Rocket Lab, the aerospace leader, announced the production release of Inverted Metamorphic (IMM) Apex, its newest space-grade solar cell. It is entirely germanium-free.

IMM Apex delivers a 31.5 percent Beginning-of-Life conversion efficiency alongside a 40 percent reduction in cell mass. In orbit, weight is everything. Lighter cells mean lower launch costs, bigger payloads, and better specific power (watts per kilogram).

And compared to conventional solar cells used for the past 30 years, IMM Apex operates without germanium substrates, which mitigates rising costs and supply chain issues for critical minerals.

“Rocket Lab is excited to bring this cutting-edge solar solution to market. IMM Apex delivers exceptional performance while addressing real-world challenges like rising material costs and supply chain constraints,” said Brad Clevenger, President of Rocket Lab USA.

Drop-in compatibility

The global supply chain for germanium is fragile due to extreme market concentration, complex extraction processes, and geopolitical trade controls. 

China controls most of the global supply and strictly limits exports. This concentration creates major supply risks for space programs.

To make matters worse, germanium is only a byproduct of zinc mining, so refineries cannot easily boost production. High purity requirements further constrain the market. As a result, major importers like the United States face severe cost spikes and potential shortages.

But these new solar cells could solve the issue. As per the company, the IMM Apex solar cell offers satellite builders instant compatibility without requiring system redesigns. It acts as a drop-in replacement, so companies avoid expensive retooling costs.

The underlying platform has already proved its worth on NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter and powers over 1,100 satellites in orbit today. Upgraded facilities are currently churning out multi-100-kilowatt volumes to keep pace with booming global demand.

“In addition to being free from germanium supply constraints, optimized manufacturing processes and targeted capital investments have enabled efficient manufacturing in multi-100-kilowatt volumes to meet growing demand,” the company stated. 

Backed by over a decade of rigorous testing, IMM Apex is ready now for diverse mission needs, with future upgrades already underway.

Eliminates germanium dependency

Standard solar cells are grown right-side up on a thick germanium base. IMM cells are grown upside down on a temporary substrate, which is later etched away. This process creates flexible, ultra-thin, radiation-hardened cells made of layers like Gallium Arsenide and Indium Gallium Phosphide. 

Germanium forms the vital foundation of high-efficiency space solar panels and infrared satellite optics. Spacecraft solar panels avoid standard silicon in favor of multi-junction III-V solar cells. These cells use layers like Gallium Arsenide grown on a germanium base. The germanium substrate supplies structural support and absorbs infrared light. 

Wall Street reacted positively to the release, sending RKLB stock up as market analysts recognized the commercial potential of overcoming germanium challenges. 

“With IMM Apex, customers gain access to a high-efficiency, lightweight, germanium-free product that combines proven reliability with faster production times. IMM Apex is designed to more cost-effectively power the most ambitious missions without compromising performance,” Clevenger added.

As constellations expand and interplanetary ambitions grow, power remains the ultimate challenge. Rocket Lab pairs a lighter cell weight with supply chain independence. This achievement moves the company beyond better solar technology and clears a direct runway for the next era of commercial spaceflight.

💾

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and industry partners are deploying advanced manufacturing technologies, such as heavy 3D printing and AI-driven automation, to repair broken US industrial supply chains.

For instance, inside an advanced Tennessee facility, a giant three-armed robot called MedUSA crafted a three-by-five-foot nuclear pressure vessel by guiding molten steel into place. Nearby was a large 12-foot model of an impact limiter, made from strong plastic instead of the usual wood. These were battle tests for the future of American industry.

America’s industrial sector is facing severe operational hurdles, driven by irregular supply chains and a shortage of skilled workers. These issues have created extreme delays in infrastructure sectors like hydropower, where acquiring major custom components can now take over ten years.

Over 350 leaders gathered at ORNL for the Materials and Manufacturing Innovation Days. They discussed ways to speed up the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies.

