Biofuel experts have long sought a more economically-viable way to turn algae into biocrude oil to power vehicles, ships and even jets. University of Utah researchers believe they have found an answer. They have developed an unusually rapid method to deliver cost-effective algal biocrude in large quantities using a specially-designed jet mixer. Packed inside the…
Lightning-Fast Communications
A mineral discovered in Russia in the 1830s known as a perovskite holds a key to the next step in ultra-high-speed communications and computing. Researchers from the University of Utah’s departments of electrical and computer engineering and physics and astronomy have discovered that a special kind of perovskite, a combination of an organic and inorganic…
Crime And Virtual Punishment
When it comes to crime and punishment, how judges dish out prison sentences is anything but a game. But students from the University of Utah have created a new mobile game for the iPhone and Android devices that demonstrates how software algorithms used by many of the nation’s judicial courts to evaluate defendants could be…
Researchers Create LEDs from Food & Beverage Waste
Most Christmas lights, DVD players, televisions and flashlights have one thing in common: they’re made with light emitting diodes (LEDs). LEDs are widely used for a variety of applications and have been a popular, more efficient alternative to fluorescent and incandescent bulbs for the past few decades. Two University of Utah researchers have now found…
Better Bomb-Sniffing Tech Could Lead to Flexible Solar Panels
University of Utah engineers have developed a new type of carbon nanotube material for handheld sensors that will be quicker and better at sniffing out explosives, deadly gases and illegal drugs. A carbon nanotube is a cylindrical material that is a hexagonal or six-sided array of carbon atoms rolled up into a tube. Carbon nanotubes…
Superfast Computers That Don’t Overheat
University of Utah engineers discovered a way to create a special material – a metal layer on top of a silicon semiconductor – that could lead to cost-effective, superfast computers that perform lightning-fast calculations but don’t overheat. This new “topological insulator” behaves like an insulator on the inside but conducts electricity on the outside and…
Microwave Oven Cooks Up Solar Cell Material
Nanocrystal semiconductor for photovoltaics, medical sensors, heat reuse University of Utah metallurgists used an old microwave oven to produce a nanocrystal semiconductor rapidly using cheap, abundant and less toxic metals than other semiconductors. They hope it will be used for more efficient photovoltaic solar cells and LED lights, biological sensors and systems to convert waste…