A multi-institutional team became the first to generate accurate results from materials science simulations on a quantum computer that can be verified with neutron scattering experiments and other practical techniques. …
Tag: materials science
Penn State Engineers Are Developing An Inexpensive, Thermally-Modulated Battery For Electric Cars
schwit1 shares a report from Penn State University: Range anxiety, the fear of running out of power before being able to recharge an electric vehicle, may be a thing of the past, according to a team of Penn State engineers who are looking at lithium iron phosphate batteries that have a range of 250 miles with the ability to charge in…
Twisted Graphene Could Power a New Generation of Superconducting Electronics
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: In 2018, a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) pulled off a dazzling materials science magic trick. They stacked two microscopic cards of graphene — sheets of carbon one atom thick — and twisted one ever so slightly. Applying an electric field transformed the stack from a conductor to an…
A Group of Materials Called Perovskites Could Be a Game-Changer For Solar Power
Researchers from Australia have discovered that the widely acclaimed mineral perovskite can be used to transform the solar industry through cheaper and more efficient photovoltaics. The Independent reports: Perovskite, which is forged deep within the Earth’s mantle, has been hailed for its unprecedented potential to convert sunlight into electricity. Researchers have already improved its sunlight-to-energy efficiency from around 3 per cent…
Boom Supersonic Hopes To Test-Fly Its Supersonic Plane In 2021
Colorado startup Boom Supersonic is planning to show off its XB-1 supersonic plane on October 7th, with flights planned for next year. Engadget reports: [Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl] describes himself as an Objectivist (a follower of the teachings of Ayn Rand) and previously worked for both Groupon and Amazon. He freely admits that, beyond his private pilots license, he does…
Scientists Slow Down and Steer Light With Resonant Nanoantennas
New submitter HotSyncer shares a report from Phys.Org: [I]n a paper published on Aug. 17, in Nature Nanotechnology, Stanford scientists demonstrate a new approach to slow light significantly, much like an echo chamber holds onto sound, and to direct it at will. Researchers in the lab of Jennifer Dionne, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, structured ultrathin silicon…
Solving materials problems with a quantum computer
Quantum computers have enormous potential for calculations using novel algorithms and involving amounts of data far beyond the capacity of today’s supercomputers. While such computers have been built, they are still in their infancy and have limited applicability for solving complex problems in materials science and chemistry. For example, they only permit the simulation of the properties of a few atoms…
Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode Display On Human Skin
In a new report on Science Advances, Minwoo Choi and a team of scientists in Electronic Engineering and Materials Science in the Republic of Korea, developed a wearable, full-colour OLED display using a two-dimensional (2-D) material-based backplane transistor. Phys.Org reports: They engineered an 18-by-18 thin-film transistor array on a thin molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) film and transferred it to an aluminium oxide…
A fresh twist in chiral topology
The concept of chirality is well-established in science: when an object cannot be superimposed on its mirror image, both the object and its mirror image are called chiral. In the drug industry, for instance, more than 50% of the pharmaceutically active molecules used nowadays are chiral molecules. While one of the ‘enantiomers’ is life-saving, its counterpart with opposite handedness may be…
Sally Ride: 1st American woman in space
Ride was the 1st American woman to go to space, flying on the STS-7 space shuttle Challenger mission in 1983, and later on another mission in 1984. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/sally-ride-1st-american-woman-in-space-june-18-1983…