A newly engineered catalyst overcomes key obstacles that have long limited ammonia as a clean fuel for heavy industry.
Category: energy
New propulsion system could make tiny satellites both fast and fuel-efficient
MIT engineers are testing a new propulsion system that combines the power and speed of conventional chemical thrusters with the precision and fuel-efficiency of electrical thrusters.
The system could enable the design of nimbler, more flexible small satellites, which could perform both fast, powerful maneuvers and slower, precise adjustments, depending on the mission and moment at hand.
The key to the new system is a special propellant that can power both chemical and electrical thrusters, which traditionally have required separate, bulky fuel sources.
Microcombs unlock 112Gbps wireless link at 560GHz for 6G
Researchers at Tokushima University have demonstrated single-channel wireless transmission at 112 Gbps in the 560 GHz band using soliton microcombs, marking a significant step toward next-generation 6G communications.
Conventional electronic technologies face fundamental limitations in generating stable high-frequency signals beyond 350 GHz, including reduced output power and increased phase noise. These challenges have hindered the realization of ultra-high-speed wireless communication in the terahertz regime, which is expected to play a key role in future 6G systems.
Microcomb system tackles key hurdles To overcome these challenges, the research team developed a microcomb-driven terahertz wireless communication system that combines fiber-coupled microcombs with high-order modulation techniques. The system leverages the high frequency stability and low phase noise of microcombs to generate a low-noise terahertz carrier.
Solar-powered desalination system turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste
The United Nations estimates that 2.2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water, and communities from California to the Middle East rely on desalination plants to convert ocean water to fresh water. Common desalination techniques such as reverse osmosis and thermal distillation are energy-intensive, require pre- and post-water treatment, and leave behind a concentrated saltwater byproduct called brine that wreaks havoc on sea life when it’s deposited back into the ocean by raising the salt level and lowering oxygen in the water.
Diamond quantum sensor could reveal elusive altermagnets
For nearly a century, there were two known kinds of magnets. Ferromagnets are the classic magnets that attract metal and keep pictures stuck to the refrigerator. Antiferromagnets hide their magnetism at the atomic scale but are increasingly prized for their technological potential. A third category discovered within the last decade may combine the best qualities of both. Dubbed altermagnets, they could someday help create faster, more energy-efficient electronics.
Now, University at Buffalo physicists are proposing a quantum sensing system to make identifying altermagnets much simpler. Described in a study published in Physical Review Letters, the theoretical technique would measure how a suspected altermagnet disturbs a tiny magnetic defect in a nearby diamond. The way the defect’s magnetic signal relaxes could provide evidence of altermagnetism.
“This could be the first building block of a new generation of experiments that determine whether a material is an altermagnet,” says corresponding author Jamir Marino, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UB Department of Physics, College of Arts and Sciences. “Altermagnets could completely revolutionize the way we transport information, but to confirm if this elegant theory is true, we need experiments that identify altermagnets and confirm they behave the way scientists predict.”
Ultrafast holographic imaging reveals electron and magnetic dynamics inside next-generation materials
An extremely fast microscopy method to research the interaction of light and matter makes it possible to study optical processes on very short timescales. To this end, a German–Italian research team is combining holographic imaging with ultrafast spectroscopy in an innovative way. In this manner, even extremely short-lived electronic and magnetic phenomena—which play a major role in the development and application of novel energy materials—can be observed.
The research was conducted as part of an international collaboration between scientists from the Institute for Physical Chemistry at Heidelberg University, the Polytechnic University of Milan, and the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies in Milan (Italy). The findings are published in the journal Nature Photonics.
At the heart of the research is a pump-probe microscope, which is used to conduct so-called excitation and detection experiments. In this process, the material under investigation is first excited by a short light pulse, while a second pulse records the time-dependent response. By comparing measurements taken with the excitation on and off, these processes can be accurately reconstructed.
Rare observations reveal an X9 solar flare before it erupts
Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation from the sun’s surface, which can wreak havoc on Earth’s power grids, damage orbiting satellites, and pose serious radiation risks to astronauts. Yet despite decades of study, the processes that trigger these eruptions remain poorly understood.
In a new preprint on arXiv, a team led by Louis Seyfritz at the New Jersey Institute of Technology has captured rare observations of a large flare in the hours before it erupted, offering new clues about what sets these events in motion.
Collective vibrations unlock fast ion flow in superionic crystals
In the race to develop safer, faster-charging solid-state batteries and more efficient thermoelectric conversion technologies, engineers and scientists have long faced a fundamental challenge: how to ensure ions move through hard, solid materials as quickly as they do in liquids?
A team led by Prof. Zhou Yanguang, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), discovered a novel mechanism for rapid ion transport in solids, opening new avenues for materials design.
The study shows that the ionic transport is governed by collective dynamics. The results were published in the journal Physical Review Letters, titled “Fast Ionic Transport Governed by Collective Vibrational Dynamics.”