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Category: sustainability – Page 2

All-solid-state battery researchers reveal key insights into degradation mechanisms

Researchers from UNIST, Seoul National University (SNU), and POSTECH have made a significant breakthrough in understanding the degradation mechanisms of all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs), a promising technology for next-generation electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage.

Jointly led by Professor Donghyuk Kim at UNIST’s School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Professor Sung-Kyun Jung at SNU’s School of Transdisciplinary Innovations, and Professor Jihyun Hong from POSTECH, their study reveals that interfacial chemical reactions play a critical role in structural damage and performance decline in sulfide-based ASSBs. The findings are published in Nature Communications.

Unlike that rely on flammable liquid electrolytes, ASSBs use non-flammable solid electrolytes, offering enhanced safety and higher energy density. However, challenges such as interface instability and microstructural deterioration have impeded their commercialization. Until now, the detailed understanding of how these phenomena occur has remained limited.

Living computers powered by mushrooms

Mushrooms are known for their toughness and unusual biological properties, qualities that make them attractive for bioelectronics. This emerging field blends biology and technology to design innovative, sustainable materials for future computing systems.

Turning Mushrooms Into Living Memory Devices

Researchers at The Ohio State University recently discovered that edible fungi, such as shiitake mushrooms, can be cultivated and guided to function as organic memristors. These components act like memory cells that retain information about previous electrical states.

Turning pollution into clean fuel with stable methane production from carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the world’s most abundant pollutants and a key driver of climate change. To mitigate its impact, researchers around the world are exploring ways to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and transform it into valuable products, such as clean fuels or plastics. While the idea holds great promise, turning it into reality—at least on a large scale—remains a scientific challenge.

A new study led by Smith Engineering researcher Cao Thang Dinh (Chemical Engineering), Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Fuels and Chemicals, paves the way to practical applications of carbon conversion technologies and may reshape how we design future carbon conversion systems. The research addresses one of the main roadblocks in the carbon : catalyst stability.

In chemical engineering, a catalyst is a substance that accelerates a reaction—ideally, without being consumed in the process. In the case of carbon conversion, catalysts play a critical role by enabling the transformation of CO₂ into useful products such as fuels and building blocks for sustainable materials.

New air filter could turn every building into a carbon sink

Despite decades of warnings and increasing efforts to fight climate change, global carbon emissions are still rising. While cutting emissions from the source is a common way we address this problem, another crucial strategy is actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. Current centralized DAC (direct-air-capture) plants are expensive and take up a lot of land, so scientists have developed a carbon dioxide-catching air filter that can fit into existing ventilation systems of homes and offices around the world.

The researchers describe their filter in a paper published in Science Advances. It is made of tiny carbon threads known as nanofibers that are coated with a polyethylenimine polymer. This combination makes an incredibly effective carbon sponge that captures carbon dioxide molecules from the air, even at low concentrations. The filter can also be cleaned by solar heating or low-energy electricity methods.

The team put their new carbon filter through its paces to see how well it worked. First, they checked how much it could soak up carbon by placing it in a flow system and passing air with a known concentration of carbon dioxide through it. The filter proved highly selective and fast, capturing the molecules and letting the rest of the air pass through.

World’s first full-cell dual-cation battery developed in Ireland

Researchers at University of Limerick (UL) have developed a battery that could reshape the future of electric vehicles and portable electronics. Their breakthrough in energy storage technology has seen the development of the world’s first full-cell dual-cation battery.

This innovative system combines lithium and sodium ions to significantly enhance both battery capacity and stability, marking a new frontier in sustainable energy research.

The work, published in Nano Energy, was led by Hugh Geaney, Associate Professor of Chemistry at UL’s Department of Chemical Sciences and Principal Investigator at UL’s Bernal Institute, and Government of Ireland postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Syed Abdul Ahad, his colleague at the Department and the Bernal Institute.

An edible fungus could make paper and fabric liquid-proof

As an alternative to single-use plastic wrap and paper cup coatings, researchers in Langmuir report a way to waterproof materials using edible fungus. Along with fibers made from wood, the fungus produced a layer that blocks water, oil and grease absorption. In a proof-of-concept study, the impervious film grew on common materials such as paper, denim, polyester felt and thin wood, revealing its potential to replace plastic coatings with sustainable, natural materials.

