Energy

Energy•Aug 29, 2026

A Gallium Nitride Transistor Withstood More Than 3,400 Volts

EPFL researchers built a gallium-nitride transistor on silicon that withstood more than 3.4 kilovolts while keeping resistance low. Its charge-balanced design could shrink high-voltage power converters, but it remains a laboratory device without demonstrated converter-level efficiency, manufacturing yield or long-term field reliability.

Energy•Aug 25, 2026

A Plastic Mold Helped Make a 15.7-Pound Metal Part Without Welding

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and A.J. Tuck used a printed plastic form, electroforming and high-pressure processing to make five leak-free nickel containers and one solid 15.7-pound component. The result could simplify difficult reactor-part manufacturing, but only simple cylinders have completed the full process.

Energy•Aug 22, 2026

A Spinning Tool Made Strong Motor Material From Metal Powder

Researchers consolidated iron-silicon powder into dense, strong soft-magnetic disks with one friction-based forging step. The material combined tensile strength above 650 MPa with useful magnetic properties, but only small laboratory specimens were tested, not a working electric motor or an industrial production line.

Energy•Aug 22, 2026

A Water-Based Battery Survived 60,000 Fast-Charge Cycles

A laboratory zinc-iodine cell completed more than 60,000 charge-discharge cycles when charged in three minutes. A starch-derived polymer cage kept reactive iodine compounds near the cathode, but the result comes from small experimental cells and does not yet establish pack-level cost, safety or durability.

Energy•Aug 13, 2026

A Full-Size Perovskite Solar Panel Reaches 22% Efficiency and Passes Reliability Tests

A 0.72-square-metre perovskite solar module achieved a certified 22% total-area efficiency and passed the IEC 61215 qualification sequence. The result tackles two persistent barriers to commercial perovskite panels, scale and durability, but accelerated tests and a three-month field comparison cannot yet prove decades of service.

Energy•Aug 11, 2026

The Same Silver Catalyst Does Two Different Jobs Inside a Solid Oxide Cell

Researchers at Seoul National University, KAIST, and the Korea Basic Science Institute found that silver nanoparticles in a solid oxide cell react at their boundary with the electrode when generating electricity, but switch to reacting across their own surface when producing hydrogen, a distinction that could let engineers design separate, optimized electrodes for each mode.

Energy•Aug 11, 2026

A Nanocarbon Cage Could Make Hydrogen Fuel Cells Cheap Enough for Data Centers

Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis built a nanostructured carbon support that keeps platinum-cobalt fuel-cell catalyst particles from clumping even at 1,000°C, solving a long-standing activity-versus-durability trade-off. The catalyst kept 85% of its performance after 150,000 stress cycles, a step toward cheaper, longer-lasting hydrogen power.

Energy•Aug 5, 2026

AI Screened 100,000 Solvents for a Sodium Battery, but Chemists Still Tested the Final 27

MIT researchers used a machine-learning pipeline to generate 100,000 electrolyte-solvent candidates, narrowed them to 27 laboratory tests and identified a smaller molecule that improved ion transport. A sodium-metal test cell retained about 85.9% capacity after 1,600 cycles, but commercial scale, safety and manufacturing remain unproved.

Energy•Jul 31, 2026

A Laser Powered a Drone Propeller From a Distance, but the Drone Has Not Flown Yet

Researchers built a wing-mounted receiver that converted green laser light into electricity at 38.49% efficiency and powered a stationary drone model’s propeller. The result could support longer missions one day, but it was a laboratory proof of concept, not an in-flight charging demonstration.

Energy•Jul 28, 2026

A Tiny Nuclear Battery Is Being Tested in Space. It Could Run Sensors for Decades

City Labs has launched a CubeSat carrying a tritium betavoltaic battery for its first orbital demonstration. The technology could provide decades of low-power electricity for remote sensors, medical devices and shadowed space missions, but it produces only tiny amounts of power and does not run the satellite itself.

Energy•Jul 27, 2026

How Silver-Exchanged Zeolite Could Separate Tritium for Nuclear Fusion Fuel Recycling

A silver-exchanged zeolite separated three hydrogen isotopes and showed 244-fold selectivity for tritium over ordinary hydrogen at liquid-nitrogen temperature. The laboratory result could support more efficient fusion-fuel recycling, but capacity, radiation resistance, repeated operation and reactor-scale economics remain unproved.

Energy•Jul 17, 2026

A New Molecular Layer Could Make Tandem Solar Cells More Efficient and Durable

Researchers replaced a widely used C60 electron-transport layer with a carborane-based molecule that reduced energy losses, strengthened adhesion and raised laboratory efficiency by 1.5 percentage points in perovskite cells and 2.4 points in perovskite-silicon tandems. The material is commercially available, but full-module durability and manufacturing economics remain unproven.

Energy•Jul 14, 2026

Four-Minute Sodium-Metal Battery Tackles the Dendrite Problem

A quasi-solid electrolyte enabled a laboratory sodium-metal battery to combine very fast charging with encouraging cycle life and resistance to short circuits. Scaling, temperature stability and pack-level safety remain decisive challenges.