Industry News

February 2018
Solar-to-Hydrogen Conversion: Nanostructuring Increases Efficiency of Metal-Free Photocatalysts by Factor 11

PCN nanolayers under sunlight can split water.

One of the major challenges of the energy transition is to supply energy even when the sun is not shining. Hydrogen production by splitting water with the help of sunlight could offer a solution. Hydrogen is a good energy storage medium and can be used in many ways. However, water does not simply split by itself. Ca
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Date:
02/28/2018
DURHAM, N.C. — Cree, Inc. announces that it signed a strategic long-term agreement to produce and supply its Wolfspeed silicon carbide (SiC) wafers to Infineon Technologies AG. The agreement governs Cree’s supply of advanced 150 mm SiC wafers to Infineon, which will broaden Infineon’s product offering
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Date:
02/27/2018
Cartoon Coyote's Fall Inspires Development of new Properties of Silicon
The essence of the technology - where an object takes a moment to respond to the energy placed upon it - is a staple of cartoons such as Roadrunner, where characters run off cliffs and spend a moment in mid-air before falling. Scientists hope that their discovery, detailed in a study published by Nature Ph
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Date:
02/27/2018
Army Researchers are After Cost-Effective Safer, Lighter Batteries

Joint modeling and experimental work by the US Army Research Laboratory and the Georgia Institute of Technology is focused on the development of batteries that improve the safety and energy density of ones currently found on the battlefield, and is featured on the cover of the prestigious Advanced Energy Materials journal.

Scientists at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the Georgia Institute of Technology are focused on the development of batteries that improve the safety and energy density of ones currently found on the battlefield. The joint modeling and experimental work reports on the progress towards the discovery of novel
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Date:
02/27/2018
Exotic State of Matter: An Atom Full of Atoms

The electron (blue) orbits the nucleus (red) -- and its orbit encloses many other atoms of the Bose-Einstein-condensate (green).

What is inside an atom, between the nucleus and the electron? Usually there is nothing, but why could there not be other particles too? If the electron orbits the nucleus at a great distance, there is plenty of space in between for other atoms. A "giant atom" can be created, filled with ordinary atoms. Al
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Date:
02/26/2018
DOE Grants $10.6 Million to Produce More Biodiesel, Biojet Fuel

University of Illinois research project Renewable Oil Generated with Ultra-productive Energycane (ROGUE) will transform energycane and Miscanthus (pictured) into sustainable sources of biodiesel and biojet fuel with support from the US Department of Energy.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded the University of Illinois a $10.6 million, five-year grant to transform two of the most productive crops in America into sustainable sources of biodiesel and biojet fuel. The new research project Renewable Oil Generated with Ultra-productive Energycane--or ROGUE--kicks of
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Date:
02/26/2018
Developing a 'Living Lab' to Study Energy-Efficient Logistics

Rensselaer will receive $2 million -- in collaboration with private sector companies and local transportation agencies -- to foster changes in freight demand patterns to reduce energy use, enhance quality of life, improve economic productivity, incorporate efficient practices into freight logistics, and publish lessons learned.

Troy, N.Y. -- The transportation sector is one of the largest consumers of energy. The energy consumption of the freight sector is growing faster than the overall sector, according to researchers. This is the case of light trucks and medium/heavy trucks that consume 32.1 percent and 22.7 percent of the energy con
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Date:
02/23/2018
Basque Researchers Turn Light Upside Down

This is an illustration of waves propagating away from a point-like source. Left: Regular wave propagation. Right: Wave propagation on a hyperbolic metasurface.

Optical waves propagating away from a point source typically exhibit circular (convex) wavefronts. "Like waves on a water surface when a stone is dropped", explains Peining Li, EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow at nanoGUNE and first author of the paper. The reason of this circular propagation is that th
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Date:
02/23/2018
Qualcomm Incorporated announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., is working with an ecosystem of leading carmakers and automotive suppliers to accelerate the commercial introduction of Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology using the Qualcomm 9150 C-V2X chipset solution. C-V2X is a glo
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Date:
02/22/2018
Digestive Ability of Ancient Insects Could Boost Biofuel Development

The firebrat and silverfish are close relatives and have the ability to digest cellulose.

A study of the unusual digestive system of an ancient group of insects has provided new insights into future biofuel production. Published in Nature Communications, the research reveals that the ability of some insects to efficiently digest cellulose could be exploited for industrial processes, such as the produc
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Date:
02/22/2018
$1.8m From DOE Supports Innovative Waste Heat Recovery System

The turbocompressor is one of the key components to Todd Bandhauer's waste heat recovery system.

