Inside smartphones and computer displays are metals known as the rare earths. Mining and purifying these metals involves waste- and energy-intense processes. Better processes are needed. Previous work has shown that specific ...
Materials Science
Oct 18, 2018
1
113
Fuels, plastics, and other products are made using catalysts, materials that drive chemical reactions. To design a better catalyst, scientists must get the right atoms in the right spot. Positioning the atoms can be difficult, ...
Materials Science
Oct 18, 2018
0
15
Technological advances in oil and gas well stimulation over the past decade now allow for the production of natural gas from shale gas trapped in rock formations underground. With the sudden increase in the availability of ...
Materials Science
Aug 14, 2018
0
60
Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are a relatively new variety of battery being studied and developed by researchers around the world. Because they have very high theoretical energy densities – storing more than five times ...
General Physics
May 4, 2018
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183
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have discovered key conditions that give rise to fast magnetic reconnection, the process that triggers solar flares, auroras, ...
Plasma Physics
Mar 2, 2018
19
92
The fusion of two protons initiates the primary nuclear cycle that powers the Sun. The rate of this low-energy, weak-interaction fusion is too small to be measured in the laboratory. While nuclear model predictions for this ...
General Physics
Dec 20, 2017
1
98
To build better solar cells, scientists need to design materials from the bottom up, placing chains of molecules just where they are needed. Scientists devised a new way to grow neatly arranged, densely packed bundles of ...
Polymers
Oct 27, 2017
0
8
When it comes to entirely new, faster, more powerful computers, Majorana fermions may be the answer. These hypothetical particles can do a better job than conventional quantum bits (qubits) of light or matter. Why? Because ...
Quantum Physics
Oct 26, 2017
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10
Combining speed with incredible precision, a team of Molecular Foundry scientists and industry users developed a way to print extremely small devices on the tip of a glass fiber as thin as a human hair. These tiny devices ...
Optics & Photonics
Oct 26, 2017
0
12
For decades scientists have known that a quantum computer—a device that stores and manipulates information in quantum objects such as atoms or photons—could theoretically perform certain calculations far faster than today's ...
Nanophysics
Jul 24, 2017
0
43
