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Category: energy – Page 8

Quantum eyes on energy loss: Diamond quantum imaging can enable next-gen power electronics

Improving energy conversion efficiency in power electronics is vital for a sustainable society, with wide-bandgap semiconductors like GaN and SiC power devices offering advantages due to their high-frequency capabilities. However, energy losses in passive components at high frequencies hinder efficiency and miniaturization. This underscores the need for advanced soft magnetic materials with lower energy losses.

In a study published in Communications Materials, a research team led by Professor Mutsuko Hatano from the School of Engineering, Institute of Science, Tokyo, Japan, has developed a novel method for analyzing such losses by simultaneously imaging the amplitude and phase of alternating current (AC) stray fields, which are key to understanding hysteresis losses.

Using a diamond quantum sensor with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers and developing two protocols—qubit frequency tracking (Qurack) for kHz and quantum heterodyne (Qdyne) imaging for MHz frequencies—they realized wide-range AC magnetic field imaging. This study was carried out in collaboration with Harvard University and Hitachi, Ltd.

Spacecraft can ‘brake’ in space using drag − advancing craft agility, space safety and planetary missions

When you put your hand out the window of a moving car, you feel a force pushing against you called drag. This force opposes a moving vehicle, and it’s part of the reason why your car naturally slows to a stop if you take your foot off the gas pedal. But drag doesn’t just slow down cars.

Aerospace engineers are working on using the drag force in space to develop more fuel-efficient spacecraft and missions, deorbit spacecraft without creating as much space junk, and even place probes in orbit around other planets.

Space is not a complete vacuum − at least not all of it. Earth’s atmosphere gets thinner with altitude, but it has enough air to impart a force of drag on orbiting spacecraft, even up to about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers).

An accidentally discovered class of nanostructured materials can passively harvest water from air

A serendipitous observation in a Chemical Engineering lab at Penn Engineering has led to a surprising discovery: a new class of nanostructured materials that can pull water from the air, collect it in pores and release it onto surfaces without the need for any external energy.

The research, published in Science Advances, describes a material that could open the door to new ways to collect water from the air in arid regions and devices that cool electronics or buildings using the power of evaporation.

The interdisciplinary team includes Daeyeon Lee, Russell Pearce and Elizabeth Crimian Heuer Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE); Amish Patel, Professor in CBE; Baekmin Kim, a postdoctoral scholar in Lee’s lab and first author; and Stefan Guldin, Professor in Complex Soft Matter at the Technical University of Munich.

Metal fleeces boost battery energy density by enabling thicker, faster-charging electrodes

Batteries are becoming more and more powerful. A discovery by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg could now give them a significant energy boost.

A team led by Max Planck Director Joachim Spatz has discovered that metal fleeces used as contact material in significantly accelerate the charge transport of metal ions, in particular. This makes it possible to build significantly thicker electrodes than is standard today. It means that roughly half of the contact metal and other materials that do not contribute to can be saved, and makes it possible for researchers to significantly increase the energy density in batteries.

The findings are published in the journal ACS Nano.

35% Efficiency Boost Seen in Spin-Torque Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording

In conventional heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), a laser is used to locally heat the recording medium to facilitate data writing. However, the thermal energy applied is largely dissipated within the medium and does not contribute directly to the recording efficiency. Moreover, this high-temperature process consumes substantial energy and raises concerns regarding the magnetic and physical degradation of the medium, especially under repeated use.

The research team focused on the temperature gradient generated within the recording medium during laser irradiation. They developed a novel structure by inserting an antiferromagnetic manganese-platinum (MnPt) layer beneath the iron-platinum (FePt) recording layer. This structure achieved approximately 35% improvement in recording efficiency compared to conventional HAMR.

This enhancement stems from generated by the , which induce spin torque that assists magnetic switching—effectively augmenting the conventional thermal assist effect. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that spin torque can be applied to (HDDs), paving the way for a new class of recording technologies.

Nano-engineered thermoelectrics enable scalable, compressor-free cooling

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, have developed a new, easily manufacturable solid-state thermoelectric refrigeration technology with nano-engineered materials that is twice as efficient as devices made with commercially available bulk thermoelectric materials.

