiasts are likely to have heard of Jeff Dahn already. He’s a professor at Dalhousie University and has been a research partner with Tesla since 2016. His focus has been to increase the energy density and lifetime of lithium-ion batteries, as well as reducing their cost. Dahn appears to have hit the motherload along with colleagues on his research team. In a paper published in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society, the group claims to have created a battery design that could last 100 years under the right conditions.

Dahn’s paper contrasts cells based on Li[Ni0.5Mn0.3Co0.2]O2 chemistry (“NMC 532”) to LiFePO4. The latter is the “Lithium Iron Phosphate” (aka LFP) chemistry that Tesla is currently using in Chinese-built standard Model 3 cars imported into Europe. The LFP chemistry has lower energy density than more widespread Lithium-Ion alternatives, but is cheaper, more durable, and allegedly safer, too. LFP can last up to 12,000 charge-discharge cycles, so beating it in this regard is no mean feat. Dahn’s NMC 532 cells showed no capacity loss after nearly 2,000 cycles. The paper extrapolates this out to imply a 100-year lifespan (they obviously haven’t been testing the battery that long).

Continue reading “Tesla Researcher Demonstrates 100-Year, 4-Million-Mile Battery” | >

Nanoparticles seem the future of electronics, at least until the next big thing.

Nano-engineered oxides are very important for the development of next-generation catalysts and microelectronics. Recently, metal exsolution from oxides has emerged as a promising nano-structuring tool to fabricate nanoparticle-decorated oxides. However, controlling the size, density, composition, and location of exsolved nanoparticles remains a challenge, limiting the ultimate performance achievable by these nanostructures.

The following nanoparticle production control was achieved: 1. ion sputtering can controllably reduce the size of surface exsolved nanoparticles down to 2 nm, which are among the smallest values reported in the literature thus far. 2. implanted metal ions can tailor the composition of nanoparticles exsolved both at the surface and in the bulk, providing a convenient and direct way to synthesize exsolved nanoparticles with alloyed compositions. 3. irradiation-induced lattice defects can catalyze the nucleation of nanoparticles, and this enables controlling the density and location of exsolved nanoparticles at specific sample locations using ion irradiation.

MIT Researchers worked with the Brookhaven National Lab to perform this work. The work demonstrates control over key properties leading to better performance. Fuel and electrolysis cells both involve electrochemical reactions through three principal parts: two electrodes (a cathode and anode) separated by an electrolyte. The difference between the two cells is that the reactions involved run in reverse. The electrodes are coated with catalysts, or materials that make the reactions involved go faster. But a critical catalyst made of metal-oxide materials has been limited by challenges including low durability. This works has improved the critical fuel cell catalyst. Metallic nanoparticles serve as catalysts in many, many reactions, including the important reaction of splitting water to generate hydrogen for energy storage.

Continue reading “Controlling the Size, Composition and Dispersion of Metal Nanoparticles” | >

A groundbreaking study by Chalmers University scientists reveals unprecedented molecular details in two early-universe galaxies, advancing our understanding of their star-formation activities.

Two galaxies in the early universe, which contain extremely productive star factories, have been studied by a team of scientists led by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Using powerful telescopes to split the galaxies’ light into individual colors, the scientists were amazed to discover light from many different molecules – more than ever before at such distances. Studies like this could revolutionize our understanding of the lives of the most active galaxies when the universe was young, the researchers believe.

Unveiling the nature of early galaxies.

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Whether in the brain or in the muscles, synapses are present wherever nerve cells exist. Synapses, the connections between neurons, are fundamental to the process of excitation transmission, which is essentially communication between neurons. As in any communication process, there is a sender and a receiver: Nerve cell processes called axons generate and transmit electrical signals thereby acting as signal senders.

Synapses are points of contact between axonal nerve terminals (the pre-synapse) and post-synaptic neurons. At these synapses, the electrical impulse is converted into chemical messengers that are received and sensed by the post-synapses of the neighboring neuron. The messengers are released from special membrane sacs called synaptic vesicles.

As well as transmitting information, synapses can also store information. While the structure and function of synapses are comparably well understood, little is known about how they are formed.

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With the market for wearable electric devices growing rapidly, stretchable solar cells that can function under strain have received considerable attention as an energy source. To build such solar cells, it is necessary that their photoactive layer, which converts light into electricity, shows high electrical performance while possessing mechanical elasticity. However, satisfying both of these two requirements is challenging, making stretchable solar cells difficult to develop.

A KAIST research team from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) led by Professor Bumjoon Kim announced the development of a new conductive polymer material that achieved both high electrical performance and elasticity while introducing the world’s highest-performing stretchable organic solar cell.

Figure 1. Chemical structure of the newly developed conductive polymer and performance of stretchable organic solar cells using the material. (Image: KAIST)

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Meteorologists on Earth struggle to predict the weather, but what about scientists trying to predict the weather on exoplanets that are light-years from Earth? This is what a recently accepted study to The Astrophysical Journal Supplement hopes to unveil as an international team of researchers used data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to conduct a three-year investigation into weather patterns on WASP-121 b, which is a “hot Jupiter” that orbits its star in just over one day and located approximately 880 light-years from Earth. This study holds the potential to not only advance our understanding of exoplanets and their atmospheres, but also how we study them, as well.

Artist impression of WASP-121 b orbiting its host star. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STSci))

“The assembled dataset represents a significant amount of observing time for a single planet and is currently the only consistent set of such repeated observations,” said Dr. Quentin Changeat, who is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Astronomy at University College London and lead author of the study. “The information that we extracted from those observations was used to infer the chemistry, temperature, and clouds of the atmosphere of WASP-121 b at different times. This provided us with an exquisite picture of the planet changing over time.”

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A s the world moves away from gas towards electricity as a greener power source, the to-do list goes beyond cars. The vast global manufacturing network that makes everything from our batteries to our fertilizers needs to flip the switch, too.

A study from UChicago chemists found a way to use electricity to boost a type of chemical reaction often used in synthesizing new candidates for pharmaceutical drugs.

Published Jan. 2 in Nature Catalysis, the research is an advance in the field of electrochemistry and shows a path forward to designing and controlling reactions—and making them more sustainable.

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This is a good thing to know.

Microbes living in our guts ooze a substance that could help protect us against excessive weight gain, according to observations in mice.

The bacteria-derived compound may explain why early exposure to antibiotics can play a role in childhood obesity, a condition which is rising globally.

Vanderbilt University biochemist Catherine Shelton and colleagues discovered this by giving young mice a high or low fat diet, with or without exposure to antibiotics. Mice only given penicillin antibiotics did not gain weight, but those also on a high fat diet did.

Continue reading “Chemical Produced by Gut Microbes Seems to Prevent Obesity in Mice” | >