2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Sustainable Technologies/Future Energy Category Winner — SUNPave: Tomorrow’s Energy Today

When solar panels are placed horizontally, they harvest 15-20 percent less energy from the sun, and hence consumers end up paying a higher price for the harvested energy.

New Battery Technology Could Power Wearable, Self-Sustaining Fever Detector

Public temperature checks have become common practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers at Texas A&M University hope to make it possible to check the temperatures of large groups of people more quickly and at a less expensive cost than allowed by current methods.

Liquid Metal Turns Motion into Electricity, Even Underwater

The soft and stretchable device converts movement into electricity and can work in wet environments.

Building Temperature-Resilient Batteries

In tests, the proof-of-concept batteries retained 87.5 percent and 115.9 percent of their energy capacity at -40 °C and 50 °C (-40 °F and 122 °F), respectively.

Gallium Nitride Yields More Energy-Efficient Devices

Engineers have created new high-power electronic devices that are more energy efficient than their predecessors.

Test Your Knowledge About Batteries

Do you know how far the battery has advanced since its inception? Find out with our quiz below.

5 Ws of Energy-Harvesting Yarns

A group of University of Texas at Dallas researchers have invented energy-harvesting yarns made from carbon nanotubes that produce electricity when repeatedly stretched.

Printed Rechargeable Batteries for the IIoT

Wireless sensors are critical for the IIoT, but they need long-term, reliable battery power.

Biofilm Harvests Energy in Evaporation

The biofilm has the potential to revolutionize the world of wearable electronics, powering everything from personal medical sensors to personal electronics.

Inflatable Actuators Use Origami Principles to Deform

Researchers have taken inspiration from origami to create inflatable structures that can bend, twist, and move in complex, distinct ways from a single source of pressure.

Let’s Get Small: New Argonne Method Greatly Improves X-Ray Nanotomography Resolution

A group of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has created a new method for improving the resolution of hard X-ray nanotomography.

A Motorless Sailplane to Explore Mars’ Atmosphere

The UA team aims to design a motorless sailplane that can soar over the Martian surface for days at a time, using only wind for propulsion.

Q&A: Reinventing Offshore Wind Turbines

Dr. Brandon Ennis, Sandia National Laboratories’ offshore wind technical lead, had a radically new idea for offshore wind turbines: instead of a tall unwieldy tower, with blades at the top, he imagined a towerless turbine with blades pulled taut like a bow.

How Much Do You Know About Electric Aircraft Advances?

How much do you know about the advances regarding to electric aircraft?

Model Predicts Seasonal Variability of Solar and Wind Power

Researchers at Columbia University, supported in part by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, conducted a study that modeled the seasonal variability of solar and...

New Perovskite Solar Cell Has a Commercially Viable Lifetime

Princeton Engineering researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable...

The Battery Powering a Truly Green Revolution in Personal Electronics

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced that they have figured out how to engineer a biofilm that harvests the energy in evaporation and...

A New, Low-Cost Aluminum-Sulfur Battery

MIT researchers have developed a new kind of battery, made entirely from abundant, inexpensive materials.

Fundamental EV Battery Models Explain New Tab Design

Cylindrical cells are one of the most common battery types used in electric vehicles. Tesla recently improved on the typical cylindrical cell design, developing a new tab design that allows for a much larger cell.

Ultrasound Tech Offers Sophisticated Battery-Testing Intelligence

The production and supply of lithium-ion batteries for the global EV and stationary energy storage systems (ESS) markets is growing at an exponential rate. At the same time,...

Niobium: Magic Metal for Battery Anodes?

The element niobium (Nb), a transition metal, stands ready to improve the performance of one of the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery’s confusing array of possible electrode chemistries — the LTO...

New Products

New products for September 2022.

Optimizing EV Performance Through the Power of Data

We are constantly blindsided by unfortunate battery-related events because as any engineer knows, the devil is in the details – the implementation details.

Large Format Li-Ion Calorimeter

Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center have developed a method to measure the total and fractional heat response of large format Li-ion cells (cells with capacities greater than 100Ah) when driven into...

Products of Tomorrow

This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow.

Room-Temperature Liquid-Metal Battery

The researchers have created a “room-temperature all-liquid-metal battery,” which includes the best of both worlds of liquid-and solid-state batteries.

Tiny Motors to Power a Network of Nanomachines

Researchers from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin recently created the first ever solid-state optical nanomotor.