******SCIENCE Algae-grown limestone provides route to carbon-negative concrete.....Dezeen Rima Sabina Aouf | 29 July 2022 Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a way of using algae to create carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative concrete. The researchers use biogenic limestone that is grown by algae in place of quarried limestone to make portland cement, concrete's key and most carbon-intensive ingredient.

The microalgae produces limestone (or calcium carbonate) naturally through the process of photosynthesis. According to the researchers, concrete made from this "biogenic limestone" is net carbon neutral, because the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when it is burned to make cement is equal to what the microalgae drew down from the atmosphere during its growth. The cement can be made carbon-negative – meaning it sequesters more carbon dioxide than it emits – if the additional ground limestone, typically added to the mixture as a "filler material," is also replaced by the algae-grown alternative. As it's not burned, the carbon in this portion of the limestone remains stored in the concrete.

The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) researchers estimate that this would save two gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year from being pumped into the atmosphere, and potentially sequester an additional 250 million tonnes."For the industry, now is the time to solve this very wicked problem," said principal investigator and head of CU Boulder's Living Materials Laboratory Wil Srubar. "We believe that we have one of the best solutions, if not the best solution, for the cement and concrete industry to address its carbon problem." The biogenic limestone looks, feels and behaves the same as quarried limestone, which means it should be easy to switch it into existing cement production processes. The researchers estimate that with one to two million acres of open ponds in the US, the country could produce enough of the substance to make all of the cement it needs. This amount of land is around one per cent of what the country uses to grow corn. The CU Boulder team has recently been awarded a $3.2 million (£2.7 million) grant from the US Department of Energy to develop and scale up the manufacture of portland cement using biogenic limestone.

"We see a world in which using concrete as we know it is a mechanism to heal the planet," said Srubar. "We have the tools and the technology to do this today." Srubar and his team work with the fast-working cloudy-white coccolithophores microalgae, which produces the largest amounts of new calcium carbonate on the planet, including blooms that can be seen from space......read on          https://www.dezeen.com/2022/07/29/algae-grown-limestone-route-carbon-negative-concrete-architecture-news/

Solid state battery design charges in minutes, lasts for thousands of cycles Research paves the way for better lithium metal batteries.Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science Leah Burrows | January 8, 2024    Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new lithium metal battery that can be charged and discharged at least 6,000 times — more than any other pouch battery cell — and can be recharged in a matter of minutes.The research not only describes a new way to make solid state batteries with a lithium metal anode but also offers new understanding into the materials used for these potentially revolutionary batteries.  The research is published in Nature Materials. “Lithium metal anode batteries are considered the holy grail of batteries because they have ten times the capacity of commercial graphite anodes and could drastically increase the driving distance of electric vehicles,” said Xin Li, Associate Professor of Materials Science at SEAS and senior author of the paper. “Our research is an important step toward more practical solid state batteries for industrial and commercial applications.” One of the biggest challenges in the design of these batteries is the formation of dendrites on the surface of the anode. These structures grow like roots into the electrolyte and pierce the barrier separating the anode and cathode, causing the battery to short or even catch fire.  Li and his team offered one way to deal with dendrites by designing a multilayer battery that sandwiched different materials of varying stabilities between the anode and cathode. This multilayer, multi-material design prevented the penetration of lithium dendrites not by stopping them altogether, but rather by controlling and containing them.  In this new research, Li and his team stop dendrites from forming by using micron-sized silicon particles in the anode to constrict the lithiation reaction and facilitate homogeneous plating of a thick layer of lithium metal. In this design, when lithium ions move from the cathode to the anode during charging, the lithiation reaction is constricted at the shallow surface and the ions attach to the surface of the silicon particle but don’t penetrate further. "In our design, lithium metal gets wrapped around the silicon particle, like a hard chocolate shell around a hazelnut core in a chocolate truffle,” said Li.  These coated particles create a homogenous surface across which the current density is evenly distributed, preventing the growth of dendrites. And, because plating and stripping can happen quickly on an even surface, the battery can recharge in only about 10 minutes. In this design, when lithium ions move from the cathode to the anode during charging, the lithiation reaction is constricted at the shallow surface and the ions attach to the surface of the silicon particle but don’t penetrate further. This is markedly different from the chemistry of liquid lithium ion batteries in which the lithium ions penetrate through deep lithiation reactions and ultimately destroy silicon particles in the anode.  But, in a solid state battery, the ions on the surface of the silicon are constricted and undergo the dynamic process of lithiation to form lithium metal plating around the core of silicon. “In our design, lithium metal gets wrapped around the silicon particle, like a hard chocolate shell around a hazelnut core in a chocolate truffle,” said Li.  These coated particles create a homogenous surface across which the current density is evenly distributed, preventing the growth of dendrites. And, because plating and stripping can happen quickly on an even surface, the battery can recharge in only about 10 minutes. Adden Energy, a Harvard spinoff company co-founded by Li and three Harvard alumni has scaled up the technology to build a smartphone-sized pouch cell battery......can car batteries be next?     https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2024/01/solid-state-battery-design-charges-minutes-lasts-thousands-cycles      

Record-breaking solar panels have scientists in shock  The world has been surprised by the arrival of the most powerful solar panel in history, so much so that we are going to have free electricity. This discovery was published in the scientific journal Science Advances and no one can stop talking about it. It represents a historic milestone towards the production of clean energy with sources other than exclusively eolic, what we call renewable diversification.

This is a development by researchers at Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The team achieved a complete breakthrough in solar panel technology. Jennifer Rup, materials scientist and professor at ETH Zurich, who is not associated with the study, was highly surprised. She said that this is “a very exciting discovery that could have a significant impact on the development of more efficient solar cells. The fact that the new material is also more durable and easier to produce than traditional silicon-based solar panels makes it even more promising”. The material that has already become a revolution in the industry is made of crystalline layers of various types of titanate, strontium and calcium arranged in a lattice structure. It is such a large object that it has left even its inventors surprised. It leaves out silicon, a common and inefficient material used in solar panels. The scientists themselves claim to have been speechless when they saw that the current flow was up to 1,000 times stronger. Its creators claim that it has exceeded all expectations imposed on it.             https://www.ecoticias.com/en/most-powerful-solar-panel/788/#:~:text=Electricity%20begins%20a%20new%20era,for%20an%20inefficient%20PN%20junction.                                                                  

Enabling Distributed Intelligence with Ferroelectric Multifunctionalities. Distributed intelligence involving a large number of smart sensors and edge computing are highly demanded under the backdrop of increasing cyber‐physical interactive applications including internet of things. Here, the progresses on ferroelectric materials and their enabled devices promising energy autonomous sensors and smart systems are reviewed, starting with an analysis on the basic characteristics of ferroelectrics, including high dielectric permittivity, switchable spontaneous polarization, piezoelectric, pyroelectric, and bulk photovoltaic effects. As sensors, ferroelectrics can directly convert the stimuli to signals without requiring external power supply in principle. As energy transducers, ferroelectrics can harvest multiple forms of energy with high reliability and durability. As capacitors, ferroelectrics can directly store electrical charges with high power and ability of pulse‐mode signal generation. Nonvolatile memories derived from ferroelectrics are able to realize digital processors and systems with ultralow power consumption, sustainable operation with intermittent power supply, and neuromorphic computing. An emphasis is made on the utilization of the multiple extraordinary functionalities of ferroelectrics to enable material‐critical device innovations. The ferroelectric characteristics and synergistic functionality combinations are invaluable for realizing distributed sensors and smart systems with energy autonomy.        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8728856/