The goal of M2IND was simple yet ambitious: remove the administrative and technical obstacles slowing advanced technology, and turn laboratory breakthroughs into factory-floor reality before time runs out.

“We want to make sure we have input from industry to help guide our research and ensure that the work at Oak Ridge and the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) is valuable to U.S. manufacturers and takes into account the supply chains needed to commercialize new technologies,” said MDF Director Ryan Dehoff.

Fast-track advanced manufacturing

The event featured two large 3D-printed nuclear energy structures. Researchers worked with the University of Maine to print a glass-fiber polymer model of an impact limiter. This massive component protects spent nuclear fuel shipping containers during transport and replaces traditional wood designs. 

Scientists also used a three-arm robotic system to print a steel pressure vessel with complex domed geometry. This project shows how additive manufacturing can produce large metal parts that usually face production issues. 

Standard reactor vessels use large-scale forging and welding, which face severe domestic capacity limits. The 3D-printed vessel served as a test case to evaluate additive manufacturing as a viable alternative. 

Supply chain issues

Participants highlighted urgent needs for resilient supply chains, alternative materials, and faster part qualification. They also pushed to combine manufacturing with AI, robotics, and digital engineering. New partnerships were formed to quickly turn laboratory research into practical tools for manufacturers.

Representatives from four Department of Energy offices and defense officials joined leaders from energy, manufacturing, and technology sectors at the event. Together, several key obstacles facing American industry were identified. These challenges include limited local capacity for large metal parts and long component lead times. 

ORNL formed key industrial partnerships to bring research into practical factory use. Yet, as forum participants repeatedly emphasized, printing a part is only half the battle. Getting it certified for real-world use is where momentum often dies.

To bridge that gap, ORNL announced a joint research effort with Idaho National Laboratory to standardize digital qualification methods across different facilities

Researchers hope to give regulators the data needed to certify 3D-printed nuclear and energy components in months rather than years. They plan to do this using real-time sensors, machine learning, and defect-tracking algorithms during the build process.

With new partnerships signed with energy titans like SLB and Kairos Power, the push is clear. Urgency has replaced routine. America is racing to rebuild its domestic manufacturing core, starting right on the laboratory floor.

💾

Bluecore Energy, a startup building small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) on floating barges, announced an oversubscribed $50 million seed round led by Silverton Partners.

Within just nine months of launch, Bluecore Energy has rapidly accelerated its path toward floating nuclear power by securing a port terminal, receiving its first barge, and starting construction on a test reactor.

Designed specifically for commercial applications, the reactor incorporates multiple layers of protective shielding and continuous water-based cooling to ensure safe, resilient operation out at sea.

The company’s founder, Kofi Asante, announced in the LinkedIn post: “Our focus is simple. Create and deliver zero-emission energy as safely and quickly as possible. Over 3 billion people live within an hour of water. We want to power them all.” 

Powering roughly 15,000 homes

Bluecore Energy emerged from stealth on 21 July with $10 million in pre-seed funding to deploy floating SMRs directly on mobile barges. 

The startup is the first SMR developer based inside a major U.S. shipping hub, operating directly out of its headquarters at the Port of Long Beach, California. 

The goal is to build a 10 MWe water-cooled reactor system using established maritime nuclear physics enclosed in steel pressure vessels and concrete shielding. The reactor will be capable of powering roughly 15,000 homes and can operate for years on a single fueling.

Designed to be modular, multiple units can be chained together to scale up and deliver reliable, long-term power to major ports, utilities, AI data centers, offshore facilities, and energy-constrained coastal communities.

Bluecore’s initial target is its hometown Port of Long Beach — the first American port to publicly back floating nuclear energy. 

“Nuclear energy at sea is not a new idea. Our opportunity is to take lessons from decades of maritime nuclear experience and combine them with modern engineering to build systems for a new generation of commercial applications,” stated Asante, who is a former Uber Freight executive.

