Metals Tech

Two new electric vehicle charging stations were unveiled on the campus of the Marine Biological Laboratory April 24.

The stations, the first installed on the MBL campus in Woods Hole, are set up directly outside the carpentry shop in the Swope Center parking lot on North Street. Use of the stations is reserved for MBL staff.

“We really think this will be a driver for more electric vehicles in Woods Hole,” Susan Moran, chairman of the Falmouth Board of Selectmen, said during an event April 24 outside the Swope Center.

MBL staff must sign up to use the charging stations, which take two hours to charge an electrical vehicle compared to five hours at a home charging station. The cost is $1.25 per hour, but in an effort to deter long-term parking in the spots, the hourly rate increases to $5 after the fourth hour.

The new stations were installed through a partnership between MBL and Eversource, whose EV Make Ready program promotes the installation of charging stations throughout the state. James Cater of Eversource said motor vehicles account for 40 percent of green house gas emissions in Massachusetts.

The two MBL stations are among 400 stations that Eversource plans to help install through the program across the state, Cater said.

Stephanie Madsen, who is the sustainability coordinator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said Eversource and MBL shared the cost of purchasing and installing the new stations. She said the utility paid for the electrical work, paving, and trenching needed to install the stations, while MBL paid approximately $11,000 for the actual stations.

In installing the new stations, MBL is following the lead of WHOI, which currently has eight charging stations installed across four locations in Woods Hole.

Madsen said increased requests from MBL staff to use WHOI’s charging stations in part helped spur efforts to bring new ones to the Swope lot.

“People are buying electric vehicles,” Madsen said. “It’s the future and [MBL and WHOI] are ready for it.”

Marie Russell, director of facilities and services at MBL, said the organization could bring more charging stations in the future if the demand calls for it.

Wave-energy developer Wello new device will soon start its voyage from Tallinn, Estonia to Orkney.

Penguin WEC2 is designed to deliver 380% more power than the previous model, WEC1.

It is funded by both the European Commission’s research and innovation program Horizon 2020 Clean Energy From Ocean Waves (CEFOW), and project participants.

It will be put through its paces by the European Marine Energy Centre, based in Stromness.

It all started with a bang…the big bang!

The explosive power of hydrogen fueled a chain reaction that led to the world we have today.

Now this power is being deployed on Earth to supply the energy needs of tomorrow.

Visualizing the Power of Hydrogen

Today’s infographic comes to us from the Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association, and it outlines how hydrogen and fuel cell technology is harnessing the power of the universe to potentially fuel an energy revolution.

What is Hydrogen, and How’s it Used?

With one proton and one electron, hydrogen sits at the very beginning of the periodic table.

Despite hydrogen being the most common molecule in the universe, it is rarely found in its elemental state here on Earth. In fact, almost all hydrogen on the planet is bonded to other elements and can only be released via chemical processes such as steam reforming or electrolysis.

There are five ways hydrogen is being used today:

1. Building heat and power
2. Energy storage and power generation
3. Transportation
4. Industry energy
5. Industry feedstock

However, what really unleashes the power of hydrogen is fuel cell technology. A fuel cell converts the chemical power of hydrogen into electrical power.

Hydrogen Unleashed: The Fuel Cell

In the early 1960’s, NASA first deployed fuel cells to power the electrical components of the Gemini and Apollo space capsules. Since then, this technology has been deployed in everything from the vehicle you drive, the train you take, and how your favorite products are delivered to your doorstep.

Nations around the world are committing to build hydrogen fueling stations to meet the growth in adoption of fuel cell technology for transportation.

Hydrogen: A Green Energy Solution

Hydrogen fuel and fuel cell technology delivers green solutions in seven ways.

1. Decarbonizing industrial energy use
2. Acting as a buffer to increase energy system resilience
3. Enabling large-scale renewable energy integration and power generation
4. Decarbonizing transportation
5. Decarbonizing building heat and power
6. Distribution energy across sectors and regions
7. Providing clean feedstock for industry

According to a recent report by McKinsey, hydrogen and fuel cell technology has the potential to remove six gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions and employ more than 30 million people by 2050, all while creating a $2.5-trillion market.

This is technology that can be deployed today, with the potential to transform how we live and power our economies in a sustainable way.

Scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Solargiga Energy in China have discovered that caffeine can help make a promising alternative to traditional solar cells more efficient at converting light to electricity. Their research, published April 25 in the journal Joule, may enable this cost-effective renewable energy technology to compete on the market with silicon solar cells.

