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IMAGE: Rice University s Carbon Hub is a zero-emissions research initiative to produce technologies that split hydrocarbons into hydrogen fuel and solid carbon materials that can be used to make buildings, cars,. view more
Credit: Photo by Tommy LaVergne/Rice University
HOUSTON - (March 8, 2021) - Carbon Hub, Rice University s zero-emissions research initiative, has awarded seed grants for six projects that will rapidly advance its vision for transforming the oil and gas sector into a leading provider of both clean hydrogen energy and solid carbon products that can be used in place of materials with large carbon footprints.
Six research teams from Rice University; the University of Cambridge, England; the University of California, Berkeley; the IMDEA Materials Institute, Madrid; the Polytechnic University of Milan; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the University of Dayton Research Institute were selected for one-year grants in response to Carbon
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IMAGE: A new Georgia Tech manufacturing process could enable battery makers to produce lighter, safer, and more energy-dense batteries. view more
Credit: Allison Carter, Georgia Tech
A new fabrication technique could allow solid-state automotive lithium-ion batteries to adopt nonflammable ceramic electrolytes using the same production processes as in batteries made with conventional liquid electrolytes.
The melt-infiltration technology developed by materials science researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology uses electrolyte materials that can be infiltrated into porous yet densely packed, thermally stable electrodes.
The one-step process produces high-density composites based on pressure-less, capillary-driven infiltration of a molten solid electrolyte into porous bodies, including multilayered electrode-separator stacks.
Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have studied the properties of mixtures of silicone-coated magic sand , a popular kid s toy, and normal sand. Silicone-coated sand particles were found to interact with each other only, and not with other sand particles. The team discovered that adding silicone-coated sand beyond a certain threshold leads to an abrupt change in clustering and rigidity, a simple, useful way to potentially tune the flow of granular materials for industry.
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Delving deeper into the chemical processes used to make various goods from biomass can help manufacturers use them with greater efficiency, and therefore, increase production. Thomas Schwartz aims to unravel the inner workings of a common method for crafting a compound for rubber known as butadiene, an effort backed by the National Science Foundation.
The assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Maine received a $513,995 NSF CAREER Award to advance his ongoing dissection of the Lebedev process. The well-known, multi-step chemical reaction is used to make butadiene from biomass-derived ethanol. However, little research has been conducted on the Lebedev process at the molecular level.
2 transistor in an ESR sample tube. view more
Credit: University of Tsukuba
Tsukuba, Japan and Warsaw, Poland - Scientists from the University of Tsukuba and a scientist from the Institute of High Pressure Physics detected and mapped the electronic spins moving in a working transistor made of molybdenum disulfide. This research may lead to much faster computers that take advantage of the natural magnetism of electrons, as opposed to just their charge.
Spintronics is a new area of condensed matter physics that attempts to use the intrinsic magnetic moment of electrons, called spins, to perform calculations. This would be a major advance over all existing electronics that rely solely on the electron charge. However, it is difficult to detect these spins, and there are many unknowns regarding materials that can support the transport of spin-polarized electrons.