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Category: engineering

Anion swap unlocks sevenfold CO₂ capture in polyionic liquids

A joint research team from Nitto Boseki Co., Ltd. (Nittobo) and Tohoku University has revealed that polyionic liquids (PILs) can achieve high carbon dioxide (CO₂) adsorption when their counter anions are exchanged. This discovery provides a critical new design guideline for the development of high-performance CO2 recovery devices and gas separation membranes.

The research was led by Associate Professor Kouki Oka of the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, Tohoku University, with the results published online in Reaction Chemistry & Engineering.

PILs are known for their strong ability to attract CO₂ and for their stability as solid materials. However, conventional anion exchange methods struggle to remove inorganic salts, which are by-products of the manufacturing process. These impurities make it difficult to accurately evaluate the materials’ true performance.

Engineered wood provides solar power even after the sun goes down

While sustainable solar energy can potentially meet our global power needs, it has one major flaw. When sunlight disappears, solar panels stop generating electricity. The problem is that while they do an excellent job of converting light into power, they are not so good at storing the energy they collect.

One solution is to use materials known to capture heat and release it later, such as phase change materials (PCMs). However, these can leak when they melt, struggle to conduct heat quickly, and catch fire easily. So researchers from China decided on a different approach, turning wood into a multifunctional solar-thermal energy storage material, as they detail in a paper published in Advanced Energy Materials.

Reengineering balsa wood The team redesigned the internal structure of balsa wood at multiple scales, from nano to micro, to create a material that absorbs sunlight and stores it as heat for later use. It can also generate electricity when that stored heat is released through a thermoelectric device.

Quantum metallurgy: Electron crystals deform and melt

In a process analogous to how solids melt into liquids, the electrons in many different metals form crystal-like patterns that can deform and melt, opening new pathways for neuromorphic computing and superconductors, University of Michigan Engineering researchers have found.

“Our work shows that these quantum structures, which are often thought to have a highly ordered structure, actually span a continuum of disorder that could be leveraged to engineer and control these materials,” said Robert Hovden, associate professor of materials science and engineering and corresponding author of the study published in Matter.

“Metallurgists often control defects, or disorder, in metals to produce specific properties,” Hovden said. “A similar approach might help us harness the potential of quantum materials in future devices. Quantum metallurgy could be the future.”

First Images From the Pandora Exoplanet Mission

A new mission promises to ‘open the box’ on exoplanet science. Scientists and engineers recently released the first engineering images from the Pandora exoplanet survey mission. The pictures represent the first ever images from a NASA Astrophysics Pioneers Program mission. Established in 2020, the program looks to test the feasibility of small low cost missions designed to address key questions in astronomy and astrophysics.

A persistent quantum computing error finally explained

Scientists have discovered the cause of a persistent glitch that continues to disrupt superconducting quantum computers, even when they have built-in defenses. For all their advanced hardware, superconducting quantum computers are vulnerable to errors caused by ionizing radiation from space or the environment. Radiation particles interfere with the chip substrate (the silicon base the processor is built on), which leads to the creation of rogue particles (quasiparticles) that disrupt the qubits, the basic units of quantum computers.

To protect against this, scientists developed a technique called gap engineering. This involves creating an energy barrier in the superconducting material of the qubits, making it harder for these particles to reach sensitive parts of the device.

However, it is not foolproof. Even with this defense, radiation can still cause sudden widespread errors affecting many qubits at once (error bursts). But it was not clear why.

Hourglass nanographenes unlock strong, robust multi-spin entanglement

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and collaborators have developed a predictive design strategy for creating graphene-like molecules with multiple interacting spins and enhanced resilience to magnetic perturbations, opening new avenues for molecular-scale quantum information technologies and next-generation spintronics.

The research team was led by Professor Lu Jiong from the NUS Department of Chemistry and the NUS Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials, together with Professor Wu Jishan from the NUS Department of Chemistry, and international collaborators, including key contributor Professor Pavel Jelínek from the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.

Magnetic nanographenes, which are molecules composed of fused benzene rings, are of growing interest for quantum technologies because they can host unpaired electrons, or spins, that may be used to store and process information. Unlike conventional magnetic materials based on metal atoms, these carbon-based systems offer chemical versatility and long spin coherence times. However, engineering a single molecule that contains multiple strongly coupled spins in a stable and controlled manner remains a major challenge.

Durable ionogel withstands 5,000 times its weight while staying soft on skin

The development of soft materials that can reliably function on the human body is important for the future of bioelectronics and wearable medical devices. These materials need to comfortably conform to the skin while being durable enough for everyday use. However, many existing soft materials are easily damaged, limiting their practical applications.

A research team led by Professor Lizhi Xu from the Department of Mechanical Engineering under the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has created a new type of ionogel that overcomes this challenge. The material is soft and flexible, yet strong enough to withstand significant mechanical stress, making it ideal for wearable and biomedical applications.

The research is published in the journal Science Advances, in an article titled “High-strength and fracture-resistant ionogels via solvent-tailored interphase cohesion in nanofibrous composite networks.”

Time-varying magnetic fields can engineer exotic quantum matter

Quantum technology has promising potential to revolutionize how large and complex amounts of information are processed. While already in use primarily in laboratory and research settings globally, quantum technologies are in a transition phase for broader industry applications across many economic sectors.

In researching fundamental aspects of quantum physics, or the behavior of nature at the smallest scales—involving atoms, electrons and photons—a study led by Cal Poly Physics Department Lecturer Ian Powell analyzed how a changing magnetic field can make matter behave in unusual ways.

Powell and student researcher Louis Buchalter, who graduated with a Cal Poly bachelor’s degree in physics in 2025, published the article “Flux-Switching Floquet Engineering” in the journal Physical Review B, highlighting how changing magnetic fields over time can create quantum states that do not exist in any stationary material (remaining in the same state as time elapses).

Oxford team achieves advanced quantum squeezing with trapped ion

“The result is more than the creation of a new quantum state. It is a demonstration of a new method for engineering interactions that were previously out of reach,” said Dr. Oana Băzăvan, lead author from the Department of Physics, University of Oxford.

“The fourth-order quadsqueezing interaction was generated more than 100 times faster than expected using conventional approaches. This makes effects that were previously out of reach accessible in practice,” Băzăvan added.

Physicists have long used a trick called “squeezing” to sharpen the fuzzy measurements of the subatomic world. It is why gravitational-wave detectors, like LIGO, can hear black holes colliding across the universe. But for all its utility, ordinary squeezing is a relatively simple, second-order effect.

XXP instrument back online, marking a key milestone in high-energy upgrade to SLAC’s X-ray laser

XPP, the X-ray Pump Probe instrument at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), is back online and welcoming researchers after a complete rebuild. The overhaul has readied XPP for the significant increase in X-ray output expected from the ongoing high-energy upgrade to LCLS at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. LCLS is a pioneering X-ray free-electron laser facility used by scientists around the world to capture ultrafast snapshots of natural processes.

“Completing the XPP rebuild on-time and on-budget is a key milestone for the high-energy upgrade effort, and we’re thrilled that the instrument is back to supporting researchers from around the world,” said John Hogan, project director for the LCLS high-energy upgrade. “This was a huge team effort, involving partners across SLAC’s engineering, science and project teams.”

Since its 2010 debut, XPP has enabled groundbreaking research across materials science—from quantum information storage to material dynamics across timescales—as well as studies in chemistry, physics and bioscience. Researchers have leveraged XPP to pioneer X-ray optics technologies, including cavity-based X-ray oscillators that are shaping future X-ray free-electron laser facilities.

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