The idea began as a joke over morning coffee. “One day, as we were discussing perovskite solar cells, our colleague Rui Wang said, ‘If we need coffee to boost our energy then what about perovskites? Would they need coffee to perform better?’” recalls Jingjing Xue, a Ph.D. candidate in Professor Yang Yang’s research group at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UCLA.

The offhand comment led the team to recall that the caffeine in coffee is an alkaloid compound containing molecular structures that could interact with the precursors of perovskite materials—compounds with a particular crystal structure that form the light-harvesting layer in a class of solar cells. Previous attempts to improve the thermal stability of these solar cells have included enhancing the perovskite layer by introducing compounds such as dimethyl sulfoxide, but researchers have struggled to boost the cells’ efficiency and long-term stability. No one had tried caffeine.

Realizing they might be onto something, the team set aside their coffee and began investigating further. They added caffeine to the perovskite layer of forty solar cells and used infrared spectroscopy (which uses infrared radiation to identify chemical compounds) to determine that the caffeine had successfully bonded with the material.

Conducting further infrared spectroscopy tests, they observed that the carbonyl groups (a carbon atom double bonded to an oxygen) in caffeine interacted with lead ions in the layer to create a “molecular lock.” This interaction increased the minimum amount of energy required for the perovskite film to react, boosting the solar cell efficiency from 17 percent to over 20 percent. The molecular lock continued to occur when the material was heated, which could help prevent heat from breaking down the layer.

“We were surprised by the results,” says Wang, who is also a Ph.D. candidate in Yang’s research group at UCLA. “During our first try incorporating caffeine, our perovskite solar cells already reached almost the highest efficiency we achieved in the paper.”

But while caffeine appears to significantly improve the performance of cells that utilize perovskite to absorb sunlight, the researchers do not think it will be useful for other types of solar cells. The unique molecular structure of caffeine only allows it to interact with perovskite precursors, which may give this solar cell variety an edge on the market. Perovskite solar cells already have the advantage of being cheaper and more flexible than their silicon counterparts. They are also easier to manufacture—perovskite cells can be fabricated from solution-based precursors as opposed to solid crystal ingots. With further research, Wang believes caffeine may facilitate large-scale production of perovskite solar cells.

“Caffeine can help the perovskite achieve high crystallinity, low defects, and good stability,” he says. “This means it can potentially play a role in the scalable production of perovskite solar cells.”

In order to continue enhancing the solar cells’ efficiency and stability, the team next plans to further investigate the chemical structure of the caffeine-incorporated perovskite material and to identify the best protective materials for perovskites.

You’ve never heard Dean Martin like this.

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences transmitted a recording of Martin’s classic “Volare” wirelessly via a semiconductor laser—the first time a laser has been used as a radio frequency transmitter.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers demonstrated a laser that can emit microwaves wirelessly, modulate them, and receive external radio frequency signals.

“The research opens the door to new types of hybrid electronic-photonic devices and is the first step toward ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi,” said Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering, at SEAS and senior author of the study.

This research builds on previous work from the Capasso Lab. In 2017, the researchers discovered that an infrared frequency comb in a quantum cascade laser could be used to generate terahertz frequencies, the submillimeter wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that could move data hundreds of times faster than today’s wireless platforms. In 2018, the team found that quantum cascade laser frequency combs could also act as integrated transmitters or receivers to efficiently encode information.

Now, the researchers have figured out a way to extract and transmit wireless signals from laser frequency combs.

Unlike conventional lasers, which emit a single frequency of light, laser frequency combs emit multiple frequencies simultaneously, evenly spaced to resemble the teeth of a comb. In 2018, the researchers discovered that inside the laser, the different frequencies of light beat together to generate microwave radiation. The light inside the cavity of the laser caused electrons to oscillate at microwave frequencies—which are within the communications spectrum.

“If you want to use this device for Wi-Fi, you need to be able to put useful information in the microwave signals and extract that information from the device,” said Marco Piccardo, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and first author of the paper.

The first thing the new device needed to transmit microwave signals was an antenna. So, the researchers etched a gap into the top electrode of the device, creating a dipole antenna (like the rabbit ears on the top of an old TV). Next, they modulated the frequency comb to encode information on the microwave radiation created by the beating light of the comb. Then, using the antenna, the microwaves are radiated out from the device, containing the encoded information. The radio signal is received by a horn antenna, filtered and sent to a computer.

The researchers also demonstrated that the laser radio could receive signals. The team was able to remotely control the behavior of the laser using microwave signals from another device.

“This all-in-one, integrated device holds great promise for wireless communication,” said Piccardo. “While the dream of terahertz wireless communication is still a ways away, this research provides a clear roadmap showing how to get there.”

The Harvard Office of Technology Development has protected the intellectual property relating to this project and is exploring commercialization opportunities.

