Rice University Archives

Renewables, Energy Storage, & Managing The Utility Grid Of The Future

December 7th, 2018 | by Steve Hanley

The world of electrical energy is changing before our eyes. Some utility companies will go out of business while others will thrive.

Graphene Could Lower The Cost Of Renewable Hydrogen For FCEVs

October 23rd, 2015 | by Tina Casey

A new graphene enabled catalyst could lead to low cost, large scale hydrogen production for fuel cell electric vehicles and power-to-gas systems

The Inevitable Solar-Powered March Of The Hydrogen Fuel Cell

September 7th, 2015 | by Tina Casey

Hydrogen is slowly but surely shedding its bad boy image as research progresses on solar powered water-splitting for hydrogen fuel cells

More Good News For Fuel Cell EV Fans

April 17th, 2015 | by Tina Casey

Take heart, fuel cell electric vehicle early adopters! You can look forward to cheaper, greener hydrogen for your personal mobility needs

Black Or Yellow, There’s Gold In That Thar Wastewater

April 7th, 2015 | by Tina Casey

Yet another sustainability threefer for algae: producing algae biofuel from municipal wastewater, removing pollutants, and saving energy, too

Flakey New “Foam Party” Graphene Battery Breakthrough

December 10th, 2014 | by Tina Casey

Researchers at Rice University have whipped up a flexible foam-based, flakey graphene battery in the form of an inexpensive microsupercapacitor

Graphene Cousin “Flips” For Energy Storage Breakthrough

November 4th, 2014 | by Tina Casey

A research team from Rice University has achieved an energy storage breakthrough based on a new, relatively cheap and simple method for manufacturing Mo

Solar Energy News Buffet

July 26th, 2014 | by Zachary Shahan

As noted in an article yesterday, I’ve been very busy in the past month (well, months…) moving into a new home and [&hellip

Diamane — Extremely Thin Films Of Diamond Can Be Created Without High-Pressure

February 8th, 2014 | by James Ayre

Diamane — an extremely thin film of diamond only a few atoms thick — can be created without the extreme [&hellip

Cheap Substitute For Silicon Grows From Carbon Nanotube “Seeds”

August 27th, 2013 | by Tina Casey

While we’ve been busy touting graphene as the “miracle material of the new millennium,” there’s another advanced materials kid on [&hellip

Elusive Silicon Battery Not So Elusive, Thanks To Carbon Nanotubes

August 7th, 2013 | by Tina Casey

Silicon could provide lithium-ion batteries with ten times their typical storage capacity, but this ubiquitous semiconductor is notoriously fragile when [&hellip

Solar Steam — Off-Grid Solar-Powered Sterilization System Created

July 24th, 2013 | by James Ayre

An impressive new solar-powered sterilization system — capable of converting as much as 80% of the energy found in sunlight [&hellip

Harvard U. Researchers Transform Bacteria Into A Biofuel Powerhouse

July 3rd, 2013 | by Tina Casey

A research team from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering together and Harvard Medical School is on track [&hellip

Boron For Better Batteries

May 24th, 2013 | by Guest Contributor

Tina about one year ago wrote about Rice University research exploring the benefits from the use of boron in batteries. Rice [&hellip

Graphene Carbon Nanotube Hybrid Created, A Seamless 3-D Material For Energy Storage & Electronics

December 4th, 2012 | by James Ayre

Researchers from Rice University have created a ‘seamless’ graphene and nanotube hybrid. The material is probably the best electrode [&hellip

New Silicon Batteries Outperform Typical Li-ion Chemistries

November 2nd, 2012 | by Nicholas Brown

Rice University researchers have developed yet another li-ion (lithium-ion) silicon battery anode, but this time it is a crushed, [&hellip

Discarded Silicon Gets New Life In Lithium-Ion Batteries

September 10th, 2012 | by James Ayre

A new way to create the flexible components of rechargeable lithium-ion (LI) batteries from discarded silicon has been developed by [&hellip

Spray-On Lithium-Ion Batteries Can Turn Any Surface Into a Battery

July 9th, 2012 | by Nicholas Brown

Rice University researchers have developed an unusual type of lithium-ion battery. It is a liquid that can be painted [&hellip

Turn Your Beer Mug into a Paint-On Solar Charged Battery

June 29th, 2012 | by Tina Casey

Paintable and printable solar cells are lowering the cost of solar power, and now researchers at Rice University have come [&hellip

U.S. Navy Rides the Terahertz Wave to Next-Gen Electronics

May 9th, 2012 | by Tina Casey

The U.S. Navy is behind a push to exploit one of the “hottest” areas of the electromagnetic spectrum, the terahertz [&hellip

Carbon Nanotubes Improve, Cut Cost of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

April 23rd, 2012 | by Zachary Shahan

Coincidentally, or not, researchers at Rice University and Tsinghua University have come to essentially the same conclusion as researchers [&hellip

Nanoantenna Surprise Discovery Could Make Solar Cells More Efficient

May 9th, 2011 | by Guest Contributor

Basic scientific curiosity paid off in unexpected ways when Rice University researchers investigating the fundamental physics of nanomaterials discovered a new technology that could dramatically improve solar energy panels