Search for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies available for licensing, patents and patent applications, and publications.

Aluminum hydride is the best known alane and has been known for over 60 years. It is potentially a very attractive medium for onboard automotive hydrogen storage, since it contains 10 wt.% hydrogen with a high volumetric density of hydrogen. Pure aluminum hydride requires heating to about 150°C before it desorbs significant hydrogen. Doping it with alkali metal hydrides reduces the desorption temperature, but the dopants limit the hydrogen storage capacity in proportion to the amount... read more

Superconductors having high critical temperatures (T_c), current densities (J_c), and upper magnetic fields (H_c2) are in great demand. The iron chalcogenides have been shown to have resistive onset critical temperatures on the order of 14K in the bulk and up to about 18K in thin-film form, with very high H_c2. These properties make them suitable for use in high-field applications, such as for magnets and conductors in magnetic fields, in addition to other superconducting applications such as... read more

Titania with nanocavities offers improved blocking of light in the ultraviolet range of the electro¬magnetic spectrum. It transmits about 25 percent less light than do traditional bulk titanium dioxide or titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Theoretically, by controlling the size of the nanocavities the transmission of the titania with nanocavities can be four times less than titanium dioxide or titanium dioxide nanoparticles.

Supercapacitors are electrical storage devices that can deliver a huge amount of energy in a short time. Such a surge of energy is important in hybrid electric and fuel cell-powered vehicles, as well as in a wide range of electronic and engineering applications. Since the energy storage capability and the current carrying capability of supercapacitors are proportional to their capacitance, it is important to have as much surface area as possiblein the electrode. A smooth and conformal adlayer... read more

Fluorinated precursors for superconducting ceramics typically increase the critical current in the superconductors they produce. Here the fluorinated precursors are obtained by combining salts of a rare earth, an alkaline earth, and copper in solution, spraying the solution onto a substrate, and heating the covered substrate in a fluorine-containing atmosphere. This is accomplished without the use of trifluoroacetates or physical deposition techniques. The method is suitable for producing... read more

 HTS based on the Y-Ba-Cu-O (YBCO) system (second generation, or 2G, materials) exhibit superior superconducting properties, when optimized, to so-called first generation (1G) materials such as Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-O (BiSCCO). However their sensitivity to oxygen stoichiometry makes them hard to optimize. In particular, YBCO performance is strongly dependent on grain boundaries, degrading when the grain boundary misalignment exceeds about 4° between grains. The result is that YBCO must be... read more

Semiconducting nanowires rarely develop a protective coating in situ, leaving the surface vulnerable to defects and contaminants. By encapsulating them in the growth chamber with a stable compound, not only is the surface protected from environmental contaminants, but deleterious surface electronic states are minimized.

Cuprate superconductors exhibit relatively high transition temperatures, but their unit cells are complex and large. Localizing a superconducting layer to a small thickness is difficult with bulk cuprates due to the challenges of growing layers with precise thicknesses. The inventive structures can be used to make superconducting field effect transistors (SuFETs), using the interfacial superconducting layer as the channel.

Semiconducting nanowires rarely develop a protective coating in situ, leaving the surface vulnerable to defects and contaminants. By encapsulating them in the growth chamber with a stable compound, not only is the surface protected from environmental contaminants, but deleterious surface electronic states are minimized.

Platinum is a very good, albeit expensive, electrocatalyst. In order to increase the catalytic activity of an electrocatalyst per mass of noble metal (the mass activity), nanoparticles of less expensive materials are coated with atomically thin layers of platinum. First a monolayer of a sacrificial base metal such as copper or lead is deposited onto a core particle via underpotential deposition. Then the base metal is replaced by galvanic displacement with the catalytically active more noble... read more

The electrical, chemical, mechanical, and optical properties of nanostructures depend on their physical dimensions and chemical compositions. Current methods of forming nanowires rely on knowing the average values for these parameters. As a result, there is poor control over local properties of the nanowires, which may vary from spot to spot in an uncontrolled fashion. By using knowledge of the size-dependent phase diagram, the inventors have developed methods of controlling the properties of... read more

Thermoelectric materials can convert heat into electricity and vice versa. To be useful, however, the materials should exhibit a high electrical conductivity along with a low thermal conductivity. This is a combination very difficult to achieve. By using non-equilibrium processing techniques, thermoelectric materials are produced that achieve these competing goals, leading to high efficiency thermoelectric devices for electricity generation from waste heat or compact cooling.

