A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 2 1 5 3D MAGNETIC NANOSTRUCTURES COULD TRANSFORM COMPUTING A team led by scientists at Cardiff University, U.K., and including researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M., created the first 3D replica of a spin-ice material using a sophisticated type of 3D printing and processing. They say the 3D printing technology allowed them to tailor the geometry of the artificial spin-ice, meaning they can control the way the magnetic monopoles are formed and moved around in the systems. Being able to manipulate the mini monopole magnets in 3D could RESEARCH TRACKS open up numerous applications, from enhanced computer storage to 3D computing networks that mimic the neural structure of the human brain. The artificial spin-ice was created using 3D nanofabrication techniques in which tiny nano- wires are stacked into four layers in a lattice structure. Magnetic force microscopy was then used to visualize the magnetic charges present on the device, allowing the team to track the movement of the single-pole magnets across the 3D structure. “Ultimately, this work could provide ameans to produce novel magnetic metamaterials, where material properties are tuned by controlling the 3D geometry of an artificial lattice,” says researcher Sam Ladak of Cardiff University. “Magnetic storage devices are another area that could be massively impacted by this breakthrough. As current devices use only two of the three dimensions available, this limits the amount of information that can be stored. Since the monopoles can be moved around the 3D lattice using a magnetic field, it may be possible to create a true 3D storage device based upon magnetic charge.” www.cardiff.ac.uk. IONOPHOBIC ELECTRODE IMPROVES ENERGY STORAGE A group of scientists led by Zhang Suojiang, a professor at the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese A team fromCardiff University and Los Alamos National Lab created the first 3D replica of spin-ice. Academy of Sciences, discovered that ionophobic electrodes can boost energy storage performance. Electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) with ionic liquids (ILs), a new type of energy storage device, can fill the gap between the power density of batteries and the energy density of conventional capacitors, say researchers. However, ILs in nanopores often exhibit sluggish diffusion dynamics, which hinder high power density. In this study, the team proposed a newstrategy to improve the energy density and power density of EDLCs with ILs based on massive molecular dynamics simulations. When comparing EDLCs with an ionophilic electrode to those with an extremely ionophobic electrode, the researchers found that the charging time for the latter decreased by roughly 80% while the capacitance increased by nearly 100%. The idea of introducing ionophobicity holds promise for improving the design of IL-based high-performance supercapacitors and other new energy storage devices and applications. www.cas.ac.cn. Researchers at the University of Marburg, Germany, and Aalto University, Finland, discovered a new carbon network that is atomically thin like graphene, but is made up of squares, hexagons, and octagons forming an ordered lattice. In contrast to graphene and other forms of carbon, the new biphenylene network has metallic properties. www.aalto.fi. BRIEF Ionophilic and ionophobic pore mechanisms and their influence on charging dynamics. Courtesy of IPE.
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