Clean water scarcity leads to disease, death, and often international tension. Limited clean water supplies face further stress due to its required use in a number of industrial processes. Reverse osmosis (RO) is currently the best method of desalination (making fresh water from seawater), but the energy requirements and costs for this process are tremendous [...]
At Sandia National Laboratories, researcher Cy Fujimoto, in partnership with Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation (AFCC), is developing a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) that can operate optimally with minimum on-board humidification and low gas crossover. Current fuel cell vehicles run optimally when the air and hydrogen fuel is humidified, which requires high pressures and additional systems [...]
Semiconductor nanowire lasers have attracted intense interest as promising compact, low-power coherent light sources for on-chip applications, many of which (e.g., imaging, multiplex communication, data storage) desire high beam quality and spectral purity—conditions that can be satisfied by single-mode operation in nanowire lasers. However, due to the lack of mode-selection mechanisms, most reported nanowire lasers exhibit [...]
In response to increased interest in wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductor projects by DOE, on October 30, 2012, Sandia hosted a one-day brainstorming workshop aimed at identifying the value, scope, structure, and partnership opportunities of a potential National Center for Wide Bandgap Semiconductors. Participants from DOE, industry, academia, and other labs participated in a series of breakout [...]