The grand challenge to improve energy storage and increase battery life, while ensuring safe operation, is becoming evermore critical as we become increasingly reliant on this energy source for everything from portable devices to electric vehicles. A Columbia Engineering...
Solid-state sodium-ion batteries are far safer than conventional lithium-ion batteries, which pose a risk of fire and explosions, but their performance has been too weak to offset the safety advantages. Researchers Friday reported developing an organic cathode that dramatically...
Water, despite its central place in so many processes vital to life on Earth, remains a chemical mystery in many respects. One of those mysteries is the nature of water at the exact point where it comes into contact...
In a proof-of-principle study in mice, scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine report the creation of a specialized gel that acts like a lymph node to successfully activate and multiply cancer-fighting immune system T-cells. The work puts scientists a step...
Researchers from the UK and Spain have identified an eco-friendly solid that could replace the inefficient and polluting gases used in most refrigerators and air conditioners.
When put under pressure, plastic crystals of neopentylglycol yield huge cooling effects—enough that they are competitive with conventional...
Contrary to what you may have been taught, water doesn't always freeze to ice at 32 degrees F (zero degrees C). Knowing, or controlling, at what temperature water will freeze (starting with a process called nucleation) is critically important...
The quest to keep plastic out of landfills and simultaneously satisfy the needs of the food industry is filled with obstacles.
A biodegradable replacement for petroleum-based products has to meet all sorts of standards and, so far, attempts at viable...
Scientists have discovered a new state of physical matter in which atoms can exist as both solid and liquid simultaneously.
Until now, the atoms in physical material were understood to exist typically in one of three states—solid, liquid or gas. Researchers have...
As researchers work toward next-generation electric vehicles, they may be hitting their heads on the ceiling of what lithium ion batteries can deliver.
Meanwhile, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan are pushing the performance of a competing...
Efficient and inexpensive catalysts will be required for production of hydrogen from sunlight. Molybdenum sulfides are considered good candidates. A team at HZB has now explained what processes take place in molybdenum sulfides during catalysis and why amorphous molybdenum...
While water is perceived to be one of the simplest substances in the world, modeling its behavior on the atomic or molecular level has frustrated scientists for decades. To date, no single model has been able to accurately represent...