The startup has already secured and delivered its first physical barge alongside an electric test reactor to its port site. This will allow the engineering team to actively construct, test, and refine system components in real-world conditions. 

Alongside these hands-on development milestones, Bluecore is rapidly advancing its formal regulatory, design classification, and commercialization pathways by deepening its technical engagement with both the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the US Coast Guard.

Accelerating development

Its platform leverages offshore mobility to overcome land-based energy constraints. 

The company’s small modular reactors will be mounted on mobile barges that can be moored or anchored like offshore oil rigs. These will be connected directly to land infrastructure using high-capacity subsea power cables. Positioned out in open waters, the units naturally draw on the ocean for continuous cooling. 

According to TechCrunch, this seed round drew strong support from returning pre-seed backers, including Slauson & Co., Harlem Capital, and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen. And high-profile new investors, such as Collab Capital, Kevin Hart’s HartBeat Ventures, and angel investors from Tesla, Uber, Amazon, and Google.

With the new capital, Bluecore will place its first order for nuclear fuel. The primary operational challenge facing the company is navigating hardware supply chain issues. 

The startup, staffed by veterans from SpaceX, Rivian, and Navy submarine units, is already undergoing joint design review with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Coast Guard.

💾

Replicating the cold, airless void of space inside a high-vacuum chamber on Earth, defense giants Lockheed Martin and L3Harris Technologies have cleared a massive technical hurdle in the race to protect the American homeland.

The companies successfully completed a static hot-fire test for the Stage 2 solid rocket motor of the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI). It was a demanding proof-of-concept run. Through simulated low-Earth orbit conditions, engineers proved the motor could deliver reliable performance where standard atmospheric tests fall short.

On-time fielding of the NGI fulfills an urgent need for advanced U.S. missile defense capabilities, with recent static-fire testing confirming its steady progress toward Critical Design Review.

“The test demonstrated the L3Harris Technologies’ Stage 2 motor will sustain the extreme thermal and pressure stresses expected during interceptor missions,” the company stated.

Test performance

The Next Generation Interceptor is the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s upcoming homeland anti-ballistic missile system, designed to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). As part of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) architecture, it will replace older Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs) currently housed in Alaska and California silos with an upgraded, modernized defense capability.

During the test, the L3Harris-built motor sustained intense thermal and pressure stresses. It did far more than survive; key metrics like thrust output, chamber pressure, and combustion stability matched design expectations across the board.

That stability is crucial. At hypersonic speeds, even a microsecond of thrust fluctuation can cause an interceptor to miss an incoming threat entirely.

“This successful static fire test is a significant milestone on the path to the Critical Design Review and confirms our confidence that the NGI motor will meet the demanding performance envelope required for fielding by 2030,” said Christopher Jewell, Lockheed Martin NGI vice president. 

The raw test data will now feed directly into finalizing the interceptor‘s complete blueprint, paving the way for full integration into the nation’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) network.

Other advancements in NGI tech

In early August, Lockheed Martin achieved another key milestone for the NGI program by successfully completing a critical burst test on its second-stage motor case. 

Engineers pressurized the carbon-fiber composite structure with water beyond expected launch limits. The testing confirmed its strength-to-weight ratio and ability to withstand extreme launch forces while delivering necessary orbital thrust.

NGI is progressing toward a key December design review, clearing the way for qualification testing, initial 2028 deliveries, and flight tests starting in 2029.

Despite an 18-month delay caused by supply chain problems and solid rocket motor design issues, it is said that recent performance has been strong, though the agency remains vigilant regarding potential component risks.

Also, in June, Lockheed Martin opened a new assembly facility in Courtland, Alabama, dedicated to manufacturing the NGI. Reportedly, the plant features a digitally driven production line engineered for flexible scalability and reconfiguration to meet evolving military demands. 

