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Category: sustainability

AI-powered lab discovers brighter lead-free nanomaterials in 12 hours

A new autonomous laboratory recently navigated through billions of potential material synthesis recipes to identify brighter, lead-free light-emitting nanomaterials in just 12 hours. The work could accelerate development of safer light-emitting nanoplatelets for use in applications ranging from photodetectors to the production of fuel from solar energy. A paper describing this work appears in Nature Communications.

Nanoplatelets are sheet-like crystals only billionths of a meter thick; in this case, they belong to a family of lead-free “double perovskites,” materials whose atomic recipe can be tuned to control how they absorb and emit light.

“One of the big challenges in developing safer optical nanomaterials is the sheer size of the material universe,” says Milad Abolhasani, Alcoa Professor and University Faculty Scholar in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University. Abolhasani is the corresponding author of the research.

Beyond borders: Metaverse manufacturing envisions AI-linked local production built on digital twins

Over the past decades, technological advances have fueled great innovation in a wide range of fields. Emerging and rapidly developing technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) systems, three-dimensional (3D) and four-dimensional (4D) printing, digital twins (i.e., virtual representations of physical objects, systems or processes) and advanced robots, are set to further transform many industries and sectors.

Researchers at London South Bank University explored the idea of metaverse manufacturing, an industrial ecosystem that would blend technology-enhanced physical production processes with immersive visual environments. In a paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, they tried to envision how this ecosystem could work and what technologies it would rely on, while also considering its possible advantages in terms of sustainability and productivity.

The study was conducted within the Mechanical Intelligence (MI) Research Group at London South Bank University, which focuses on bioinspired design and adaptive engineering systems.

A tiny world beyond Neptune has an atmosphere that shouldn’t exist

A team of professional and amateur Japanese astronomers have found evidence for a thin atmosphere around a small body in the outer solar system. The object is so small that it should not have a sustainable atmosphere, raising questions about when and how the atmosphere formed. Future observations to better characterize the atmosphere will help solve these mysteries.

Mechanochemistry simplifies synthesis of challenging conductive organic molecules

Mechanochemistry is a growing field for chemical reactions that proceed in the solid state in the absence, or with minuscule amounts, of solvent added. For decades, solvents have been considered conventional for the progression of modern chemistry; nonetheless, researchers are increasingly demonstrating that mechanochemistry can synthesize complex molecules more effectively. With more progress, mechanochemistry could alleviate solvent-related environmental and financial burdens in chemical industries.

Using mechanochemistry, researchers from Nagoya University, including Koya M. Hori, Yoshifumi Toyama, and Hideto Ito successfully developed a two-step synthetic method for dihydrodinaphthopentalenes (DHDPs), conductive organic molecules that are considerably challenging to synthesize. These findings were recently published in the journal RSC Mechanochemistry on February 5, 2026. The results are expected to advance the synthesis of compounds with applications in organic materials.

Conductive organic molecules are used in increasingly essential technologies such as OLEDs in smartphone screens, solar cells for renewable energy, anti-static polymer coatings, and more. Perhaps due to their complex and expensive synthesis, however, DHDPs have not been integrated into any commercialized products.

Perovskite solar cells skip yellow phase, degrade more slowly with key additives

Halide perovskites are gaining ground on silicon as a critical material for solar cell technologies: A new study published in the journal Science reports a method to make perovskite-based photovoltaics more durable, allowing the films to attain the desirable black phase of crystal configuration quicker and at lower temperatures while also making it harder to degrade into the inactive yellow phase.

Perovskites are solution-processable materials and can be readily processed as a solution or deposited as vapor. By mixing two key ingredients in the precursor solution, Rice University chemical engineer Aditya Mohite and collaborators have developed perovskite crystalline films that retain 98% of their initial efficiency even after 1,200 hours of exposure under open-circuit voltage conditions to accelerate aging at 90 degrees Celsius (194 degrees Fahrenheit).

The two additives used were a two-dimensional perovskite, which served as a template to guide crystal growth, and formamidinium chloride, a salt molecule that regulates crystallization and has the optimal size to sustain the atomic bonds in the crystal in the right configuration. The two additives create compressive strain in the lattice, driving the formation of the black perovskite phase and stabilizing it, while also steering degradation toward a harder-to-form phase, significantly improving durability.

Dust Traps Twice as Much Heat as Climate Models Estimate

Atmospheric desert dust absorbs roughly twice the heat previously estimated by climate models, representing about 10% of total global warming. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/earth-and-the-environment/…estimate-2](https://www.labroots.com/trending/earth-and-the-environment/…estimate-2)

What role does dust play in climate change? This is what a recent study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated how desert dust could be used to constrain climate models. This study has the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, legislators, and the public better understand new methods for understanding the various environmental factors that contribute to climate change.