The human body is held together by an intricate cable system of tendons and muscles, engineered by nature to be tough and highly stretchable. An injury to any of these tissues, particularly in a major joint like the shoulder or knee, can require surgical repairs and weeks of limited mobility to fully heal.

Now MIT engineers have come up with a tissue engineering design that may enable flexible range of motion in injured tendons and muscles during healing.

The team has engineered small coils lined with living cells, that they say could act as stretchy scaffolds for repairing damaged muscles and tendons. The coils are made from hundreds of thousands of biocompatible nanofibers, tightly twisted into coils resembling miniature nautical rope, or yarn.

The researchers coated the yarn with living cells, including muscle and mesenchymal stem cells, which naturally grow and align along the yarn, into patterns similar to muscle tissue. The researchers found the yarn’s coiled configuration helps to keep cells alive and growing, even as the team stretched and bent the yarn multiple times.

In the future, the researchers envision doctors could line patients’ damaged tendons and muscles with this new flexible material, which would be coated with the same cells that make up the injured tissue. The “yarn’s” stretchiness could help maintain a patient’s range of motion while new cells continue to grow to replace the injured tissue.

“When you repair muscle or tendon, you really have to fix their movement for a period of time, by wearing a boot, for example,” says Ming Guo, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “With this nanofiber yarn, the hope is, you won’t have to wearing anything like that.”

Guo and his colleagues published their results this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His MIT co-authors are Yiwei Li, Yukun Hao, Satish Gupta, and Jiliang Hu. The team also includes Fengyun Guo, Yaqiong Wang, Nü Wang, and Yong Zhao, of Beihang University.

Stuck on gum

The new nanofiber yarn was inspired in part by the group’s previous work on lobster membranes, where they found the crustacean’s tough yet stretchy underbelly is due to a layered, plywood-like structure. Each microscopic layer contains hundreds of thousands of nanofibers, all aligned in the same direction, at an angle that is slightly offset from the layer just above and below.

The nanofibers’ precise alignment makes each individual layer highly stretchable in the direction in which the fibers are arranged. Guo, whose work focuses on biomechanics, saw the lobster’s natural stretchy patterning as an inspiration for designing artificial tissues, particularly for high-stretch regions of the body such as the shoulder and knee.

Guo says biomedical engineers have embedded muscle cells in other stretchy materials such as hydrogels, in attempts to fashion flexible artificial tissues. However, while the hydrogels themselves are stretchy and tough, the embedded cells tend to snap when stretched, like tissue paper stuck on a piece of gum.

“When you largely deform a material like hydrogel, it will be stretched just fine, but the cells can’t take it,” Guo says. “A living cell is sensitive, and when you stretch them, they die.”

Shelter in a slinky

The researchers realized that simply considering the stretchability of a material would not be enough to design an artificial tissue. That material would also have to be able to protect cells from the severe strains produced when the material is stretched.

The team looked to actual muscles and tendons for further inspiration, and observed that the tissues are made from strands of aligned protein fibers, coiled together to form microscopic helices, along which muscle cells grow. It turns out that, when the protein coils stretch out, the muscle cells simply rotate, like tiny pieces of tissue paper stuck on a slinky.

Guo looked to replicate this natural, stretchy, cell-protecting structure as an artificial tissue material. To do so, the team first created hundreds of thousands of aligned nanofibers, using electrospinning, a technique that uses electric force to spin ultrathin fibers out from a solution of polymer or other materials. In this case, he generated nanofibers made from biocompatible materials such as cellulose.

The team then bundled aligned fibers together and twisted them slowly to form first a spiral, and then an even tighter coil, ultimately resembling yarn and measuring about half a millimeter wide. Finally, they seeded live cells along each coil, including muscle cells, mesenchymal stem cells, and human breast cancer cells.

The researchers then repeatedly stretched each coil up to six times its original length, and found that the majority of cells on each coil remained alive and continued to grow as the coils were stretched. Interestingly, when they seeded cells on looser, spiral-shaped structures made from the same materials, they found cells were less likely to remain alive. Guo says the structure of the tighter coils seems to “shelter” cells from damage.

Going forward, the group plans to fabricate similar coils from other biocompatible materials such as silk, which could ultimately be injected into an injured tissue. The coils could provide a temporary, flexible scaffold for new cells to grow. Once the cells successfully repair an injury, the scaffold can dissolve away.

“We may be able to one day embed these structures under the skin, and the [coil] material would eventually be digested, while the new cells stay put,” Guo says. “The nice thing about this method is, it’s really general, and we can try different materials. This may push the limit of tissue engineering a lot.”