Background Lithium/sulfur (Li/S) batteries are garnering significant attention as a promising solution for next-generation electrochemical energy storage. Their potential to revolutionize the battery industry stems from several key advantages that address the limitations of current lithium-ion (Li-ion) technology. These advantages include an exceptionally...

Background Airborne dust emission can lead to adverse effects on human health (e.g., respiratory problems and cardiovascular issues) and the surrounding environment (e.g., contamination of water bodies and degradation of vegetation). One commonly used short-term method to mitigate airborne dust is spraying water on the soil surface. However, as the...

Background The Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University is actively engaged in research focused on sorbent materials used in direct air capture of carbon dioxide. Much of this research centers on understanding the chemical and physical properties of these materials and how they influence direct air capture performance. Carbon...

Glucose and oxygen are important components of human metabolic processes -- many diseases are associated with glucose transport and metabolic disorders including diabetes and cancer. Monitoring glucose and cell metabolism can provide invaluable information for understanding these diseases. There are many assays and sensors for both glucose and oxygen,...

The advent of epitaxial techniques for growing thin films has allowed for the growth of unnatural, metastable structures having properties previously unattainable in equilibrium systems. Specifically, quaternary compounds are of great interest for microelectronic and optoelectronic devices due to expectations that these materials will exhibit...

Single-cell and cell cluster optical tomography, or Cell-CT, has found increasing application in life sciences basic research. Two limitations to its use in this area are that it can image only fixed cells, and the lack of thixotropic gels that can support live cells and also satisfy refractive index constraints. Researchers at the Biodesign Institute...

The efficiency of biofuel production depends on the photosynthetic activity of microbes; to maximize their growth it is necessary to continually monitor the environmental conditions. Traditional monitoring methods (such as using electrodes to measure CO2 consumption and/or O2 generation) are typically time- and labor-intensive, have low throughput,...

Batteries operate by polarizing and transferring ions through liquid or molecular solvents. Recent developments have made use of organic cation salts in plastic crystalline states as solvents, in which lithium salts can be dissolved. These lithium salts are known as electrolytes. Unfortunately, they are associated with low conductivity. Other electrolytes...

The demand for electric automobiles is driving research to find new rechargeable battery options. Current lithium ion batteries are very heavy and require large amounts of space. Additionally, these batteries have the potential to overheat during charging and cause fires. Lithium ion batteries are used because they can be recharged, but the charging...

Civil and geotechnical engineers must fortify sandy soil in order to build durable structures on loose terrain. Effective soil cementation can be achieved by microbial induced carbonate precipitation (MICP), a process using microbes to generate urease enzymes that catalyze calcium carbonate precipitation. However, MICP is limited by the large size of...