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Category: engineering

Stretching metals can tune catalysis: A new method predicts energy shifts

Heterogeneous catalysis—in which catalysts and reactants are of different phases, e.g., solid and gas—is important to many industrial processes and often involves solid metal as the catalyst. Ammonia synthesis, catalytic converters for automobile exhaust, methanol synthesis, carbon dioxide reduction, and hydrogen production are examples of such metal-catalyzed heterogeneous catalysis.

The electronic structure of metal surfaces governs the adsorption of reactants and intermediates, and thus the catalytic activity. For this reason, strain engineering —which tunes the electronic structure of a metal catalyst by stretching or compressing its crystal lattice—has emerged as an important strategy for enhancing catalytic performance. Unfortunately, scientists have not been able to quantify how metal strain influences adsorption energies and reaction barriers across different metal catalysts, thereby limiting the rational design of catalysts with desired properties.

To address this challenge, a research team from the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a method to predict how strain modifies adsorption energies and reaction barriers across diverse metal systems. The study is published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

Terraforming Mars: Modeling engineered aerosols to warm the planet

Whenever humans arrive on Mars, they’re going to find it a difficult place to exist. Mars is cold, with an average surface temperature of −55°C; temperatures can plunge to −125°C with dust storms lasting months; its atmosphere is very thin and almost all carbon dioxide; and all the water is frozen and mixed with ice made of CO2. Oh, and solar radiation will be hazardous on Mars’ surface since the planet has no ozone layer to block ultraviolet radiation, especially so during solar flares. Disneyland it is not.

New Martians will need to live underground until, someday, maybe, Mars can be terraformed to, if not quite looking like Earth, at least a planet more hospitable to fragile human creatures.

There are arguments for and against terraforming Mars. If humans do terraform, one of the first suggestions is to increase Mars’ greenhouse effect by melting the CO2-ice caps.

Quasi-liquid layer controls growth mechanisms of ice-like materials

Clathrate hydrates are crystalline structures formed at the bottom of seafloors, created by water molecules trapping methane, carbon dioxide or other molecules. While these materials are underutilized in technology, a University of Oklahoma researcher is helping scientists better understand them through a trailblazing study.

Alberto Striolo, a professor in OU’s Gallogly College of Engineering, co-authored an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that addresses a key challenge toward utilizing hydrates: their slow growth rates. He and his fellow researchers have discovered an unusual interfacial layer on the hydrate that impacts its growth rate.

Striolo is the college’s Asahi Glass Chair in Chemical Engineering and Lloyd and Jane Austin Presidential Professor. He is also the director of the college’s Online Master of Science in Sustainability and the Materials Science and Engineering doctoral program.

Integrated strategy unlocks 29.76% efficiency for all-perovskite tandem solar cells

Two stacked layers comprise tandem solar cells (TSCs), with each subcell absorbing different wavelengths of sunlight, which makes TSCs more efficient than single-layer solar cells. All-perovskite TSCs hold great promise for next-generation photovoltaics, with a theoretical efficiency exceeding 40%. However, their practical performance is hampered by mismatched crystallization kinetics between their wide-bandgap (WBG) and narrow-bandgap (NBG) subcells, leading to phase segregation and defect accumulation.

To address this challenge, a research group led by Prof. Ge Ziyi and Prof. Liu Chang from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed an innovative colloidal chemistry strategy to enhance the performance of these TSCs, achieving a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 29.76%. Their study is published in Joule.

The researchers designed a unified carboxylate-based modulator system using two graded carboxylate anions—tartrate (Ta-) and citrate (Cit-)—to precisely regulate the nucleation dynamics of the two subcells.

Racetrack-shaped lasers developed for bright, stable frequency combs

A new, miniature laser source developed by applied physicists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien) could soon pack the power of a laboratory-based spectrometer—an important workhorse tool for precision environmental gas analysis—onto a single microchip.

The device, a ring-shaped, “racetrack” quantum cascade laser, generates a specific type of light source, called a frequency comb, in the difficult-to-access mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. It was developed in the lab of Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering, in collaboration with co-senior author Benedikt Schwarz and colleagues at TU Wien.

The research was co-led by first author Ted Letsou, a postdoctoral researcher in the Capasso group, and Johannes Fuchsberger, a graduate student at TU Wien, and is published in Optica.

