The Netherlands is building roads out of plastic waste. Take a journey down the plastic highway đđ.
The Netherlands is building roads out of plastic waste. Take a journey down the plastic highway đ đ
đ„ : World Economic Forum #lovethenetherlands #1sttheworld
The growing popularity of lithium-ion batteries in recent years has put a strain on the worldâs supply of cobalt and nickelâtwo metals integral to current battery designsâand sent prices surging.
In a bid to develop alternative designs for lithium-based batteries with less reliance on those scarce metals, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a promising new cathode and electrolyte system that replaces expensive metals and traditional liquid electrolyte with lower cost transition metal fluorides and a solid polymer electrolyte.
âElectrodes made from transition metal fluorides have long shown stability problems and rapid failure, leading to significant skepticism about their ability to be used in next generation batteries,â said Gleb Yushin, a professor in Georgia Techâs School of Materials Science and Engineering. âBut weâve shown that when used with a solid polymer electrolyte, the metal fluorides show remarkable stabilityâeven at higher temperaturesâwhich could eventually lead to safer, lighter and cheaper lithium-ion batteries.â
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the California NanoSystems Institute in Los Angeles have recently developed a soft swimming robot based on a self-sustained hydrogel oscillator. This robot, presented in a paper published in Science Robotics, operates under constant light input without the need for a battery.
âWhen I shone light on a soft, fast responsive hydrogel pillar, I observed the pillar started to oscillate around the optical beam,â Yusen Zhao, a Ph.D. student involved in the research, said. âIt looked very intriguing to me, and I wondered: How can a constant input produce intermittent output? Under what conditions does the oscillation happen? Would it be powerful enough to propel and swim in water, and eventually lead to solar sails? With these questions, I continued systematic studies aiming to achieve these objectives.â
Zhao and his colleagues developed a soft oscillator made of a light-responsive soft gel, which is molded into the shape of a pillar or strip. When light hits a spot of this gel pillar, it is automatically absorbed and converted into heat. The locally heated spot on the robot causes it to eject some of its water and shrink in volume, resulting in its tail bending towards the light source.
Superhard materials can slice, drill and polish other objects. They also hold potential for creating scratch-resistant coatings that could help keep expensive equipment safe from damage.
Now, science is opening the door to the development of new materials with these seductive qualities.
Researchers have used computational techniques to identify 43 previously unknown forms of carbon that are thought to be stable and superhardâincluding several predicted to be slightly harder than or nearly as hard as diamonds. Each new carbon variety consists of carbon atoms arranged in a distinct pattern in a crystal lattice.
Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology and Politecnico di Milano have identified a crucial new aspect of charge density modulations in cuprate high critical temperature superconductors. They have identified a new electron wave which could help reveal some of the mysteries about superconducting materials. The findings are published in the journal Science.
High critical temperature superconductors have a variable charge density, meaning that their electrical charge is unevenly distributed. This partly results from what are known as âcharge density wavesâ, which were discovered a few years ago. But these have only been observed to exist sporadically, under certain conditions. Therefore, they were not believed to be a contributing factor to the materialsâ superconducting properties.
What the researchers have now discovered, however, is an additional aspect to the variable charge density, which they term âcharge density fluctuationsâ. These have been identified as an additional charge modulation, collective and with a shorter correlation length. They are very pervasive, meaning that compared to the conventional charge density waves, they are present at a much greater range of temperatures, up to room temperature and beyond, and at different levels of oxygen doping.
Researchers around the world are constantly looking for ways to enhance or transcend the capabilities of electronic devices, which seem to be reaching their theoretical limits. Undoubtedly, one of the most important advantages of electronic technology is its speed, which, albeit high, can still be surpassed by orders of magnitude through other approaches that are not yet commercially available.
A possible way of surpassing traditional electronics is through the use of antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials. The electrons of AFM materials spontaneously align themselves in such a way that the overall magnetization of the material is practically zero. In fact, the order of an AFM material can be quantified in what is known as the âorder parameter.â Recent studies have even shown that the AFM order parameter can be âswitchedâ (that is, changed from one known value to another, really fast) using light or electric currents, which means that AFM materials could become the building blocks of future electronic devices.
However, the dynamics of the order-switching process are not understood because it is very difficult to measure the changes in the AFM order parameter in real time with high resolution. Current approaches rely on measuring only certain phenomena during AFM order switching and trying to obtain the full picture from there, which has proven to be unreliable for understanding other more intricate phenomena in detail. Therefore, a research team lead by Prof. Takuya Satoh from Tokyo Tech and researchers from ETH Zurich, developed a method for thoroughly measuring the changes in the AFM order of an YMnO3 crystal induced through optical excitation (that is, using a laser).
Y. Sun et al. Route to a superconducting phase above room temperature in electron-doped hydride compounds under high pressure. Physical Review Letters. Vol. 123, August 30, 2019. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.097001.
An international team of researchers led by the University of Tokyo has discovered a new material which, when rolled into a nanotube, generates an electric current if exposed to light. If magnified and scaled up, say the scientists, the technology could be used in future high-efficiency solar devices.
Based on some basic analysis of recent photos of SpaceXâs East Coast Starship facility, situated in Cocoa, Florida, SpaceX has almost certainly begun fabricating and staging hardware that will eventually become part of the companyâs first Super Heavy booster prototype.
This is by no means surprising but it does confirm the reasonable assumption that SpaceX is already working hard to ensure that the first Super Heavy booster(s) can be assembled as quickly as possible. Additionally, SpaceX appears to have started clearing brush in the process of preparing to transport the Florida orbital Starship prototype (âMk2â) to SpaceXâs Pad 39A launch facilities, dozens of miles away.
The aforementioned âbasic analysisâ is more or less comprised of looking for and counting the massive steel rings that SpaceX has decided to build its Starships (and Super Heavy boosters) out of. By all appearances, SpaceX is doing nearly everything short of milling and preparing the raw materials (steel) internally. In Florida and Texas, giant rolls of stainless steel are delivered to the worksite by semi-truck, where SpaceX technicians prepare the rolls for sectioning (likely with a plasma torch or laser) and any necessary machining.