In 2024, the Missile Defense Agency awarded Lockheed Martin a $17 billion contract to deliver 20 NGIs. The system is expected to serve as a core component of “Golden Dome,” the Defense Department’s multi-domain missile shield linking sensors and interceptors. For this initiative, the Pentagon is requesting nearly $18 billion in fiscal 2027 as part of a projected $185 billion long-term investment.

💾

Looks like an entire orbital launchpad could be hitched to a semi-truck and driven anywhere on Earth, thanks to space launch provider Rocket Lab. 

The company has unveiled GHOST, which is short for Global Hypersonic and Orbital Spaceport Technology. GHOST is a deployable, containerized launch infrastructure designed to fire rockets into orbit or suborbital trajectories from nearly anywhere on Earth. 

It is like a spaceflight in a box. GHOST houses everything required to execute a flight campaign: the rockets themselves, ground support equipment, launch pads, and complete range control systems. 

With this technology, Rocket Lab aims to make launch operations fully portable, especially for national security and international space defense.

Furthermore, GHOST’s primary advantage is its ability to support both Electron orbital rockets and HASTE hypersonic test vehicles using a single shared ground infrastructure. 

“We’ve been leading the field in small launch for missile defense and national security for years. Our reliability, repeatability, and affordability sets us apart from everybody else, and creating GHOST is about packaging that up into a deployable system that can serve the world’s most important programs from wherever those missions need,” said Sir Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab. 

Dual mission profiles

Rocket Lab depends on two primary vehicles: Electron, its 59-foot workhorse launcher with 83 missions under its belt since debuting in 2017. It is the second most frequently launched US rocket annually after SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

And HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) is a suborbital derivative designed for testing hypersonic flight technologies. First launched in June 2023, HASTE has flown nine times to date, offering customers dedicated testing environments alongside Electron’s small-satellite orbital rides.

This new containerized setup supports dual-vehicle launches out of a single system. As a result, defense partners and international allies can rapidly establish independent launch points while completely overcoming the high costs of fixed concrete infrastructure.

“Whether it’s for missile defense and deterrence, or opening up more trajectories, orbital missions, and sovereign launch capabilities in allied nations, GHOST is the answer to launching anywhere, anytime, and without compromise,” Beck added. 

GHOST: Launch-anywhere capability

Rocket Lab will debut its containerized GHOST system in 2027 with a suborbital launch from its newly established Launch Complex 4 at Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Complex. 

Featuring two pads built for high-frequency flight campaigns, this addition brings Rocket Lab’s global network to six operational pads across two hemispheres, expanding beyond its active sites in New Zealand (LC-1) and Virginia (LC-2 and LC-3).

Rocket Lab has expanded its Virginia facility with a second launch pad to support Neutron, its upcoming medium-lift rocket designed to be larger, more powerful, and partially reusable — similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Although Neutron‘s maiden flight slipped past its original 2024 target, developmental delays are typical for new launch vehicles, and the company continues to make steady progress toward its operational debut.

Earlier this year, Rocket Lab secured its largest launch agreement to date through a $190 million Department of Defense contract for 20 flights of its suborbital HASTE rocket.

Serving as the core testbed for the DOD and Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division, HASTE allows defense agencies to evaluate payloads and maneuverable hardware at Mach 5+ speeds. This high-cadence testing pipeline directly supports the U.S. military’s drive to accelerate its capabilities in hypersonic technology and defense systems against fast, low-altitude aerial threats.

National security space strategy is shifting fast. Fixed launch pads are stationary targets. Through compact, modular launch systems, GHOST could bring mobility-driven deterrence to space defense, allowing swift, on-demand launches directly from allied lands.

💾

A process called Alkaline Thermal Treatment (ATT) has been tested to turn mixed plastic waste into high-purity hydrogen fuel.

Researchers from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and Ewha Womans University in South Korea undertook this new study. This process eliminates the costly and laborious step of sorting plastic waste before recycling.

The single-reactor method successfully processes a mixture of the three most common, hard-to-recycle plastics: polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE), and polypropylene (PP).

