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Archive for the ‘materials’ category: Page 9

Jan 10, 2024

New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material

Posted by in category: materials

In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes electrons’ spins to align.

Jan 9, 2024

Material Properties of Fire-Ant Rafts

Posted by in category: materials

The rate at which a raft made of ants is stretched determines its properties because the ants take time to fix holes.

Jan 9, 2024

Microsoft, US lab use AI to speed search for new battery materials

Posted by in categories: materials, robotics/AI

Jan 9 (Reuters) — Microsoft (MSFT.O) has worked with a U.S. national laboratory to use artificial intelligence to rapidly identify a material that could mean producing batteries that require 70% less lithium than now, the company said on Tuesday.

The replacement of much of the lithium with sodium, a common element found in table salt, still needs extensive evaluation by scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington to determine whether it will be suitable for mass production.

“Something that could have taken years, we did in two weeks,” Jason Zander, an executive vice president at Microsoft, told Reuters. “That’s the part we’re most excited about. … We just picked one problem. There are thousands of problems to go solve, and it’s applicable to all of them.”

Jan 9, 2024

Solid-state battery design offers 6,000 cycles and 10-minute charge

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

The design solves dendrite-related issues by creating a multilayer battery with diverse materials and managing dendrites by containment.


Research unveils novel solid-state batteries with lithium metal anode and provides insights into revolutionary battery materials.

Jan 8, 2024

“Graphene Bubble Bridging” Enabled Flexible Multifunctional Carbon Fiber Membrane Toward K+ Storage Devices

Posted by in category: materials

Advanced Functional Materials, part of the prestigious Advanced portfolio and a top-tier materials science journal, publishes outstanding research across the field.

Jan 7, 2024

Microtexturing soft materials to remove aqueous microfoulants

Posted by in categories: engineering, materials

The process of crystallization fouling is a phenomenon where scale forms on surfaces. It is widespread in nature and technology and affects the energy and water industries. Despite previous attempts, rationally designed surfaces with intrinsic resistance remain elusive due to a lack of understanding of how microfoulants adhere in dynamic aqueous environments.

In a study now published in Science Advances, Julian Schmid and a team of researchers in surface engineering in Switzerland and the U.S. studied the interfacial dynamics of microfoulants by using a micro-scanning fluid dynamic gauge system to demonstrate a rationally developed coating that removes 98% of deposits under shear flow conditions.

Jan 6, 2024

Reimagining Thermoelectrics: The Rubik’s Cube Structure Unlocks Heusler Potential

Posted by in category: materials

Scientists have created unique Slater-Pauling Heusler materials with semiconductor properties, offering significant potential in thermoelectric applications. Their research reveals these materials’ unique electron redistribution and thermal properties.

Recently, researchers from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) designed Slater-Pauling (S-P) Heusler materials with a unique structure resembling a Rubik’s cube. These materials showed potential in thermoelectric applications due to their semiconductor-like properties.

Unique Semiconductor Behavior

Jan 6, 2024

PolyU researchers craft materials, achieve 99.6% solar reflectivity

Posted by in categories: materials, sustainability

Inspired by the ‘whitest beetle known to science,’ PolyU researchers reveal an advanced cooling material for sustainable indoor cooling.

Jan 6, 2024

Lawrence Berkeley Lab Researchers Optimize Higher Density Copper Doping to Make LK99 Variant into a Superconductor

Posted by in categories: materials, supercomputing

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab researchers use computational methods to describe an approach for optimizing the LK99 material as a superconductor.

Some will say, hey why is Nextbigfuture still covering LK99. Didn’t some angry scientists say that LK99 was not a superconductor? I have been covering science for over 20 years and there are a lot of angry scientists who believe many things will not work. Scientists going into experiments looking to debunk something will not be the ones who figure out how to make it work.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab researchers spent time and worked on supercomputers to try to figure out how to make LK99 work. There computational work is showing promise.

Jan 6, 2024

Freeform direct-write and rewritable photonic integrated circuits in phase-change thin films

Posted by in category: materials

In a thin film of phase-change materials, photonic circuits can be directly written, erased, and modified by a laser writer.

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