One of the efforts to become fossil fuel independent is to use biofuel generated by crops, but it stirred a big debate due to lack of food and fertile ground around the world. Using algae as biofuel can be up to 300 times more efficient than conventional crops, and researcher from the Iowa State University ... »

Although it has been referred as “fool’s gold” throughout the history, dating to times of ancient Rome and tricking prospectors for centuries, yellow-toned mineral pyrite found its use as an inexpensive and promising option for solar energy. Oregon State University (OSU) researchers discovered related compounds that use the advantages of the material without the downsides ... »

A combined team of researchers from the Oxford University and University of Sheffield used a novel method to analyze the energy used in the formation of fibers in natural silk and synthetic materials in order to demonstrate that natural unspun silks taken from a silkworm are a thousand times more efficient than common plastics when ... »

Aside developing more efficient methods in hydrogen production, researchers around the world are developing ways to store hydrogen for subsequent use. University of Oregon (UO) chemists developed a boron-nitrogen-based liquid-phase storage material for hydrogen which is more suitable than currently known ways to store hydrogen because it can perform safely at room temperature and is ... »

According to a Professor Eric Wachsman from the University of Maryland, the lack of funding for fuel cell research is putting the country at risk of falling behind in the development and implementation of the most efficient means of converting fuel to electricity. Fuel cells have up to three times the efficiency of an internal ... »

A team of researchers from UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology has developed the World’s lightest material which is about one hundred times lighter than Styrofoam. Developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the novel material could be used for battery electrodes and acoustic, vibration or shock energy absorption. “Modern ... »

A team of researchers from Stanford University School of Engineering has devised an ultrafast nanoscale light-emitting diode (LED) that is orders of magnitude lower in power consumption than today’s laser-based systems. It is also able to transmit data at the very rapid rate of 10 billion bits per second, making it suitable for use at ... »