“We are solving two urgent global problems at the same time,” said Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park, the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of UCLA Samueli and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. 

“Plastic waste is accumulating at alarming rates, and clean hydrogen is essential for decarbonizing energy. This technology tackles both of these challenges in a creative and scalable way,” the co-corresponding author added. 

Mixed plastic processing

Look around you. The water bottle on your desk, the crinkly shopping bag in your pantry, and the sleek dashboard of your car all share a drawback. Once you throw them away, the waste is almost impossible to recycle as a single stream.

A persistent challenge in global recycling is the labor-intensive requirement to sort plastics by type before processing. It leads to 79 percent of plastic waste ending up buried in landfills, while another 12 percent is burned away into atmospheric pollution. Only 9 percent ever get a second life.

But the new study overcomes this challenge. The team demonstrated a chemical technique that takes a chaotic, unsorted cocktail of the world’s three most common plastics and transforms it into hydrogen fuel. Interestingly, the method does it without releasing a single puff of carbon dioxide. 

Alkaline Thermal Treatment uses heat to trigger a reaction between sodium hydroxide and organic matter, generating hydrogen fuel in the process.

It was originally designed to extract hydrogen fuel from ocean biomass, such as seaweed. The researchers wondered if the same principles could dissolve our mounting plastic problem. 

While plastic bottles (PET) broke down easily during the process, shopping bags (PE) and food containers (PP) resisted the chemical attack due to highly stable, stubborn carbon-hydrogen bonds. 

To overcome this chemical defense, a thermal oxidation pretreatment was introduced. In this process, the mixed plastic was briefly exposed to mild heat in the air. After this, oxygen was introduced into the stubborn polymer chains, which created the reactive weak spots needed for the treatment to dismantle all three plastic types.

Eco-friendly process

Once activated, the unsorted plastic soup degrades beautifully inside a single reactor, pumping out hydrogen gas with a purity level exceeding 90 percent.

ATT process changes the game for environmental footprints by operating at temperatures around 400 degrees Celsius (752 F), which are cooler than those of extreme gasification methods.

Furthermore, the technique uses a sodium hydroxide reagent to capture the plastic’s carbon rather than venting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The carbon is permanently bound into a stable, solid mineral called sodium carbonate.

The researchers have already outlined a simple secondary process to turn that byproduct into calcium carbonate. That is the exact mineral used by the concrete and construction industries, locking the plastic’s carbon away forever in infrastructure.

The breakthrough is currently confined to precision laboratory settings. Significant optimization is required to scale the technology up for municipal recycling plants, and its long-term economic viability still needs to be rigorously tested.

The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

💾

Researchers in Julia R. Greer’s lab at Caltech have developed a new method for creating three-dimensional architected battery cathodes. It has been designed to improve safety, reduce environmental impact, and enhance the performance of future batteries.

The new cathode replaces toxic, expensive, and unethically mined cobalt with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) embedded in a carbon matrix. LFP is much safer and less prone to catching fire or short-circuiting when overcharged.

On its own, LFP isn’t a miracle material; it usually suffers from sluggish performance. But by rethinking the internal architecture of the battery, the team found a loophole.

“We’ve developed a versatile way to make three-dimensional architected battery electrodes from safer materials,” said Yingjin Wang, a graduate student in Greer’s lab. 

“Using lithium iron phosphate, commonly referred to as LFP, combined with a carbon matrix, we eliminated the use of dangerous cobalt while improving the mechanical resilience of the battery,” the first author added. 

3D-architected cathodes

Lithium-ion batteries are the dominant power source for modern mobile devices, electric vehicles, and renewable grids. 

These batteries consist of five core components: an anode (negative electrode), a cathode (positive electrode), a liquid electrolyte to transport ions, a separator to prevent short circuits, and current collectors to harvest electricity. 

While commercially vital, standard designs carry persistent safety risks and performance limitations. To address these flaws, a new development has reimagined battery design, paving the way for less dangerous, more environmentally friendly energy storage that also boosts performance.

