Understanding phase change materials for thermal energy storage

As the world searches for practical ways to decarbonize our activities and mitigate associated climate change, approaches to alternative energy are hampered by the intermittent nature of energy sources, such as solar and ...

Cheap beads offer alternative solar-heating storage

A cheap material that can store heat energy collected from the sun during the day that can be released slowly over night has been developed by researchers in the India. The material based on paraffin wax and stearic acid ...

Sunflowers inspire more efficient solar power system

(Phys.org) -- A field of young sunflowers will slowly rotate from east to west during the course of a sunny day, each leaf seeking out as much sunlight as possible as the sun moves across the sky through an adaptation called ...

Improving energy storage with a cue from nature

Materials melt faster when the lines of heat spread through the cold material like the branches of a tree—and the melting rate can be steadily increased by allowing the tree architecture to freely evolve over time, researchers ...

New optical memory cell achieves record data-storage density

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique that can store more optical data in a smaller space than was previously possible on-chip. This technique improves upon the phase-change optical memory cell, which uses light to ...

Researchers discover a new way to control infrared light

In the 1950s, the field of electronics began to change when the transistor replaced vacuum tubes in computers. The change, which entailed replacing large and slow components with small and fast ones, was a catalyst for the ...

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