Feel the heat radiating off a running car or touch the top of a warm refrigerator. Both are examples of mechanical processes that generate "waste heat." On a small scale, like running household appliances, waste heat might not seem like a big deal. But on a large scale, like running a backup generator
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Date:
02/22/2018
World's First Solar Fuels Reactor for Night Passes Test

CONTISOL was tested at Cologne, Germany using simulated 'suns', rather than an actual solar field, and the storage and heat exchanger was also simulated, because the reactor itself is the innovation being tested

International solar thermal energy researchers have successfully tested CONTISOL, a solar reactor that runs on air, able to make any solar fuel like hydrogen and to run day or night - because it uses concentrated solar power (CSP) which can include thermal energy storage. The promise of solar fuels is that w
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Date:
02/21/2018
Computers aid Discovery of new, Inexpensive Material to Make LEDs With High-Color Quality
A team led by engineers at the University of California San Diego has used data mining and computational tools to discover a new phosphor material for white LEDs that is inexpensive and easy to make. Researchers built prototype white LED light bulbs using the new phosphor. The prototypes exhibited better color qu
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Date:
02/20/2018
Electric Eel-Inspired Device Reaches 110 Volts

Electric Eel-Inspired Device Reaches 110 Volts: This photo depicts the printed, high voltage implementation of the artificial electric organ. A 3-D bioprinter was used to deposit arrays of gel precursor droplets onto plastic substrates, which were then cured with a UV light to convert them into solid gels. Alternating high-salinity and low-salinity gels (red and blue gels, respectively) were printed onto one substrate, and alternating cation-selective and anion-selective gels (green and yellow gels, respectively) were printed onto a second substrate. When overlaid, these gels connect to form a conductive pathway of 612 tetrameric gel cells that can be used to generate up to 110 volts.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In an effort to create a power source for future implantable technologies, a team led by Michael Mayer from the University of Fribourg, along with researchers from the University of Michigan and UC San Diego, developed an electric eel-inspired device that produced 110 volts from gels filled wi
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Date:
02/19/2018
Unconventional Superconductor may be Used to Create Quantum Computers of the Future

After an intensive period of analyses the research team led by Professor Floriana Lombardi, Chalmers University of Technology, was able to establish that they had probably succeeded in creating a topological superconductor.

With their insensitivity to decoherence what are known as Majorana particles could become stable building blocks of a quantum computer. The problem is that they only occur under very special circumstances. Now researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in manufacturing a component that is ab
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Date:
02/19/2018
The new Bioenergy Research Center: Building on ten Years of Success
AUSTIN, Texas -- Building on the success of 10 years of investigation into the production of renewable fuels from plants, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently embarked on a new mission: to develop sustainable alternatives to transportation fuels an
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Date:
02/19/2018
Uniting Diverse Research Areas to Drive Autonomous Cars
Worcester, Mass. – An aerospace engineer and an electrical and computer science engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) are combining their work to find the key to developing self-driving cars that can operate safely and efficiently, even in complex city environments. With a three-year, $425,000
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Date:
02/14/2018
More Than a Well-Balanced Breakfast: Scientists use Egg Whites for Clean Energy Production

Hydrogen (H2) evolution systems constructed in cross-linked porous lysozyme crystals by immobilizing Pt nanoparticles as H2-evolution catalysts in immediate proximity to an organic photosensitizer, rose bengal.

Eggs may soon fuel more than people in the morning. Researchers from the Osaka City University in Japan have developed a way to potentially use egg whites as a substrate to produce a carbon-free fuel. They published their results on February 2nd in Applied Catalysis B. "Hydrogen is a promising fuel and energy storage medium b
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Date:
02/14/2018
Hydride transfer is an important reaction for chemistry (e.g., fuel cells), as well as biology (e.g., respiratory chain and photosynthesis). Often, one partial reaction involves the transfer of a hydride ion (H(-)). But does this hydride transfer involve one step or several individual steps? In the journal Angewandte Chemie
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Date:
02/14/2018
Cost-Reduction Roadmap Outlines two Pathways to Meet DOE Residential Solar Cost Target for 2030
Leveraging cost-reduction opportunities in the roof replacement or new construction markets for residential photovoltaic (PV) installations could help the United States meet the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) residential solar photovoltaic cost target by 2030, according to
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Date:
02/13/2018
Powerful LED-Based Train Headlight Optimized for Energy Savings

A new train headlight design uses two half-circular parabolic, or cup-shaped, aluminized reflectors with high-efficiency LEDs placed in the plane where the two reflectors come together. Combining the strong beams from each reflector generates the light intensity necessary to meet safety guidelines.

WASHINGTON -- Researchers have designed a new LED-based train headlight that uses a tenth of the energy required for headlights using conventional light sources. If operated 8 hours every day, the electricity savings of the new design would reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by about 152 kilograms pe
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Date:
02/13/2018
CORNING, N.Y. - Corning Incorporated announced that its Environmental Technologies business recently received the Cummins' new product development award for providing strong technical support, excellent product performance, and on-time product supply with no delays for its emissions-control solutions. The bie
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Date:
02/12/2018
Rubber Blanket at an Atomic Level

The basic idea of the measurement method: red light hits the surface -- blue light is sent back.

