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Category: sustainability

Nanosheet material stores heat below 100°C using dual water adsorption modes

Efficiently capturing and storing excess heat, particularly below 200°C, is paramount to achieving a carbon-neutral society. Every year, factories and homes produce excess heat, much of which gets wasted. Likewise, as the world gets more reliant on renewable energy sources, the need to capture and store heat grows.

A collaboration between Tohoku University and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency has made significant strides in this regard, developing nanosheets of layered manganese dioxide (MnO2) that can store heat even below 100°C.

Details of the study were published in the journal Communications Chemistry.

EVs Getting Cleaner More Quickly Than Expected in Europe: Study

As the push for sustainable transportation intensifies globally, a new study from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) reveals that battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) in Europe are becoming significantly cleaner at a pace faster than previously anticipated. This development comes as the continent’s electricity mix transitions toward more renewable sources, providing a profound climate advantage over traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.

Key Findings of the Study

Released on Wednesday, the ICCT study highlights that BEVs sold in Europe today produce 73 percent fewer life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions compared to ICE vehicles. This figure marks a noteworthy 24-percent improvement from the organization’s prior estimates in 2021, emphasizing the rapid progress of BEVs as Europe enhances its renewable energy initiatives.

Defects in single-crystal indium gallium zinc oxide could fix persistent display instability

Many displays found in smartphones and televisions rely on thin-film transistors (TFTs) made from indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) to control pixels. IGZO offers high transparency due to its large bandgap (the gap existing between the valence and conduction bands), high conductivity, and can operate even in an amorphous (non-crystalline) form, making it ideal for displays, flexible electronics, and solar cells.

However, IGZO-based devices face long-term stability issues, such as negative bias illumination stress, where prolonged exposure to light and electrical stress shifts the voltage required to activate pixels. These instabilities are believed to stem from structural imperfections, which create additional electronic states—known as subgap states—that trap charge carriers and disrupt current flow.

Until recently, most studies on subgap states focused on amorphous IGZO, as sufficiently large single-crystal IGZO (sc-IGZO) samples were not available for analysis. However, the disordered nature of amorphous IGZO has made it difficult to pinpoint the exact causes of electronic instability.

Practical changes could reduce AI energy demand by up to 90%

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be made more sustainable by making practical changes, such as reducing the number of decimal places used in AI models, shortening responses, and using smaller AI models, according to research from UCL published in a new UNESCO report.

In recent years, the use of generative AI has expanded rapidly, with (LLMs) developed by companies such as OpenAI, Meta and Google becoming household names. For example, OpenAI’s ChatGPT service, powered by the GPT-4 LLM, receives about 1 billion queries each day.

Each generation of LLMs has become more sophisticated than the last, better able to perform tasks like text generation or knowledge retrieval. This has led to a vast and increasing demand on resources such as electricity and water, which are needed to run the data centers where these AI models are trained and deployed.

New lithium-sulfur battery for electric cars reduces charging time to 12 minutes

Researchers from Germany, India and Taiwan have presented the concept of lithium-sulfur batteries for electric cars, which will reduce the full charging time to less than 30 minutes.

With the global transition to electric transportation, reducing battery charging time remains one of the key challenges for developers and researchers around the world. Modern Li-ion batteries can be charged from 20 to 80% in about 20–30 minutes, but full charging takes much longer. Meanwhile, high-speed charging leads to a shorter battery life.

The study, conducted by researchers from Kiel University and their colleagues from India and Taiwan, suggests that lithium-sulfur batteries can solve the existing problems. The international study led by Dr Mozaffar Abdollahifar provides a detailed description of how lithium-sulfur batteries can overcome the limitations of current Li-ion batteries in terms of performance and charging time.

Targeting MXenes for sustainable ammonia production

In a hunt for more sustainable technologies, researchers are looking further into enabling two-dimensional materials in renewable energy that could lead to sustainable production of chemicals such as ammonia, which is used in fertilizer.

This next generation of low-dimensional materials, called MXenes, catalyzes the production of air into ammonia for foods and transportation for high-efficiency energy fertilizers.

MXenes has a wide range of possibilities that allow for highly flexible chemical compositions, offering significant control over their properties.

Wood-based material can improve safety and lifespan of lithium-ion batteries

For consumers worried about the risks associated with using lithium-ion batteries—which are used in everything from phones to laptops to electric vehicles—Michigan State University has discovered that a natural material found in wood can improve battery safety while also improving the battery’s life.

Chengcheng Fang, assistant professor in the College of Engineering, and Mojgan Nejad, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, collaborated to engineer , a natural ingredient of wood that provides support and rigidity, into a thin film separator that can be used inside to prevent short circuits that can cause a fire.

“We wanted to build a better battery,” said Fang. “But we also wanted it to be safe, efficient and sustainable.”

Thermodiffusion method offers greener extraction of valuable materials from brine deposits

A simple and cost-effective method developed by scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) could make the process of extracting valuable resources from brine deposits more environmentally friendly. The research is published in Nature Water.

Brine mining is important for lithium extraction—a critical component for battery manufacturing—with a significant portion of global lithium production coming from continental brine deposits.

In 2024, ANU researchers developed the world’s first thermal desalination method, where water remains in the throughout the entire process. They have now successfully applied this method to brine concentration.

Devices that pull water out of thin air poised to take off

More than 2 billion people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, with global warming and competing demands from farms and industry expected to worsen shortages. But the skies may soon provide relief, not in the form of rain but humidity, sucked out of the air by “atmospheric water harvesters.” The devices have existed for decades but typically are too expensive, energy-hungry, or unproductive to be practical.

Now, however, two classes of materials called hydrogels and metal-organic frameworks have touched off what Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), calls “an explosion of efforts related to atmospheric water harvesting.”

So far, none of the devices can compete with established approaches to augment water supplies, such as desalinating seawater. But some applications—cooling data centers and slaking the thirst of soldiers on the move—could support higher costs until the technology scales up, says Samer Taha, CEO of Atoco, a California-based startup. “There are many applications where atmospheric water harvesting can help.”

Cracking the quantum code: Light and glass are set to transform computing

European researchers are developing quantum computers using light and glass, in a collaboration that promises breakthroughs in computing power, battery technology and scientific discovery.

Giulia Acconcia grew up in the picturesque, historic town of Spoleto, nestled in the foothills of Italy’s Apennine Mountains. Already in secondary school, she became fascinated with modern technology—a passion that would shape her future.

Her love of electronics led her to the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy, where she now finds herself at the forefront of quantum computing research.