Conventional lithium-ion batteries rely on flat, two-dimensional (“planar“) electrodes, but in this new work, the team introduced a three-dimensional, architected cathode produced through 3D printing. 

Moreover, transitioning from a flat design to a 3D-architected battery maximizes the active surface area where chemical energy is converted into electricity.

“We think this is advantageous because you can decouple the solid-state versus liquid-state diffusion distance. The electrolyte is liquid, so as it’s channeling through this architecture, which is like a labyrinth, it has a solid surface available to it anywhere,” Greer explained.

Moreover, the design reduces tortuosity and shortens the physical path that ions must travel between the cathode and separator, thereby increasing the battery’s power density and allowing it to release its stored energy much faster.

Safer alternative

A primary drawback of current lithium-ion batteries is their reliance on cobalt in the cathodes. Cobalt supply chains are plagued by unethical mining practices in remote regions worldwide, and the material itself poses a notable safety hazard due to its tendency to catch fire or short-circuit when overcharged. 

In contrast, lithium iron phosphate is a much safer alternative. Its inherently stable chemical profile makes it far less likely to experience dangerous thermal issues or short circuits.

“LFP by itself is not a new material, but using this additive manufacturing, or 3D-printing, approach to create an architected electrode that doesn’t contain cobalt is a new thing,” Greer said. 

The next major milestone for the researchers is to design a complementary 3D-architected LFP anode, which will create a fully 3D-architected battery that is both energy- and power-dense. 

Achieving this will be a highly complex manufacturing challenge given the early state of the research and the intricate fabrication parameters involved. Ultimately, the team aims to integrate a polymer-based electrolyte to achieve a true solid-state battery.

The study was published in the journal ACS Energy Letters.

💾

Cambridge researchers have transitioned a laboratory-scale technology into a scalable, real-world application that uses solar power to convert plastic waste and cellulose into clean hydrogen fuel and valuable industrial chemicals.

The team demonstrated a new solar-powered reactor that converts everyday plastic waste, such as fizzy drink bottles, into hydrogen fuel. 

Interestingly, they did it outside, at scale, using a device that can be manufactured with tools not much more complicated than a standard hardware store paint sprayer.

Scaling up the solution for plastic waste

Photoreforming is the process of using solar energy to break down plastic molecules. It is a concept scientists have understood for quite some time, but scaling it up has always been the missing piece of the puzzle.

While the chemistry worked beautifully inside pristine laboratories, it was limited to tiny catalyst plates about the size of a smartphone wrapper. Scaling those up usually meant depending on highly complex manufacturing processes, scorching temperatures, and toxic chemical baths.

“When we started trying to scale this technology up, we quickly found out that what seems simple on a small scale is not simple at all when you’re trying to make it at scale. We can’t really have giant vats of solution to make these panels – it’s just not practical at scale,” said Ariffin Bin Mohamad Annuar, co-first author from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. 

To smash through this issue, the researchers went big. And constructed a one-meter-square reactor panel and took it entirely outdoors, testing it under the natural, unpredictable sunlight outside Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry.

The device does not generate electricity like a standard rooftop solar panel. Rather than that, it directly absorbs sunlight to drive a chemical reaction. On one end, it breaks down the polymers in PET plastic bottles and cellulose; on the other, it splits water molecules to harvest pure hydrogen.

The magic coating

The interesting part of the new system lies in how it was built. Compared with earlier versions that required high temperatures and complex liquid-suspension processes, the new solar panels can be assembled at room temperature using basic equipment. 

Professor Dominic Wright’s team developed a specialized molecular precursor material containing cobalt and zirconium. Professor Erwin Reisner’s team then loaded this material into a basic sprayer. 

The light-absorbing catalyst was sprayed directly onto ordinary glass panels at room temperature.

