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Cheaper clean-energy technologies could be made possible thanks to a new discovery. Research team members led by Raymond Schaak, a professor of chemistry at Penn State, have found that an important chemical reaction that generates hydrogen from water is effectively triggered — or catalyzed — by a nanoparticle made of nickel and phosphorus, two inexpensive elements that are abundant on Earth. The results of the research will be published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Schaak explained that the purpose of this nanoparticle is to help produce hydrogen from water — a process that is important for many energy-production technologies including fuel cells and solar cells. “Water is an ideal fuel, because it is cheap and abundant, but we need to be able to extract hydrogen from it,” Schaak said. Hydrogen has a high energy density and is a great energy carrier, Schaak explained, but it requires energy to produce. To make its production practical, scientists have been hunting for a way to trigger the required chemical reactions with an inexpensive catalyst. Platinum works, but it is expensive and relatively rare, so Schaak and his team have been searching for alternative materials.

“There were some predictions that nickel phosphide might be a good candidate, and we already had been working with nickel phosphide nanoparticles for several years,” Schaak said. “It turns out that nanoparticles of nickel phosphide are indeed active for producing hydrogen and are comparable to the best known alternatives to platinum.”

Source: http://news.psu.edu/

Putting  into a microchip Graphene, has proven difficult. Scientists are working hard on it as graphene is the wonder material that could solve the problem of making ever faster computers and smaller mobile devices. The answer may lie in new nanoscale systems based on ultrathin layers of materials with exotic properties. Called two-dimensional layered materials, these systems could be important for microelectronics, various types of hypersensitive sensors, catalysis, tissue engineering and energy storage. Researchers at Penn State have applied one such 2D layered material, a combination of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride, to produce improved transistor performance at an industrially relevant scale.

“Other groups have shown that graphene on boron nitride can improve performance two to three times, but not in a way that could be scaled up. For the first time, we have been able to take this material and apply it to make transistors at wafer scale,” said Joshua Robinson, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State.

Source: http://live.psu.edu/story/59873#rssEarth_and_Mineral_Sciences