Thermodynamics News

July 2, 2024

Top Headlines

Characterization of the Extraordinary Thermoelectric Properties of Cadmium Arsenide Thin Films

June 27, 2024 — If there's one thing we humans are good at, it's producing heat. Significant amounts, and in many cases most of the energy we generate and put into our systems we lose as heat, whether it be our ...

Common Plastics Could Passively Cool and Heat Buildings With the Seasons

June 27, 2024 — By restricting radiant heat flows between buildings and their environment to specific wavelengths, coatings engineered from common materials can achieve energy savings and thermal comfort that goes beyond what traditional building envelopes can ...

New Fabric Makes Urban Heat Islands More Bearable

June 13, 2024 — Researchers detail a new wearable fabric that can help urban residents survive the worst impacts of massive heat caused by global climate change, with applications in clothing, building and car design, and food storage. By addressing both direct ...

New Plasma Escape Mechanism Could Protect Fusion Vessels from Excessive Heat

June 11, 2024 — The exhaust heat generated by a fusing plasma in a commercial-scale reactor may not be as damaging to the vessel's innards as once thought, according to new research about escaping plasma ...

Latest Headlines

updated 6:59pm EDT

Scientists Probe Chilling Behavior of Promising Solid-State Cooling Material

July 1, 2024 — A research team has bridged a knowledge gap in atomic-scale heat motion. This new understanding holds promise for enhancing materials to advance an ...

Small, Adsorbent 'Fins' Collect Humidity Rather Than Swim Through Water

June 26, 2024 — Clean, safe water is a limited resource and access to it depends on local bodies of water. But even dry regions have some water vapor in the air. To harvest small amounts of humidity, researchers ...

3D-Printed Mini-Actuators Can Move Small Soft Robots, Lock Them Into New Shapes

June 11, 2024 — Researchers have demonstrated miniature soft hydraulic actuators that can be used to control the deformation and motion of soft robots that are less ...

Researchers Engineer New Approach for Controlling Thermal Emission

June 10, 2024 — If a material absorbs light, it will heat up. That heat must go somewhere, and the ability to control where and how much heat is emitted can protect or even hide such devices as satellites. An ...

Newly Developed Material Logs and Stores Stress Information of Infrastructure

June 6, 2024 — A new material may be the key to quickly flag damaged infrastructure. This material offers a way to reduce the manpower required to regularly monitor ...

Pushing an Information Engine to Its Limits

June 6, 2024 — The molecules that make up the matter around us are in constant motion. What if we could harness that energy and put it to use? Over 150 years ago Maxwell theorized that if molecules' motion could be ...

Overcoming Barriers to Heat Pump Adoption in Cold Climates and Avoiding the 'Energy Poverty Trap'

May 31, 2024 — Converting home heating systems from natural gas furnaces to electric heat pumps is seen as a way to address climate change by reducing greenhouse ...

Researchers Create Materials With Unique Combo of Stiffness, Thermal Insulation

May 29, 2024 — Researchers have demonstrated the ability to engineer materials that are both stiff and capable of insulating against heat. This combination of ...

Performance of Eco-Friendly Cooling Applications Enhanced

May 28, 2024 — Researchers have developed a sustainable and controllable strategy to manipulate interfacial heat transfer, paving the way for improving the performance of eco-friendly cooling in various ...

Renewable Grid: Recovering Electricity from Heat Storage Hits 44% Efficiency

May 23, 2024 — Closing in on the theoretical maximum efficiency, devices for turning heat into electricity are edging closer to being practical for use on the grid, ...

Earlier Headlines

Breakthrough Discovery Uses Engineered Surfaces to Shed Heat

May 24, 2024 — Splash a few drops of water on a hot pan and if the pan is hot enough, the water will sizzle and the droplets of water seem to roll and float, hovering above the surface. The temperature at which ...

Strings That Can Vibrate Forever (Kind Of)

May 22, 2024 — Researchers have engineered string-like resonators capable of vibrating longer at ambient temperature than any previously known solid-state object -- approaching what is currently only achievable ...

New Polystyrene Recycling Process Could Be World's First to Be Both Economical and Energy-Efficient

May 22, 2024 — Engineers have modeled a new way to recycle polystyrene that could become the first viable way of making the material ...

