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MIT researchers develop optimized sulfidation separation process for rare earth and other key metals

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New processing methods developed by MIT researchers could help ease looming shortages of the essential metals that power everything from phones to automotive batteries by making it easier to separate these rare metals from mining ores and recycled materials. Cite this article Stinn, C., —Antoine Allanore. Allanore, A.

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Study finds the wettability of porous electrode surfaces is key to making efficient water-splitting or carbon-capturing systems

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As water-splitting technologies improve, often using porous electrode materials to provide greater surface areas for electrochemical reactions, their efficiency is often limited by the formation of bubbles that can block or clog the reactive surfaces. As a result, there were substantial changes of the transport overpotential.

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MIT researchers propose mechanism for overcoming bottleneck in electroreduction of CO2

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Researchers at MIT have identified , quantified, and modeled a major reason for the poor performance of electroreduction processes to convert CO 2 to fuel or other useful chemicals. The research was supported by Shell, through the MIT Energy Initiative. A paper on their work is published in the ACS journal Langmuir. —Soto et al.

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Tsinghua, MIT, Argonne team discovers lithium titanate hydrates for superfast, stable cycling in Li-ion batteries

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An international research team from Tsinghua University, MIT and Argonne National Laboratory has discovered a series of novel lithium titanate hydrates that show better electrochemical performances compared to all the Li 2 O–TiO 2 materials reported so far—including those after nanostructuring, doping and/or coating. —Wang et al.

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MIT team discovers new family of materials with best performance yet for oxygen evolution reaction; implications for fuel cells and Li-air batteries

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MIT researchers have found a new family of highly active catalyst materials that provides the best performance yet in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in electrochemical water-splitting—a key requirement for energy storage and delivery systems such as advanced fuel cells and lithium-air batteries. Grimaud et al.

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MIT-led team devises new approach to designing solid ion conductors; implications for high-energy solid-state batteries

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Researchers led by a team from MIT, with colleagues from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), BMW Group, and Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a fundamentally new approach to alter ion mobility and stability against oxidation of lithium ion conductors—a key component of rechargeable batteries—using lattice dynamics.

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More Insight Into Cobalt as Catalyst for Water Splitting

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Researchers from UC Davis and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have uncovered more detail about the functioning of cobalt as a water-splitting catalyst. In 2008, MIT chemists, led by Professor Dan Nocera, reported that a simple cobalt catalyst could split water at neutral pH to produce oxygen, protons and electrons.

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