Two-dimensional materials such as graphene, which consist of only one or a few atomic layers, have been a very promising aspect of materials science over recent years. They demonstrate remarkable properties that open up completely new technical possibilities, from sensor technology to solar cells. However, there is
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Date:
02/12/2018
Dataforth MAQ20 Module Receives Honorable Mention  in 2018 Engineers’ Choice Awards
Dataforth’s MAQ20-DODC20SK module has been named the Honorable Mention in the Hardware - Data Acquisition category in Control Engineering’s 2018 Engineers’ Choice Awards program. Introduced in February 2017, the high density DODC20SK module has 20 isolated discrete output channels that can switch up to 60VDC
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Date:
02/12/2018
New Lithium Collection Method Could Boost Global Supply
With continual technological advancements in mobile devices and electric cars, the global demand for lithium has quickly outpaced the rate at which it can be mined or recycled, but a University of Texas at Austin professor and his research team may have a solution. Benny Freeman, professor in the McKetta D
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Date:
02/09/2018
Army-Led Effort Demos new Atomic Effect for Potential Isotopic Battery

The cover image is an artistic impression of the process of nuclear excitation by electron capture. A highly stripped ion, illustrated here as an atomic nucleus with a single orbiting electron, captures an incident electron into a vacant orbit. Under the right conditions, this capture transfers a small amount of energy into the nucleus, which subsequently emits a much larger amount of energy in the form of gamma rays.

ADELPHI, Md. - A multinational research team led by Army scientists successfully induced a controlled release of stored isotopic energy using a physical effect involving atomic electrons that was proposed more than 40 years ago but never before demonstrated experimentally. Scientists said this significant scientifi
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Date:
02/08/2018
Already on the way to the customer the day the order is received
Construction work is progressing briskly on the largest single investment in HARTING’s history, the HARTING "European Distribution Center (EDC)" logistics centre. "The construction companies involved are working meticulously together. At the moment, we‘re a good two weeks ahead of our original s
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Date:
02/07/2018
SEGGER breaks ground on new corporate headquarters
SEGGER announced its further expansion. Just last week, SEGGER broke ground on a new 2,200 square meter office in Monheim, Germany, only ten minutes from Düsseldorf. This is only one week after announcing its new location in the heart of Silicon Valley, and one year after completing construction of its new of
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Date:
02/07/2018
Removing fossil fuel subsidies would have only a small effect on CO2 emissions and renewable energy use, new research has shown. The largest emissions savings would be in oil and gas exporting countries, where fewer poor people would be affected, and subsidy removal can be aided by currently low oil prices. Fossil fuel subs
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Date:
02/07/2018
Symmetry Electronics Signs Distribution Agreement With RECOM Power
Hawthorne, CA –  Global semiconductor distributor, Symmetry Electronics, announced the company has signed a franchise agreement with RECOM Power to promote the full line of RECOM power supply modules. RECOM Power’s innovative AC/DC, DC/DC converters, switching regulators, and LED driver modules help customer
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Date:
02/06/2018
MILPITAS, Calif. — Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments in 2017 increased by 10 percent against 2016 shipments, while worldwide silicon revenues rose by 21 percent over 2016 levels, reported the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its year-end analysis of the silicon wafer industry. Silicon wafer are
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Date:
02/06/2018
Clocking Electrons Racing Faster Than Light in Glass

The table-top laser experiment at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. (a) A high power laser pulse creates mega-ampere electron current pulses. Cherenkov emission in the form of cones is emitted by these electrons traveling faster than light in glass. (b) the time trace of the Cherenkov emission measured in the experiment.

Living life in the fast lane can be tremendously exciting, giving us the 'time of our lives' but how long does it really last? Experiments at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai have answered this question for a bunch of electrons traveling faster than light (fasten your seatbelts!) through a pi
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Date:
02/06/2018
Is Hydrogen the Fuel of the Future?

As the race to find energy sources to replace our dwindling fossil fuel supplies continues apace, hydrogen is likely to play a crucial role in the future.

As the race to find energy sources to replace our dwindling fossil fuel supplies continues apace, hydrogen is likely to play a crucial role in the future. Japan has already announced its intention to become the world's first "hydrogen society" - aiming to open 35 hydrogen fuelling stations by 2020. W
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Date:
02/06/2018
Powerbox proudly becomes Participant to the U.N. Global Compact

Click image to enlarge

From left to right: Martin Sjöstrand – CEO Powerbox ; Patrick Le Fèvre CMCO Powerbox

Powerbox, one of Europe’s largest power supply companies and a leading force for four decades in optimizing power solutions for demanding applications, and actively engaged in the development of sustainable power solutions, has become a ‘participant’ of the United Nations Global Compact, the world’s la
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Date:
02/05/2018
New Method Could Open Path to Hydrogen Economy

WSU researchers have found a way to create large amounts of inexpensive nanofoam catalysts that can facilitate the generation of hydrogen on a large scale by splitting water molecules.

PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University researchers have found a way to more efficiently generate hydrogen from water - an important key to making clean energy more viable. Using inexpensive nickel and iron, the researchers developed a very simple, five-minute method to create large amounts of a high-qu
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Date:
02/01/2018
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