As global demand grows for more energy-efficient, reliable and compact cooling solutions, this advancement offers a scalable alternative to traditional compressor-based refrigeration.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, a team of researchers from APL and refrigeration engineers from Samsung Electronics demonstrated improved heat-pumping efficiency and capacity in refrigeration systems attributable to high-performance nano-engineered thermoelectric materials invented at APL known as controlled hierarchically engineered superlattice structures (CHESS).

Aversive memories can be weakened during human sleep via the reactivation of positive interfering memories

Our behavioral findings indicated that TMR weakened earlier acquired aversive memories while increasing positive memory intrusions in the interference condition. To examine how TMR reactivated aversive and positive memories during NREM sleep, we extracted cue-locked, time-frequency resolved EEG responses in the interference and noninterference conditions, and compared them with the EEG responses elicited by control sounds.

We found that when compared to the control sounds that did not involve any memory pairs before sleep, both interference and noninterference memory cues increased EEG power across the delta, theta, sigma, and beta bands in frontal and central areas (Pclusters < 0.01, corrected for multiple comparisons across time, frequency, and space, Fig. 4 A–D). However, when contrasting interference with noninterference memory cues, we did not identify any significant clusters (Pclusters 0.05). These findings suggested that delta-theta and sigma-beta power increases may indicate memory reactivation during sleep.

We next examined whether cue-elicited theta and beta power were associated with subsequent memory accuracies (i.e., remembered vs. forgotten) for individual positive or aversive stimulus in the interference condition, given the relationship between theta activity and emotional processing (19), and between beta activity and memory interference during sleep (27, 34). Employing BLMM across all channels revealed that the cue-elicited theta power over the right central-parietal region (FC5, C2, C4, CP2, CP4, TP7) was significantly higher for subsequently remembered than for forgotten positive memories (mediandiff = 1.39, 95% HDI [0.32, 2.43], Fig. 4E). For aversive memories, a few channels’ (Fp2, F6, C5) theta power was higher for remembered than for forgotten aversive memories (mediandiff = 1.04, 95% HDI [0.16, 1.86]; Fig. 4F).

Historic quantum physics breakthrough reveals what an electron really looks like

In a discovery that’s already turning heads in the scientific world, a team of physicists has achieved what was once thought impossible: they’ve measured the actual shape of a moving electron. This leap forward could not only reshape how we understand matter at the smallest scale—it might also unlock a new era of smarter, faster, and more energy-efficient electronics.

Laser-powered fusion experiment more than doubles its power output

The world’s only net-positive fusion experiment has been steadily ramping up the amount of power it produces, TechCrunch has learned.

In recent attempts, the team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) increased the yield of the experiment, first to 5.2 megajoules and then to 8.6 megajoules, according to a source with knowledge of the experiment.

The new results are significant improvements over the historic experiment in 2022, which was the first controlled fusion reaction to generate more energy than it consumed.

Two distinct exciton states observed in 2H stacked bilayer molybdenum diselenide

Two-dimensional (2D) materials have proved to be a promising platform for studying exotic quasiparticles, such as excitons. Excitons are bound states that emerge when an electron in a material absorbs energy and rises to a higher energy level, leaving a hole (i.e., the absence of an electron) at the site that it used to occupy.

Researchers at Heriot-Watt University and other institutes recently observed two distinct exciton states in bilayer molybdenum diselenide (MoSe₂) with a 2H-stacked configuration, which involves the alignment of two monolayers with a characteristic rotational symmetry. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, reports the observation of one of these states known as quadrupolar excitons in 2H-MoSe₂

“Our work was inspired by the ongoing effort to explore and control excitonic phenomena in atomically thin semiconductor materials, which are rich platforms for studying ,” Mauro Brotons-Gisbert, senior author of the paper, told Phys.org. “In particular, bilayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) like MoSe₂ naturally host interlayer excitons with a dipolar character— of electrons and holes residing in adjacent layers.”