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Category: energy – Page 35

X-ray microscopes are essential for examining components and materials because they can be used to detect changes and details in the material. Until now, however, it has been difficult to detect small cracks or tiny inclusions in the images. By developing a new method, researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon are now able to visualize such changes in the nanometer regime. In particular materials research and quality assurance will profit from this development.

The team reported on their new development in the scientific journal Optica (“Nanoscale dark-field imaging in full-field transmission X-ray microscopy”).

The quality must be right. This also applies to materials science. When metal parts are welded together, you need to know whether the weld seam is any good — or whether small cracks or pores have formed inside, which could lead to failure. High-performance materials, e.g. for electrodes in electric car batteries or fuel cells, should not contain defects to allow the current to flow undisturbed.

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Sinonus uses technology developed at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, where researchers have been studying the concept of a structural battery using carbon fibre for years.

Massless batteries have been something of a holy grail for energy storage since 2007, because the weight of the battery effectively disappears once it is part of the load-bearing structure. The Chalmers team, led by professor Leif Asp, is one of the few to find a material that works.

Carbon fibre is known for its strength versus weight.

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SpinLaunch was founded in 2014, and its leadership team has since raised tens of millions of dollars in funding. The company has been working with NASA, Airbus, and Cornell University, launching some of their equipment as part of testing. The tech has so far endured 10,000 Gs, “10,000 times the force of Earth’s gravity,” all per the Space.com report.

If SpinLaunch’s concept proves reliable, it could eliminate the loads of fuel that is burned to launch spacecraft. In 2016, Business Insider noted that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket used more than 900,000 pounds of propellant for each liftoff, for reference. The fuel efficiency may have improved some since then.

CBC News reports that a growing number of launches are starting to draw scrutiny, particularly for ozone layer health. The barrier protects us from some of the sun’s harmful radiation.

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A new method in spectromicroscopy significantly improves the study of chemical reactions at the nanoscale, both on surfaces and inside layered materials. Scanning X-ray microscopy (SXM) at MAXYMUS beamline of BESSY II enables the investigation of chemical species adsorbed on the top layer (surface) or intercalated within the MXene electrode (bulk) with high chemical sensitivity. The method was developed by a HZB team led by Dr. Tristan Petit. The scientists demonstrated among others first SXM on MXene flakes, a material used as electrode in lithium-ion batteries.

Since their discovery in 2011, MXenes have gathered significant scientific interest due to their versatile tunable properties and diverse applications, from energy storage to electromagnetic shielding. Researchers have been working to decipher the complex chemistry of MXenes at the nanoscale.

The team of Dr. Tristan Petit now made a significant progress in MXene characterization, as described in their recent publication (Small Methods, “Nanoscale surface and bulk electronic properties of Ti 3 C 2 Tx MXene unraveled by multimodal X-ray spectromicroscopy”). They utilized SXM to investigate the chemical bonding of Ti 3 C 2 Tx MXenes, with Tx denoting the terminations (Tx=O, OH, F, Cl), with high spatial and spectral resolution. The novelty in this work is to combine simultaneously two detection modes, transmission and electron yield, enabling different probing depths.

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