Renewable energy sources like wind and solar need a storage system capable of charging and discharging to relieve the power grid. Instead of building new infrastructure, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering imagines a system built from half-used EV batteries.
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Marina Leite leads a team of UC Davis researchers in an AI-driven project to build foundational knowledge of halide perovskites, a promising material for solar cells.
The materials science and engineering researcher and an interdisciplinary team formed at the Research Corporation for Science Advancement's Scialog have received funding to investigate water-free mining of valuable metals like iron and lithium.
Researchers in the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering offer insights on devices that operate like solar cells in reverse and can generate power even in the absence of sunlight, offering an alternative route for energy production.
Over the past four years, the number of public charging ports across the U.S. has doubled. As of August 2024, the nation had 192,000 publicly available charging ports and was adding about 1,000 public chargers weekly. But there’s still a need to make the charging experience more reliable and accessible for everyone.
In collaboration with materials company Homerun Resources, Inc., UC Davis engineering researchers have developed a one-step laser technique that purifies raw silica sand to over 99.99% silica. This is the first step in a multiphase project to create a clean-energy pathway to producing silicon.
UC Davis researchers partnered with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to design a new device that can use neutrons to measure molecules in optically excited states. It's a potential game-changer to study materials that will increase the efficiency of photovoltaic solar cells.
With recent $1.98 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, an interdisciplinary team of researchers aims to decarbonize the industrial sector by efficiently extracting ultra-low-grade waste heat from gas streams and using it for various applications in the food and beverage industry.
College of Engineering researchers aim to make around-the-clock solar energy a reality with a novel thermophotovoltaic device. Paired with an optical emitter, the device converts the sun’s heat into a concentrated light spectrum that can then be transformed into usable energy.
The U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, has selected a University of California, Davis, collaboration to receive $1.98 million in funding as one of 49 projects aimed at decarbonizing the industrial sector and moving the nation closer to a net-zero economy.
