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Researchers at Cornell University have found a heretofore unrealized property of gallium nitride (GaN) that could cause significant improvements in the electronic and wireless communication industries.  The discovery was made when one of the researchers stacked a thin, un-doped GaN crystal on top of an aluminum nitride (AlN) crystal – which generated a high concentration of holes in the combined crystal structure.  When compared to more traditional doping procedures, the researchers determined that the resultant hole gas increased the conductivity of the GaN by a factor of nearly 10.  Through a collaboration with Intel, one of the researchers used this...

A Case Study of "Incorporating Solvate and Solid Electrolytes for All-Solid-state Li2S Batteries with High Capacity and Long Cycle Life" Introduction Solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries have recently achieved a groundbreaking breakthrough in their experimental development that overcomes previous performance limitations.  Academic researchers Minjeong Shin and Andrew A. Gewirth from the University of Illinois’s Department of Chemistry first communicated this discovery through their paper "Incorporating Solvate and Solid Electrolytes for All-Solid-state Li2S Batteries with High Capacity and Long Cycle Life", published in Advanced Energy Materials on May 2019.  In the paper, the team discussed how they developed a new materials that would increase the performance of these batteries,...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have uncovered a new way to increase the speed of charging electric vehicles.  When the battery cathode in the electric vehicle is exposed to concentrated light, the overall charging time is reduced by at least a factor of two.  This phenomenon occurs due to the interaction between light and the material of the tested cathode, lithium manganese oxide or LiMn2O4 (LMO).  The manganese in the cathode absorbs photons of light, increasing its charge state from trivalent (Mn3+) to tetravalent (Mn4+), which then results in the ejection of lithium ions...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have uncovered a previously unrecognized analytical characterization criterion that accurately quantifies the quality of 2D materials.  Specifically, they analyzed graphene using low energy electron diffraction.  Normally the diffraction results are expected to be sharp and clear peaks that represent the perfection of the material; however, the graphene results also included a broad diffusion band in addition to the aforementioned peaks.  While the cause for this broad diffusion band’s presence is not yet fully understood, the scientists at Ames Laboratory theorize that it is due to the confinement of graphene electrons into a...