Powering Wearable Devices With High-Performing Carbon Nanotube Yarns

May 20, 2024 — Carbon nanotube (CNT) yarns are promising for flexible and fabric-type wearable materials that can convert waste heat into thermoelectricity. To improve the thermoelectric properties of CNT yarns, ...

A Powerful Tool Speeds Success in Achieving Highly Efficient Thermoelectric Materials

May 16, 2024 — Thermoelectric materials could play an important role in the clean energy transition, as they can produce electricity from sources of heat that would otherwise go to waste. Researchers report a new ...

Using AI to Improve Building Energy Use and Comfort

May 15, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new method that can lead to significant energy savings in buildings. The team identified 28 major heat loss regions in a multi-unit residential building with the most ...

Scientists Generate Heat Over 1,000 Degrees Celsius With Solar Power Instead of Fossil Fuel

May 15, 2024 — Instead of burning fossil fuels to smelt steel and cook cement, researchers in Switzerland want to use heat from the sun. The proof-of-concept study uses synthetic quartz to trap solar energy at ...

Using Artificial Intelligence to Speed Up and Improve the Most Computationally-Intensive Aspects of Plasma Physics in Fusion

May 14, 2024 — Researchers are using artificial intelligence to perfect the design of the vessels surrounding the super-hot plasma, optimize heating methods and maintain stable control of the reaction for ...

Exceptionally Large Transverse Thermoelectric Effect Produced by Combining Thermoelectric and Magnetic Materials

May 13, 2024 — A research team has demonstrated that a simple stack of thermoelectric and magnetic material layers can exhibit a substantially larger transverse thermoelectric effect -- energy conversion between ...

New Work Extends the Thermodynamic Theory of Computation

May 13, 2024 — Physicists and computer scientists have recently expanded the modern theory of the thermodynamics of computation. By combining approaches from statistical physics and computer science, the ...

Transforming Common Soft Magnets Into a Next-Generation Thermoelectric Conversion Materials by 3 Minutes Heat Treatment

May 9, 2024 — A research team has demonstrated that an iron-based amorphous alloy, widely used as a soft magnetic material in transformers and motors, can be transformed into a 'transverse' ...

The Big Quantum Chill: Scientists Modify Common Lab Refrigerator to Cool Faster With Less Energy

May 1, 2024 — Scientists have dramatically reduced the time and energy required to chill materials to temperatures near absolute zero. Their prototype refrigerator could prove a boon for the burgeoning quantum ...

Diamond Dust Shines Bright in Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Apr. 25, 2024 — An unexpected discovery surprised a scientist: nanometer-sized diamond particles, which were intended for a completely different purpose, shone brightly in a magnetic resonance imaging experiment -- ...

Atom-by-Atom: Imaging Structural Transformations in 2D Materials

Apr. 17, 2024 — Silicon-based electronics are approaching their physical limitations and new materials are needed to keep up with current technological demands. Two-dimensional (2D) materials have a rich array of ...

Cooler Transformers Could Help Electric Grid

Apr. 16, 2024 — Simulations on the Stampede2 supercomputer of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) are helping scientists engineer solutions to overheating of grid transformers -- a critical component of the ...

Researchers Advance Pigment Chemistry With Moon-Inspired Reddish Magentas

Apr. 16, 2024 — A researcher who made color history in 2009 with a vivid blue pigment has developed durable, reddish magentas inspired by lunar mineralogy and ancient Egyptian ...

Rock Permeability, Microquakes Link May Be a Boon for Geothermal Energy

Apr. 11, 2024 — Using machine learning, researchers have tied low-magnitude microearthquakes to the permeability of subsurface rocks beneath the Earth, a discovery that could have implications for improving ...

New Device Gathers, Stores Electricity in Remote Settings

Apr. 9, 2024 — Wirelessly connected devices perform an expanding array of applications, such as monitoring the condition of machinery and remote sensing in agricultural settings. These applications hold much ...

Proof-of-Principle Demonstration of 3-D Magnetic Recording

Apr. 8, 2024 — Research groups have made a breakthrough in the field of hard disk drives (HDD) by demonstrating the feasibility of multi-level recording using a three-dimensional magnetic recording medium to store ...

Elastocaloric Cooling: Refrigerator Cools by Flexing Artificial Muscles

Apr. 2, 2024 — There is room for just one small bottle in the world's first refrigerator that is cooled with artificial muscles made of nitinol, a nickel-titanium alloy. But the mini-prototype is ...