As the search for renewable energy sources has intensified, the discovery of efficient and cheap technologies for exploiting the energy from the sunlight has emerged as a key challenge. Higher efficiency plays an increasingly important role in making competitive solar cell designs as the price of silicon continues to drop. At present, the actual silicon […]
Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in portable electronic devices and electric vehicles since their introduction by Sony in 1991. Safety is an important concern since about two billion cells are produced every year but with a one-in-200,000 failure rate. Excessive temperature variations and high temperatures over the melting point of the metallic lithium can cause […]
Sunlight is the most important energy source of Earth. All earthlings live thanks to the ability of plants and bacteria to transform solar energy into chemical one. As sunlight is a free, and practically unlimited, energy source it is easy to understand the general interest in finding efficient ways of transforming it into electrical power […]
Approximately 90% of world’s electricity is generated in turbines moved by hot steam, which, unfortunately, operate only at 30 to 40 percent efficiency. This means that around two thirds of the total energy input is lost into the environment as waste heat. Thermoelectric materials can convert such waste heat into useful electricity, although they are […]
The most widely used metaphors for nuclear fusion reactors are the recreation of the Sun on Earth and the controlled explosion of a hydrogen bomb. In both cases, the first thing that comes to mind is the need for high-performance radiation-resistant materials to contain the fusion reaction. The selection and design of new materials that […]
In this third and last part of the series (1, 2) about ITER we continue giving insights into the most outstanding aspects of the ITER machine design. Divertor The ITER divertor is a part of the vessel, placed at the very bottom, whose twofold purpose is (i) helping in shaping the plasma and (ii) getting […]
In this second part of the series about ITER (see first here), we start giving a more detailed description of the ITER machine. Then, we address some important challenges that have been identified for each of its parts and scientists’ plans to solve them. Tokamak design After all, the core of a nuclear plant is […]
Nobel-laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes allegedly once said of nuclear fusion: “We say that we will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don’t know how to make the box “. Indeed, the task is challenging in a way that even surpasses the stringent design of world-famous LHC (Large […]