Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists from IOCB Prague are the first to describe the causes of the behavior of one of the fundamental aromatic molecules, azulene. This molecule has captivated the scientific community not just with its distinct blue hue, but also with its unique properties.

Their current undertaking will influence the foundations of organic chemistry in the years to come and in practice will help harness the maximum potential of captured light energy. Their findings were recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).

Azulene has piqued the curiosity of chemists for many years. The question of why it is blue, despite there being no obvious reason for this, was answered almost fifty years ago by a scientist of global importance, who, coincidentally, had close ties with IOCB Prague, Prof. Josef Michl.

Under the limitation of current density, micro-LED is difficult to achieve watts level optical power, which is not suitable for long-distance and underwater optical communication that requires high-power optical transmitter devices. Therefore, how to improve the communication performance of conventional-size LED is also a key issue at present.

The authors of an article published in Opto-Electronic Science studied a wavelength division multiplexing visible light communication system based on multi-color LED. The system uses a Si substrate GaN-based LED with a 3D structured quantum well. In the active layer of this LED, there is a three-dimensional structure (“V” shaped pit, or V-pit) with a hexagonal profile, opening towards the P-type GaN layer.

With the large-scale commercial use of 5G, global academia and industry have started research on the next-generation mobile communication technology (6G).

Continue reading “Engineers develop enhanced GaN-based LED array visible light communication system” »

A research team led by Prof. Yan Lifeng from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has designed a water-based nanomicellar electrolyte by using methylurea (Mu). The results were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Aqueous zinc ion batteries (AZIBs) are competitive candidates for clean energy storage, but they are severely limited by the irreversible electrochemical reaction of the zinc anode. Therefore, it is a crucial issue to explore how to regulate the electrochemical performance of AZIBs through electrolyte design optimization.

In this paper, the researchers proposed a unique design of nanomicellar electrolyte, which comprises ZnSO₄, MnSO₄ and a high concentration of Mu molecules through a self-assembly strategy, where the aqueous-solvent environment is partitioned into hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions, and cations and anions are encapsulated into nanodomains.

Sunlight is an inexhaustible source of energy, and utilizing sunlight to generate electricity is one of the cornerstones of renewable energy. More than 40% of the sunlight that falls on Earth is in the infrared, visible and ultraviolet spectra; however, current solar technology utilizes primarily visible and ultraviolet rays. Technology to utilize the full spectrum of solar radiation—called all-solar utilization—is still in its infancy.

A team of researchers from Hokkaido University, led by Assistant Professor Melbert Jeem and Professor Seiichi Watanabe at the Faculty of Engineering, have synthesized tungstic acid–based materials doped with copper that exhibited all-solar utilization. Their findings are published in the journal Advanced Materials.

“Currently, the near-and mid-infrared spectra of solar radiation, ranging from 800 nm to 2,500 nm, is not utilized for energy generation,” explains Jeem. “Tungstic acid is a candidate for developing nanomaterials that can potentially utilize this spectrum, as it possesses a crystal structure with defects that absorb these wavelengths.”

It’s not rocket science, but instead “carbon-neutral” jet-fuel science.

It’s simply a method for pulling carbon pollution and water from the air and using the sun’s energy to turn these into fuel for an airplane.

Continue reading “Revolutionary solar tower can create jet fuel out of thin air — and it may be the key to cleaning up the aviation sector” »

Kevin Slagle, Quantum 7, 1113 (2023). Although tensor networks are powerful tools for simulating low-dimensional quantum physics, tensor network algorithms are very computationally costly in higher spatial dimensions. We introduce $\textit{quantum gauge networks}$: a different kind of tensor network ansatz for which the computation cost of simulations does not explicitly increase for larger spatial dimensions. We take inspiration from the gauge picture of quantum dynamics, which consists of a local wavefunction for each patch of space, with neighboring patches related by unitary connections. A quantum gauge network (QGN) has a similar structure, except the Hilbert space dimensions of the local wavefunctions and connections are truncated. We describe how a QGN can be obtained from a generic wavefunction or matrix product state (MPS). All $2k$-point correlation functions of any wavefunction for $M$ many operators can be encoded exactly by a QGN with bond dimension $O(M^k)$. In comparison, for just $k=1$, an exponentially larger bond dimension of $2^{M/6}$ is generically required for an MPS of qubits. We provide a simple QGN algorithm for approximate simulations of quantum dynamics in any spatial dimension. The approximate dynamics can achieve exact energy conservation for time-independent Hamiltonians, and spatial symmetries can also be maintained exactly. We benchmark the algorithm by simulating the quantum quench of fermionic Hamiltonians in up to three spatial dimensions.

At a somewhat small and unassuming airport in Maribor, Slovenia, German hydrogen propulsion startup H2FLY has quietly been building up to a major milestone in zero-emission aviation over the summer. And all the hard work has come to fruition, with the successful completion of the world’s first crewed liquid hydrogen-powered flights.

Before any aviation history enthusiast out there goes “but what about the Tupolev Tu-155?” — yes, the Soviets did try out liquid hydrogen as fuel 35 years ago, but only for one of the three engines. In contrast, H2FLY’s HY4 has now operated using only liquid hydrogen (as opposed to the gaseous kind) as fuel, relying solely on the hydrogen fuel-cell powertrain for the entire flight.

Vertical farming saves water, land, and energy — and it could be how we grow food on Mars.

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Continue reading “Vertical farms could take over the world | Hard Reset by Freethink” »

Using a ballpoint pen filled with specially formulated inks, scientists have designed LEDs that can be drawn on everyday materials.

Even in our digital age, ballpoint pens are an irreplaceable tool for writing down flashes of inspiration or signing legally binding documents. The ink flowing through these everyday objects has always been a passive absorber of light, but Junyi Zhao from Washington University in St. Louis and colleagues have now changed that [1]. The team has designed a ballpoint pen that writes with ink that produces light as a light emitting diode (LED).

LEDs are used in everything from TV screens to lightbulbs. They are often made using highly tunable semiconducting materials called halide perovskites. However, these devices have traditionally been time and energy intensive to fabricate, and they do not easily adhere to nonuniform substrates, such as fabric and plastic.