Superconductors are remarkable materials that transmit direct current without resistive loss and expel a magnetic field. So-called “high-temperature” superconductors exhibit these effects at temperatures above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, and so can be cooled relatively inexpensively. Unfortunately, these materials, many of them cuprates, require a high degree of crystalline order to perform optimally. One method of growing these crystals is to use fluorine-containing... read more

Graphene has very interesting properties due to its electronic structure. For example, its thermal and electrical conductivities are extremely high and it is one of the strongest materials known. Making single layers of it, however, is challenging. This method of fabrication yields large area (square micrometer) regions of single-layer graphene produced on ruthenium surfaces. The monolayer graphene also conforms to patterns in a substrate.

A zeptoliter is a volume of 1000 cubic nanometers, or that of a cube 10 nm on a side. Structures of this size may display size-dependent properties. They are interesting for their properties and as objects of scientific study. Until now there was no way to reliably dispense such volumes. The zeptoliter pipette can be used to dispense nanodroplets for use as seeds for bottom-up assembly of nanostructures, or for study of the properties of fluids.

Homogeneous catalysts are usually more selective than heterogeneous catalysts, but they are often difficult to recycle. This organometallic complex containing molybdenum or tungsten and not containing a precious metal can be used to catalyze the hydrogenation and/or hydrosilylation of an organic compound. At the end of the reaction, the molybdenum or tungsten precipitates and can be recovered. Mild process conditions can be used to generate the catalyst, in line with the objectives of... read more

Homogeneous catalysts are usually more selective than heterogeneous catalysts, but they are often difficult to recycle. This organometallic complex containing molybdenum or tungsten and not containing a precious metal can be used to catalyze the hydrogenation and/or hydrosilylation of an organic compound. At the end of the reaction, the molybdenum or tungsten precipitates and can be recovered. Mild process conditions can be used to generate the catalyst, in line with the objectives of... read more

Conductive polymers are finding mainstream applications in organic light-emitting diodes, capacitors, batteries, organic transistors, sensors, solar cells, actuators, textiles, electromagnetic interference, electrostatic discharge, antistatic packaging, and paints and coatings. In order to make these materials more robust, it would be desirable to be able to crosslink them. However, crosslinking often damages the electronic properties of the polymers. By adding crosslinking species as side... read more

Platinum is an excellent catalyst for many reactions. However, it is also very expensive. The catalytic activity per gram of platinum can be increased by using a hollow nanoparticle consisting of an atomically thin shell of the metal surrounding a hollow core. When used as an electrocatalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction, this structure exhibits much higher platinum mass catalytic activity than solid nanoparticle electrocatalysts. These structures can be used in fuel cells and other... read more

Heavy metal contamination is a serious issue both in wastewater and in industrial solutions. By passing a solution contaminated with low to medium concentrations of heavy metals through an electroreactor and applying pulsed three-phase current to its electrode stacks, the heavy metal contaminants are separated for removal. The method is particularly useful for removal of chromium-VI.

Bulk heterojunction photovoltaic cells are a type of solar cell formed by sandwiching two semiconducting materials, one p-type and one n-type, between two electrodes. Charge carriers are produced at the junction between semiconductor types and diffuse toward an electrode where they can be harnessed to produce electricity. The inventive nanopillared electrodes reduce the distance charge carriers must travel to encounter an electrode.

This electrochemical cell can be used to fabricate nanoparticles coated with an atomically thin layer of noble metal. It is based on the rotating cylinder electrode configuration. A cylinder electrode is immersed in a cell with a slurry of nanoparticles. On rotation, the nanoparticles collide with the cylinder and become charged. In one example use, copper is plated onto the nanoparticles. The excess copper solution is then rinsed away, a suspension is created by adding an acid, and platinum... read more

During reactions, catalysts may be “poisoned,” dissolve, or corrode, leading to decreased performance and lifetime. The invention addresses this challenge by using an atomically thin layer of catalytically active noble metal to encapsulate a high-stability, self-protecting support particle. The support particles may be nanoparticles containing a component that easily passivates, creating a relatively inert surface layer which inhibits corrosion of the underlying constituents.... read more