“Our hope is that by providing more ways to potentially reduce our reliance on , we can help lessen the waste that ends up in landfills and the ocean; nature offers elegant, to help us get there,” says Caitlin Howell, the corresponding author of the study from the University of Maine.

Fungi are more than their mushroom caps; underground they form an extensive, interwoven network of feathery filaments called mycelium. Recently, researchers have been inventing water-resistant materials made from these fibrous networks, including leather-like, electrically conductive gauze and spun yarn, because the surface of mycelium naturally repels water.

Early humans dined on giant sloths and other Ice Age giants, archaeologists find

What did early humans like to eat? The answer, according to a team of archaeologists in Argentina, is extinct megafauna, such as giant sloths and giant armadillos. In a study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers demonstrate that these enormous animals were a staple food source for people in southern South America around 13,000 to 11,600 years ago. Their findings may also rewrite our understanding of how these massive creatures became extinct.

For years, the prevailing theory about the extinction of the last great Ice Age megafauna in South America was that it was primarily due to climate change. Humans were previously believed to have played a minor role in their demise, as they hunted smaller prey, such as guanacos (a relative of the camel) and cervids (deer). However, the abundance of bones of extinct megafauna in sites studied by the team suggests that they were probably the most important food source for these .

The archaeologists counted the at 20 sites in modern-day Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. These were places that had been reliably dated to before 11,600 years ago, when these giants were still roaming around. They compared the remains of megafauna (mammals weighing over 44 kilograms) with those of smaller animals to see which were more abundant. They also closely examined the bones for cut marks and other signs that would indicate humans had butchered them.

Predictive rule reveals which sulfur-based building blocks create sustainable, degradable plastics

Plastics pose a significant waste problem: many conventional plastics do not degrade, or do so only with great difficulty. This makes research into new plastics essential—materials that retain useful properties but can also be deliberately broken down or recycled. Such innovations could lead to more sustainable materials, enabling the use of plastics in a way that conserves resources over the long term.

According to a study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, incorporating sulfur atoms into polymer chains makes them more degradable.

Sulfur atoms enhance the sustainability of polymers because the bonds between carbon and sulfur atoms are easier to break than the bonds between carbon and other carbon or . This allows sulfur-containing plastics to degrade under relatively mild conditions. However, strategies for synthesizing these plastics are still underdeveloped, which hinders large-scale production.

Scientists discover way to pause ultrafast melting in silicon using precisely timed laser pulses

A team of physicists has discovered a method to temporarily halt the ultrafast melting of silicon using a carefully timed sequence of laser pulses. This finding opens new possibilities for controlling material behavior under extreme conditions and could improve the accuracy of experiments that study how energy moves through solids.

The research, published in the journal Communications Physics, was led by Tobias Zier and David A. Strubbe of the University of California, Merced, in collaboration with Eeuwe S. Zijlstra and Martin E. Garcia from the University of Kassel in Germany. Their work focuses on how intense, affect the atomic structure of silicon—a material widely used in electronics and solar cells.

Using , the researchers showed that a single, high-energy laser pulse typically causes silicon to melt in a fraction of a trillionth of a second.

Novel feature-extended analysis unlocks the origin of energy loss in electrical steel

Magnetic hysteresis loss (iron loss) is an important magnetic property that determines the efficiency of electric motors and is therefore critical for electric vehicles. It occurs when the magnetic field within the motor core, made up of soft magnetic materials, is repeatedly reversed due to the changing flow of current in the windings. This reversal forces tiny magnetic regions called magnetic domains to repeatedly change their magnetization direction.

However, this change is not perfectly efficient and results in energy loss. In fact, iron loss accounts for approximately 30% of the total energy loss in motors, leading to the emission of carbon dioxide, which represents a pressing environmental concern.

Despite over half a century of research, the origin of iron loss in soft magnetic materials remains elusive. The energy spent during magnetization reversal in these materials depends on complex changes in magnetic domain structures. These have mainly been interpreted visually, and the underlying mechanisms have been discussed only qualitatively.

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