Materials science Content

Laser Purified Silica

Andy Fell — October 14, 2024 - 11:51am

Materials science and engineering researchers at the University of California, Davis, and materials company Homerun Resources, Inc., have developed a groundbreaking one-step laser-pulse technique to purify raw silica sand to over 99.99% purity. The method is the first phase in a collaborative effort to create a pathway to a carbon-neutral process of deriving silicon from silica sand.

Physicists Expand Equation of State for Fermi-Hubbard Model

Andy Fell — March 15, 2024 - 2:42pm

When studying complex materials, condensed matter physicists often harness the Fermi-Hubbard model to explore a material’s electric, magnetic and superconductive properties. But the model isn’t without limitations. Historically, its theoretical and experimental applications have been limited to atoms with electrons that exist in two possible states.

Ultrafast Laser Pulses Could Lessen Data Storage Energy Needs

Andy Fell — January 16, 2024 - 11:27am

A discovery from an experiment with magnets and lasers could be a boon to energy-efficient data storage.

“We wanted to study the physics of light-magnet interaction,” said Rahul Jangid, who led the data analysis for the project while earning his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at 51�ԹϺ�� Davis under associate professor Roopali Kukreja. “What happens when you hit a magnetic domain with very short pulses of laser light?”

Using Machine Learning to Find Reliable and Low-Cost Solar Cells

Andy Fell — April 17, 2023 - 12:04pm

Researchers at the University of California, Davis College of Engineering are using machine learning to identify new materials for high-efficiency solar cells. Using high-throughput experiments and machine learning-based algorithms, they have found it is possible to forecast the materials’ dynamic behavior with very high accuracy, without the need to perform as many experiments.

Using Machine Learning to Predict Properties of Complex Materials

Andy Fell — July 03, 2020 - 8:22am

Germanium-manganese compounds can have a wide variety of structures with different electronic, magnetic or thermal properties. Scientists are interested in these materials which could have applications in next-generation technology for memory storage, sensors or electronics, among other things. But working out the properties of these materials can be challenging, especially for compounds that only exist under conditions of high heat or pressure.

Anti-Solar Cells: A Photovoltaic Cell That Works at Night

Andy Fell — January 29, 2020 - 1:51pm

What if solar cells worked at night? That’s no joke, according to Jeremy Munday, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at 51�ԹϺ�� Davis. In fact, a specially designed photovoltaic cell could generate up to 50 watts of power per square meter under ideal conditions at night, about a quarter of what a conventional solar panel can generate in daytime, according to a concept paper by Munday and graduate student Tristan Deppe.