Next-generation optical sensor can read photon spin across UV-to-infrared wavelengths

A research team led by Professor Jiwoong Yang of the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at DGIST has developed next-generation optical sensor technology capable of precisely detecting not only the intensity and wavelength of light but also its rotational direction—the spin information of photons. The team successfully implemented a quantum-dot-based optical sensor that can detect circularly polarized light (CPL) across an ultra-wide spectral range—from ultraviolet to short-wave infrared—demonstrating photodetection performance comparable to that of commercial silicon optical sensors. The paper is published in Advanced Materials.

CPL refers to light in which the electric field rotates helically as it propagates. This is directly linked to the spin information of photons—the fundamental particles of light. This polarization information serves as a crucial signal in next-generation security and communication technologies, such as quantum communication, quantum cryptography, and photonic quantum information processing, which is why related optical sensor technologies are attracting significant worldwide attention.

Conventional circularly polarized light sensors typically require the light-absorbing material itself to possess a specific helical orientation, known as a chiral structure. This approach not only limits the range of usable materials but also confines detection to narrow spectral regions, such as ultraviolet or visible light. Extending this technology into the infrared region, which is essential for quantum communication and optical sensing, has previously posed a major technical challenge.

Scientists uncovered the nutrients bees were missing — Colonies surged 15-fold

Scientists have developed a breakthrough “superfood” for honeybees by engineering yeast to produce the essential nutrients normally found in pollen. In controlled trials, colonies fed this specially designed diet produced up to 15 times more young, showing a dramatic boost in reproduction and overall health. As climate change and modern agriculture reduce the availability of natural pollen, this innovation could offer a practical way to support struggling bee populations.

Physicists create laser tornado in miniature structures using synthetic magnetic field

Can light behave like a whirlwind? It turns out it can—and such “optical tornadoes” have now been created in an extremely small structure by scientists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the Military University of Technology, and the Institut Pascal CNRS at Université Clermont Auvergne. This discovery opens a new pathway for creating miniature light sources with complex structures, potentially enabling the development of simpler and more scalable photonic devices in the future, for applications such as optical communication and quantum technologies. The research is published in the journal Science Advances.

“Our solution combines several fields of physics, from quantum mechanics, through materials engineering, to optics and solid-state physics,” explains Prof. Jacek Szczytko from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the leader of the research group. “The inspiration came from systems known from atomic physics, where electrons can occupy different energy states. In photonics, a similar role is played by optical traps, which confine light instead of electrons.”

“You can think of it as an optical vortex,” says Dr. Marcin Muszyński from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw and Department of Physics City College of New York, the first author of the study. “The light wave twists around its axis, and its phase changes in a spiral manner. Moreover, even the polarization—the direction of oscillation of the electric field—begins to rotate.”

Experimental evidence shows how photons spread across multiple paths in an interferometer

The nature of quantum particles has long puzzled scientists. While single-particle interference suggests that a photon can behave like a spread-out wave, a whole photon is only ever detected in one specific place. Traditional interpretations of quantum mechanics often address this by suggesting the particle is in a superposition of being here and there at the same time. However, this tells us only where the particle is when it is measured, not where the particle physically is when no detector is present.

A research team led by Hiroshima University, led by Holger F. Hofmann, professor at the Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, has now developed a method to measure this delocalization without disturbing the photon’s wave-like path.

In a study published in the New Journal of Physics, the researchers applied a modification of the well-established method of “weak measurements” to a two-path interferometer. As the photon traveled, they applied a tiny rotation by a positive angle in one path and a negative angle in the other. If the two paths interfere in the output, the average rotation angle is always zero. However, this is only a statistical average.

Dust-resilient perovskite solar cells could cut manufacturing costs and expand green energy worldwide

Research appearing in Communications Materials has shown that perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are remarkably resilient to dust during production, challenging the industry belief that high-performance solar technology must be manufactured in sterile and expensive cleanrooms. This discovery could reduce the need for ultra-clean factories, making solar cell production cheaper and more accessible worldwide.

PSCs are a new type of technology that uses a unique crystal structure to harvest light. They are thinner, lighter, and potentially much cheaper to produce than the traditional silicon panels found on roofs today. However, traditional silicon cells are incredibly fragile during the making process; even a single microscopic dust particle can ruin a cell. This forces manufacturers to use expensive, energy-hungry cleanrooms, creating a massive barrier to production in developing nations.

Researchers at Swansea University’s Faculty of Science & Engineering have now found that perovskite technology has a unique tolerance to common dust and debris.

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