“I Always Wanted To Be A Mental Health Therapist.  Ever Since High School, I’ve Enjoyed Encouraging

This supercapacitor battery can be recharged 30,000 times

A thin, flexible supercapacitor boasts high energy and power densities. Credit: University of Central Florida

Everyone and anyone with a smartphone know it is not long before your phone holds a charge for less and less time as the battery begins to degrade. But new research by scientists at the NanoScience Technology Center at the University of Central Florida (UCF), USA, could change that. The team have developed a new method for producing flexible supercapacitors that can store greater amounts of energy and can be recharged over 30,000 times without degradation. This new method could transform technology such as electric vehicles and mobile phones in the future.

‘If you were to replace the batteries with these supercapacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn’t need to charge it again for over a week,’ said University of Central Florida researcher Nitin Choudhary.

The UCF team has attempted to apply newly discovered 2D materials that measure just a few atoms thick to supercapacitors. Other scientists have also tried formulations with other 2D materials including graphene, but had only limited success. The new supercapacitors are composed of millions of nanometre-thick wires coated with shells of 2D materials. The core facilitates the super-fast charging and discharging that makes supercapacitors powerful, and the 2D coating delivers the energy storage ability.

‘We developed a simple chemical synthesis approach so we can very nicely integrate the existing materials with the two-dimensional materials,’ said Yeonwoong Eric Jung, assistant professor of the study. Jung is working with UCF’s Office of Technology Transfer to patent the new process. ‘It’s not ready for commercialisation,’ Jung said. ‘But this is a proof-of-concept demonstration, and our studies show there are very high impacts for many technologies.’

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.

Plato, The Republic (via fyp-philosophy)

Interesting

Your blog is super cool! I have a few questions. How do you get your equipment and chemicals to carry out your experiments? I was just wondering as I'd like to start doing experiments at home. What would be a good experiment to start with also? Sorry if you have already answered these questions

Hey, thanks for the kind words! This is going to be a long answer! Let’s start with equipment:

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Bringing silicon to life: Scientists persuade nature to make silicon-carbon bonds

A new study is the first to show that living organisms can be persuaded to make silicon-carbon bonds – something only chemists had done before. Scientists at Caltech “bred” a bacterial protein to make the humanmade bonds – a finding that has applications in several industries.

Molecules with silicon-carbon, or organosilicon, compounds are found in pharmaceuticals as well as in many other products, including agricultural chemicals, paints, semiconductors, and computer and TV screens. Currently, these products are made synthetically, since the silicon-carbon bonds are not found in nature.

The new study demonstrates that biology can instead be used to manufacture these bonds in ways that are more environmentally friendly and potentially much less expensive.

“We decided to get nature to do what only chemists could do – only better,” says Frances Arnold, Caltech’s Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry, and principal investigator of the new research, published in the Nov. 24 issue of the journal Science.

Read more.

“I want to empower women through dance. I think you can build confidence through movement. When a woman starts moving her body, and becomes comfortable with herself, and realizes that she can do the steps — it connects back to life. Because all of life is movement. Technically we’re dancing every day. And it doesn’t matter how you look. It matters how you move.”