For the study, the researchers used a combination of observational data and computer models with the goal of filling a knowledge gap regarding how desert dust influences solar radiation distribution within Earth’s atmosphere. The observational data was obtained from satellites and aircraft measurements while the climate models obtained new data for computing the results. In the end, the researchers found that while dust cools the planet, it is also prone to trap double the heat as climate models have estimated, or 10 percent of the total heat retention for the planet.

“Atmospheric dust traps about a quarter of a watt per square meter of heat by absorbing and scattering the heat radiation emitted by the Earth, comparable to roughly one-tenth of the warming effect produced by the carbon dioxide emitted from all human activities,” said Dr. Jasper Kok, who is a professor in atmospheric and ocean sciences at UCLA and lead author of the study. “Current climate models undercount the heating effect of dust by about half. The climate models remain effective and useful, and this will make them even more precise.”

A Mercury rover could explore the planet by sticking to the Terminator

The closest planet to our sun, Mercury, experiences extreme temperature variations. Since the planet has no atmosphere to speak of, it is in a constant cycle where one side is extremely hot and the other extremely cold. On the sun-facing side, temperatures reach a scorching 427°C (800°F), enough to melt tin and lead, and the surface is exposed to extremely lethal levels of radiation. On the night side, temperatures plunge)] to a chilling −173°C (−279.4°F), cold enough to freeze most liquids, including those used in battery manufacturing.

All of this makes exploring Mercury’s surface very challenging. On the one hand, a rover would be subject to interference from the sun’s radiation on the sun-facing side and would likely melt down. On the other hand, a solar-powered rover cannot operate on the night side, and a battery-powered vehicle would likely lose power quickly as its batteries die. But in the Terminator, the region between night and day on Mercury, temperatures are stable enough, and there is sufficient light for a solar-powered rover to study surface features and conduct science operations.

This is the proposal put forth by a research team from the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (0HIGP) at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. The team included Mari Murillo, a Planetary Science Ph.D. Student at HIGP, and Paul G. Lucey, a prominent researcher with HIGP and Murillo’s Ph.D. advisor. The paper detailing their proposal was presented at the 2026 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (2026 LPSC).

Room-temperature vibrations could transform how industry makes graphene

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique for creating 2D materials that runs at room temperature and increases production rates tenfold over current methods, without using toxic solvents. Scientists led by Dr. Jason Stafford from the Department of Mechanical Engineering demonstrated the method can produce nanosheets of conductors, semiconductors and insulators, which are the building blocks of all digital devices and technologies produced today. The research is published in the journal Small.

Dr. Stafford said, “Our work shows a new way of making 2D materials that overcomes the production capacity issues of current methods, while simultaneously embedding sustainable manufacturing practices.”

2D materials are ultra-thin materials that consist of a few layers of atoms. They have unique electronic, thermal, and mechanical properties that differ significantly from their 3D counterparts, and are ideal components for next-generation electronics, energy and sensor technologies.

A faster, greener method to recycle lithium-ion batteries can also ease supply chain issues

As global demand for lithium-ion batteries continues to surge, a team of Rice University researchers has developed a faster, more energy-efficient way to recover critical minerals from spent batteries, potentially easing supply chain pressures and reducing environmental harm.

In a new study published in Small, researchers from Rice’s Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering introduce a class of water-based solutions that can extract valuable metals from battery waste in minutes rather than hours. The work centers on aqueous solutions of amino chlorides, which mimic the performance of commonly studied green solvents like deep eutectics, while avoiding their key limitations.

“Traditional recycling methods often rely on harsh acids or slow, energy-intensive processes,” said the study’s first author, Simon M. King, a sophomore studying chemical and biomolecular engineering who completed this work as a summer research fellow at the Rice Advanced Materials Institute. “What we’ve shown is that you can achieve rapid, high-efficiency metal recovery using a much simpler, water-based system.”

Solar reactor uses old battery acid to turn plastic waste into clean hydrogen

Researchers have developed a solar-powered reactor to break down hard-to-recycle forms of plastic waste—such as drink bottles, nylon textiles and polyurethane foams—using acid recovered from old car batteries, and converting it into clean hydrogen fuel and valuable industrial chemicals. The results are reported in the journal Joule.

The reactor, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, is powered by the energy from the sun, and could be a cheaper, more sustainable alternative to current chemical-based recycling methods. The team says their method could create a circular system where one waste stream solves another.

Global plastic production is more than 400 million tons per year, yet only 18% is recycled. The rest is burned, landfilled, or leaks into ecosystems. The researchers believe that their method, known as solar-powered acid photoreforming, could become part of the solution to the global mountain of plastic waste.

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