Bob Elliott of the comedy team Bob and Ray died February 3, reminding your editor of one of the many routines Elliott and Ray Goulding performed on live radio. It involved an inventor who had perfected a solar panel that could run the lights in your house all day, but couldn’t keep them going at night when they were really needed. That was over 50 years ago, and investigators at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, SuperSTEM, and the University of Oxford have come up with a possible solution to Bob and Ray’s quandary. Combining two oxides, one containing strontium and titanium (SrTiO3) and the other lanthanum and chromium (LaCrO3), they came up with a material that uses the interface between the two oxides to absorb visible light and produce electrons (negative charges) and holes (positive charges), which might be “useful for catalyzing reactions, such as producing hydrogen fuel.” The oxides have to be kept apart, though, because otherwise, “they …
Cambridge’s “Ultimate” Battery? Wait 10 Years and See
Cambridge University researchers claim to have successfully demonstrated how several of the problems impeding the practical development of the so-called “ultimate” battery, in this case a lithium-oxygen unit, could be overcome. They make some pretty impressive claims, saying they’ve developed a working laboratory demonstrator with “very high” energy density – comparable to that of gasoline and with greater than 90-percent efficiency, and the ability to be recharged more than 2,000 times, or 5-1/2 years with a complete cycle and recharge every day. A lithium-oxygen or lithium-air battery of this type would allow an uninterrupted drive between London and Edinburgh on a single charge, about 415 miles, over 100 miles greater than the top mileages promised by Tesla and GM at this point. Researchers add the promise of one-fifth the cost and one-fifth the weight of currently available batteries – a touchstone for electric aircraft designers, and close to the goals U. S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu asked for three years …
GraphExeter Aims for Power with Transparency
It doesn’t sound much like dispassionate, objective scholarly reporting, but the University of Exeter in England headlines its report on a University-created breakthrough material, “Revolutionary new device joins world of smart electronics.” Layering graphene and the GraphExeter, a material obviously headed for product marketing, gives a “new flexible, transparent, photosensitive device” that can lead to solar-powered clothing able to charge the wearer’s cell phone, “intelligent” windows that can “harvest light and display images,” and just maybe (in this writer’s dreams) help power electric cars and airplanes. GraphExeter, Exeter claims, is the best known room temperature transparent conductor and with graphene – the thinnest conductive material – the pair make for great potential. Researchers developed GraphExeter by sandwiching molecules of ferric chloride in between two layers of graphene. According to the University, “Saverio Russo, Professor of Physics at the University of Exeter said: ‘This new flexible and transparent photosensitive device uses graphene and graphExeter to convert light into electrical signals …