With energy demands rising, researchers at Penn State Behrend and the University of Tabriz, Iran, have completed an algorithm — or approach — to design more efficient wind farms, helping to generate more revenue for builders and more renewable energy for their customers. Wind energy is on the rise, and not just in the US,” […]
Self-Heating, Fast-Charging Battery Makes Electric Vehicles Climate-Immune
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 engineers has created a battery that can self-heat, allowing rapid charging regardless of the outside […]
Electrochemical Tuning Of Single Layer Materials Relies On Defects
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 stacked layers of metal, oxides and crystalline semiconductors,” said Shengxi Huang, assistant professor of electrical engineering, […]
Designing A New Material For Improved Ultrasound
Development of a theoretical basis for ultrahigh piezoelectricity in ferroelectric materials led to a new material with twice the piezo response of any existing commercial ferroelectric ceramics, according to an international team of researchers from Penn State, China and Australia. Piezoelectricity is the material property at the heart of medical ultrasound, sonar, active vibration control […]
Hail Technology: Deep Learning May Help Predict When People Need Rides
Computers may better predict taxi and ride sharing service demand, paving the way toward smarter, safer and more sustainable cities, according to an international team of researchers. In a study, the researchers used two types of neural networks — computational systems modeled on the human brain — that analyzed patterns of taxi demand. This deep […]
Scalable Two-Dimensional Materials Advance Future-Gen Electronics
Since the discovery of the remarkable properties of graphene, scientists have increasingly focused research on the many other two-dimensional materials possible, both those found in nature and those concocted in the lab. However, growing high-quality, crystalline 2-D materials at scale has proven a significant challenge. A pair of papers published online in two nanotechnology journals […]
Conformal Metasurface Coating Eliminates Crosstalk And Shrinks Waveguides
The properties of materials can behave in funny ways. Tweak one aspect to make a device smaller or less leaky, for example, and something else might change in an undesirable way, so that engineers play a game of balancing one characteristic against another. Now a team of Penn State electrical engineers have a way to […]
New, More Sensitive Sensor For Evaluating Drug Safety
A new technique for evaluating drug safety can detect stress on cells at earlier stages than conventional methods, which mostly rely on detecting cell death. The new method uses a fluorescent sensor that is turned on in a cell when misfolded proteins begin to aggregate — an early sign of cellular stress. The method can […]
Rooftop Concentrating Photovoltaics Win Big Over Silicon in Outdoor Testing
A concentrating photovoltaic system with embedded microtracking can produce over 50 percent more energy per day than standard silicon solar cells in a head-to-head competition, according to a team of engineers who field tested a prototype unit over two sunny days last fall. “Solar cells used to be expensive, but now they’re getting really cheap,” […]
Rooftop Concentrating Photovoltaics Win Big Over Silicon In Outdoor Testing
A concentrating photovoltaic system with embedded microtracking can produce over 50 percent more energy per day than standard silicon solar cells in a head-to-head competition, according to a team of engineers who field tested a prototype unit over two sunny days last fall. “Solar cells used to be expensive, but now they’re getting really cheap,” […]