Technique developed at University of Leicester enables cheaper and sustainable recycling of battery black mass

Could impact lithium-ion batteries used in billions of electronics and electric vehicles worldwide

Part of the Faraday Institution’s ReLiB project tackling the challenge of re-using and recycling lithium-ion batteries

Chemists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have successfully imaged the dynamic assembly of bilayer covalent organic frameworks (COFs) in solution, providing new insights into controlled stacking and moiré superlattice formation.

A team led by Professor Loh Kian Ping from the NUS Department of Chemistry has developed a method for synthesising large area two-layer 2D COFs at the liquid-substrate interface. This was achieved through the direct condensation of chemical molecules. Using scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) in solution, they successfully imaged the molecular assembly process, capturing the formation of both the monolayer and bilayer. More importantly, they show how molecular structure and solvent mixture influence the bilayer stacking modes, and how, under certain conditions, large-area moiré superlattices emerge from twisted bilayer stacking.

A groundbreaking technological advancement from Tel Aviv University has, for the first time, enabled the application of the scientific phenomenon of superlubricity in electronic components. As a result, the research team successfully harnessed frictionless sliding to significantly enhance the performance of memory components in computers and other electronic devices.

Researchers have developed a pipeline that integrates zero-shot AI detection and segmentation tools to achieve robust, automated segmentation of remote sensing images. By leveraging a sliding window hyper-inference approach and an outlier rejection step, the pipeline enhances the identification of features such as buildings, trees, and vehicles in aerial and satellite imagery. This solution is implemented as a user-friendly Python package, LangRS, making advanced remote sensing segmentation accessible to a wide range of users.

An early-career physicist mathematically connects timelike and spacelike form factors, opening the door to further insights into the inner workings of the strong force. A new lattice QCD calculation connects two seemingly disparate reactions involving the pion, the lightest particle governed by the strong interaction. One reaction is known as the spacelike process, where an electron is bounced off a pion. The second reaction, known as the timelike process, is when an electron and antielectron collide, annihilate each other, and produce two pions. The lattice QCD numerical calculation is simultaneously able to describe the spacelike and timelike processes, demonstrating the interconnectedness of different reactions described by QCD. While this connection had been observed experimentally, now physicists have the math to corroborate it.

Hydrogen nano-clusters at low temperatures display ‘superfluidity’—a quantum state of frictionless flow only previously observed in helium.

As traditional candles burn, they can contribute to indoor air pollution by emitting volatile compounds and smoke, which may pose inhalation risks. Scented wax melts are often marketed as safer alternatives to candles because they’re flame- and smoke-free. But in a study in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters, researchers describe how aroma compounds released from the melted wax can react with ozone in indoor air to form potentially toxic particles.