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Category: energy

Breaking recalcitrant lignin bonds with electricity for conversion into value-added chemicals: An e-biorefinery

A research team led by Professor Jaehoon Kim at Sungkyunkwan University and Dr. Dong Ki Lee at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has developed a highly efficient catalytic process that electrochemically converts lignin, a key component of woody biomass, into value-added aromatic compounds and cyclohexene-based compounds.

The study demonstrates that the recalcitrant ether bonds in lignin can be selectively cleaved under relatively mild conditions without the use of external hydrogen gas, while simultaneously upgrading lignin into useful chemical precursors.

The research results were published in Applied Catalysis B: Environment and Energy.

Reduce Energy Consumption In Unity Games With This Plug-In

Over the past few months, we’ve covered plug-ins for both Unreal Engine and Godot that optimize power use, making games more energy-efficient and helping players get more out of their battery life. They work by detecting when a player goes idle, then lowering the frame rate and rendering resolution, and during longer periods of inactivity, even pausing rendering entirely.

Now, thanks to Oliver Stock, who felt like somebody should step up and do the same for Unity, there’s a similar plug-in available for developers. It’s free and open-source, and you can get it by clicking here. It monitors player input, and when nothing’s happening, it automatically switches between different energy profiles. These profiles control which settings are adjusted, like frame rate, resolution, or physics updates. You can easily tweak or create your own profiles to suit your project’s needs.

Oliver recommends using Unity 2022.3.62f2 or newer. The plug-in currently only works with Unity’s URP or HDRP.

Magnets turn random snapping in soft metamaterials into repeatable sequences

Cutting patterns into elastic materials allows you to unfold those materials into new shapes, and researchers have now demonstrated the ability to control the sequence in which that unfolding happens by magnetizing the materials. The work represents a fundamental advance in our understanding of metamaterial behavior and has also demonstrated its utility in applications focused on absorbing kinetic energy.

The paper, “Magnetic coupling transforms random snapping into ordered sequences in soft metamaterials,” is published in the journal Science Advances.

“If you cut a T-pattern into a polymer sheet, you’ve created a metamaterial, because you’ve changed the properties of the material,” says Haoze Sun, first author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. “If you pull the metamaterial sheet, all the cuts essentially pop open at once. These openings create a mesh-like pattern and extend the length of the sheet.

Electronics of the future: Ultra-efficient graphene switch developed at nanometer scale

A team of researchers from Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with colleagues from Japan, has taken an important step toward the next generation of electronics. The scientists achieved highly precise control of the internal structure of graphene—an exceptionally thin and strong material—using a minute, nearly negligible amount of energy.

The study was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Ben-Shalom of the School of Physics and Astronomy, together with Prof. Michael Urbakh and Prof. Oded Hod of the School of Chemistry. The experiments and calculations were led by Dr. Nirmal Roy and Dr. Pengua Ying, supported by Simon Salleh Atri, Yoav Sharaby, Noam Raab, and Dr. Youngki Yao. The findings were published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

A Lab Version of Planetary Atmospheres

Researchers recreate key features of atmospheric turbulence in a meter-sized rotating cylinder.

Atmospheric turbulence encompasses a wide range of flow patterns, from 10-m-wide eddies to 1000-km-long wind streams. Geoscientists want to understand how energy and rotational motion transfer (or “cascade”) from one length scale to another, but atmospheric observations have not provided clear answers. A new model of the atmosphere consisting of fluid in a rotating, meter-wide cylinder is able to reproduce key features of observed turbulence [1]. Using video tracking, researchers mapped out the flow velocity in this system, uncovering the dominant role of a “vorticity” transfer that distributes rotational motion from large vortices into smaller ones. This form of cascade may explain the energy distribution in large-scale turbulence on Earth as well as on other planets.

Turbulence can be characterized by a kinetic energy spectrum, which indicates the amount of energy found in fluctuations at each length scale. The typical turbulence spectrum has a mathematical form called a power law, in which the energy density steadily decreases from large to small scales. Fluid dynamics models of Earth’s atmosphere have predicted that the power law should be relatively flat at large scales (with an exponent of −5÷3) and steeper at small scales (with an exponent of −3). However, these predictions aren’t supported by observations. “The basic shape of the spectrum is all wrong,” says Peter Read from the University of Oxford in the UK. Data taken by airplanes have revealed a spectrum that starts out steep at large scales (greater than 500 km) and becomes flatter at small scales.

First quantum oscillations observed in gallium nitride holes

Gallium nitride, a semiconductor that can operate at high voltages, temperatures, and frequencies, has enabled technologies from LED lighting to high-power electronics. Now Cornell researchers have observed a quantum property of the material for the first time, an advance that could expand its technological reach.

Much of gallium nitride’s value as a semiconductor lies in how quickly negatively charged electrons move through the material. But the material could become even more useful if scientists better understood its positively charged “holes,” which behave like mobile pockets of missing electrons but have been difficult to study.

Understanding how to control the flow of the holes—as engineers have achieved in silicon semiconductors—would allow gallium nitride to reach its full potential.

New controls can stretch, blur and even reverse quantum time flow

In new research published in Physical Review X, scientists have designed quantum control protocols that generate processes more consistent with time flowing backward than forward. The protocols—techniques to control quantum systems—modify a quantum system’s “arrow of time,” the concept of time as moving in one forward direction. The work opens up possibilities for energy extraction from quantum systems and for quantum state preparation.

A quantum system, such as a collection of qubits, is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. The team’s control protocols can prevent the emergence of the arrow of time in a quantum system or even invert its direction—that is, cause quantum time to appear to flow in reverse.

As an application of their research, the team leveraged their control protocols to design a measurement engine that extracts energy from quantum measurements performed on the system.

Atomic disorder strategy could help high-capacity batteries last longer

Researchers at UNIST, in collaboration with the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory (PAL) and KAIST, have introduced a novel approach to stabilizing high-capacity battery materials. By intentionally inducing atomic-level disorder within lithium-rich layered oxide (LRLO) cathodes, the team has effectively minimized structural degradation and energy losses, paving the way for next-generation batteries with higher energy density and longer lifespan.

The findings of this research have been published online in ACS Energy Letters.

Lithium-rich layered oxides (LRLO) are among the most promising cathode materials for future energy storage solutions due to their exceptional capacity, which involves not only metal ions but also oxygen participating in electrochemical reactions. However, their practical application has been hindered by structural instability during repeated charge and discharge cycles, leading to capacity fade and voltage degradation.

Next-generation memory material has the surprising property of shrinking when heated

Most materials we use in everyday life expand slightly when heated and return to their original size when cooled. In addition to such thermal properties, materials can also have electrical properties or magnetic properties, and traditionally we have used these characteristics separately. However, some materials allow multiple properties to coexist within a single substance.

Research on such materials is expected to contribute to the development of next-generation memory devices that can store and retain information while consuming far less energy.

How multiferroics could transform memory A representative example is a class of materials known as multiferroics, which combine the properties of a capacitor (the ability to store electric charge) and a magnet. Among them, bismuth ferrite (BiFeO₃) is one of the most intensively studied materials in the field. When an external voltage is applied, the direction of its stored electric polarization can be switched, and this change can also influence its magnetic properties.

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