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“As Ralph Colby peers at the microscope image in front of him, he thinks he can make them out — “shish kebabs,” as polymer scientists call them. Nobody knows for sure what they are, but these shapes that appear at seemingly …
“Glass has been a part of society for thousands of years, so it is easy for this material to become invisible and overlooked, but a Penn State materials scientist has laid out a plan to map the glass genome and …
“Dramatic improvements have been made to the process of converting carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, to methanol, a fuel and building block for a wide range of everyday materials, according to Penn State researchers. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing …
“Californians do not purchase electric vehicles because they are cool, they buy EVs because they live in a warm climate. Conventional lithium-ion batteries cannot be rapidly charged at temperatures below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, but now a team of Penn State …
“Confined, insensitive light could improve lasers, solar cells Cheaper and more efficient photonic devices, such as lasers, optical fibers and other light sources, may be possible with confined light that is unaffected by imperfections in the material that confines it …
“A piezoelectric ceramic foam supported by a flexible polymer support provides a 10-fold increase in the ability to harvest mechanical and thermal energy over standard piezo composites, according to Penn State researchers. In the search for ways to harvest small …
“A team of chemists at Penn State has developed a designer’s toolkit that lets them build various levels of complexity into nanoparticles using a simple, mix-and-match process. “Researchers in areas as diverse as medicine, energy and electronics often design …
“Perfection is not everything, according to an international team of researchers whose 2-D materials study shows that defects can enhance a material’s physical, electrochemical, magnetic, energy and catalytic properties. “Electronic devices, like transistors, are usually made from relatively bulky …
“A newly discovered structure of a sodium-based material allows the materials to be used as an electrolyte in solid-state batteries, according to researchers from Penn State and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The team is fine-tuning the material using an …
“Deciding which hand to use for communication-aiding technology is a cognitive task that can slow the user down, potentially inhibiting communication and performance, according to a Penn State study. More than four million Americans who have such complex disabilities that …