Hasta La Gadget!

Christopher Bielawski, a brilliant mind working at the University of Texas at Austin, had this to say about his newest discovery: “I would love it if my iPhone was thinner and lighter, and the battery lasted a month or even a week instead of a day; with an organic battery, it may be possible.” Anyone that has ever owned an iPhone (or a smartphone or any sort, really) can grok just how bold those words are, but according to Mr. Bielawski, “we’re now starting to get a handle on the fundamental chemistry needed to make this dream a commercial reality.” At the center of this potential revolution is a newfangled organic battery recently detailed in the journal Science, but just as important is the artificial photosynthesis that the research also touches on. Bielawski and colleague Jonathan Sessler have seemingly figured out how to create an electron transfer process that can proceed in the opposite direction, with this forward and backward switching of electron flow opening up new avenues for the historically stagnant battery innovation market. Granted, these guys have yet to demonstrate that the process can occur in a condensed phase, so actual commercialization is probably a century millennium or two out, but hey — at least our list of “awesome thing that’ll probably never happen” has grown by one.

UTexas researchers develop organic battery, aim for week-long use in smartphones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know the drill — some quirky research team whips up some phenomenal discovery in the middle of nowhere, gloats about it, gets it published in a journal you’ve never heard of it, and then it all vanishes into the ether, leaving your soul hurt and wondering why you ever got your hopes up in the first place. The Foundations wrote a little tune about this very situation back in 1968, but a UK team from the Center for Quantum Photonics led by Jeremy O’Brien are claiming that their latest discovery is no joke. According to him, most people have believed that a functional quantum computer wouldn’t be a reality for at least another score, but he’s saying “with real confidence that, using [his] new technique, a quantum computer could, within five years, be performing calculations that are outside the capabilities of conventional computers.” The center of this bold claim is a new photonic chip that works on light rather than traditional electricity, and those who built it say that it could “pull important information out of the biggest databases almost instantaneously.” Of course, this stuff would hit the Department of Defense long before it hits your basement, but it’s on you to keep tabs on the progress. Wouldn’t be let down again, now would we?

UK research team brings quantum computing closer than ever… or so they say originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Sep 2010 09:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Electricity might not grow on trees, but it is freely available in the air — provided you know how to catch it. Such is the contention presented by Dr. Francesco Galembeck of Brazil’s University of Campinas at the 240th annual American Chemical Society shindig. He and his crew have shown how tiny particles of silica and aluminum phosphate become electrically charged when water vapor is passed over them. This aims to prove two things: firstly, that airborne water droplets do carry an electric charge, and secondly, that metals can be used to collect that charge. Detractors have pointed out that Dr. Galembeck’s team may be generating the droplets’ electrical charge by the act of pumping the air over the metals — which might imply you couldn’t practice this technique with still, humid air — while there’s also the rather large caveat that the little electricity they were able to collect from vapor was a hundred million times less than what you could obtain from a solar cell of equivalent size. Still, it’s another new door unto a potential alternative energy source and we don’t ever like having to close those.

Continue reading Airborne electricity is ripe for the picking, claim researchers

Airborne electricity is ripe for the picking, claim researchers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engineers at Stanford have developed a process which can harness the light and heat of the sun simultaneously, which could lead to solar cells that are twice as efficient as those currently available. Called photon enhanced thermionic emission — or PETE for short — the process differs from traditional cells which lose efficiency as temperatures rise, and the materials needed to build the cells are cheap and widely available. The engineers got around the lower efficiencies by coating a piece of semiconducting material with a thin layer of the metal cesium, which enables the material to use both heat and light simultaneously. While the materials as currently demonstrated work best in very high temperatures, the researchers indicate that in the near future, the materials could have wide enough application to make them competitive with traditional forms of energy. Hit the source for the full story.

Photon enhanced thermionic emission could double efficiency of solar cells originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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