Science, Space and Technology News 2024
Seen close-up, the flow of ions between battery electrodes is actually a series of erratic, atomic-scale hops. Experiments in a laser lab at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory showed that when shaken with a jolt of voltage, most ions briefly hopped backward to their previous positions before resuming their usual erratic journeys — the first indication that they remembered, in a sense, where they had just been. Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National.
But when seen on an atomic scale, that smooth flow is an illusion: Individual ions hop erratically from one open space to another within the electrolyte’s roomy atomic lattice, nudged in the direction of an electrode by a steady voltage. Those hops are hard to predict and a challenge to trigger and detect.
The ions’ “fuzzy memory,” as Poletayev puts it, lasts just a few billionths of a second. But knowing that it exists will help scientists predict, for the first time, what traveling ions will do next – an important consideration for discovering and developing new materials. By varying the time between the laser pulse and the measurement, they were able to precisely determine how the ions’ speed and preferred direction changed in the few trillionths of a second after the jolt from the laser.“There are multiple weird and unusual things going on in the ion hopping process,” said SLAC and Stanford Professor Aaron Lindenberg, an investigator with the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences who led the study.
United Kingdom Latest News, United Kingdom Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Vector Atomic makes waves with ultra-precise, seafaring atomic clockVector Atomic claims it surpasses the performance of existing shipboard clocks by a staggering 1,000 times.
Read more »
Scientists Reveal Cancer's Atomic Secrets—'Whole New Layer to Medicine'The discovery offers an exciting avenue for potential future early cancer diagnoses.
Read more »
Organic electrochemical transistors: Scientists solve chemical mystery at the interface of biology and technologyResearchers who want to bridge the divide between biology and technology spend a lot of time thinking about translating between the two different 'languages' of those realms.
Read more »
Scientists solve chemical mystery at the interface of biology and technologyOrganic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) allow current to flow in devices like implantable biosensors. But scientists long knew about a quirk of OECTs that no one could explain: When an OECT is switched on, there is a lag before current reaches the desired operational level. When switched off, there is no lag. Current drops immediately.
Read more »
Bay Area scientists use game-changing technology to help birds amid climate changeBay Area scientists are using cutting-edge technology to better understand the decline in bird populations while finding ways to help species that are challenged.
Read more »
Couch potato kids more likely to have heart damageScientists says light physical activity can reverse the risk, say scientists.
Read more »