“What surprised me was, after all the optimization, just how simple it is,” said Mohamad Annuar. “We just have this huge panel, we spray our catalyst on it, put it into our solution, put it under the sun, and it produces hydrogen and other valuable chemicals just from plastic waste. It’s just simple and scalable.”

The Cambridge team also provided a comprehensive cost analysis for the system. This economic blueprint is a major first for this type of chemical research, mapping out exactly what it will take to bring the technology the market.

Plus, the manufacturing costs were cut down by using the spray-coating method. It proves that a future of solar-powered, localized recycling hubs is financially viable.

The technology is not quite ready for commercial deployment tomorrow. The team notes that the reactor’s overall durability and conversion efficiency still need refinement before mass production can begin.

However, the researchers have laid down a clear path toward cleaning up the planet by proving that the system can survive the outdoor elements while remaining cheap to produce.

The results are reported in the journal Nature Chemical Engineering on June 24.

💾

For 26 years, Bertrand Nelson’s body was a battleground. He fought HIV and sarcoidosis. Then, a devastating bout of Legionnaires’ disease in 2021 left his lungs shattered and his liver failing. By 2024, the 56-year-old was tethered to an oxygen tank. 

He needed a miracle. On March 21, 2026, he got two and made medical history.

In a marathon surgery at NYU Langone Health, surgeons performed the world’s first HIV-positive-to-HIV-positive lung transplant. Nelson did not just get a new lease on life. He also received a new liver on the exact same day. Today, he is breathing entirely on his own.

“This is a watershed moment for the HIV-positive community and represents real progress in creating equity in organ transplantation,” said Sapna Mehta, MD, clinical director of NYU Langone Transplant Institute and co-architect of the research protocol. 

“While these transplants are still only allowable under certain research protocols, this marks an expansion of options for people in need of a lifesaving organ,” Mehta added.

Expanded donor pool

Organs from HIV-positive donors were strictly discarded. However, the 2013 HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act opened the door for research protocols to change that. While doctors have previously transplanted HOPE hearts, kidneys, and livers, the delicate and infection-prone nature of lungs kept them off the table until now. 

The breakthrough addresses a deep inequity in the American healthcare system. Right now, roughly 1.2 million people in the U.S. live with HIV. Because of modern antiretroviral therapies (ART), most live near-normal lifespans and cannot transmit the virus. 

Under the old rules, organ failure meant facing an excruciatingly long waitlist. By allowing HIV-positive patients to accept organs from HIV-positive donors, medicine is unlocking an entirely new pool of available lifelines. 

“Transplantation of HOPE hearts and abdominal organs has been done before, but this has not been done in lung transplantation. It takes a special kind of patient to be willing to do something that hasn’t been done before,” said Mark A. Sonnick, MD, transplant pulmonologist at NYU Langone Transplant Institute and co-author of the research protocol. 

Nelson was ready to be that patient. His motivation was close to home.

“I want to be well for her,” Nelson said, speaking of his mother, who turns 82 this August. “I want her to see me thriving.”

Nelson is doing fine now

In 2000, Nelson was diagnosed with HIV and sarcoidosis, a condition that went into remission until a severe case of Legionnaires’ disease in 2021 reactivated it, damaging both his lungs and liver. 

By 2024, his health had deteriorated to the point of requiring continuous oxygen, leading to his evaluation for a groundbreaking dual-organ transplant under the HOPE Act. On March 21, the medical history was made with the first HIV-positive-to-HIV-positive lung transplant. 

Nelson is currently out of the hospital, lifting weights, and rebuilding the strength he lost during four grueling years of limited mobility.

For the broader medical community, NYU Langone’s triumph is a proof of concept. The institute is currently one of the only centers in the nation approved to perform these specific transplants. But Nelson hopes his story will spark a chain reaction, raising awareness and expanding the protocol to hospitals nationwide.

“There are so many others who need access to this level of care,” Nelson said. “The more organs that become available, the better the odds of finding the right match and living a long life.”

💾

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has developed a 4-foot-long, four-wheeled prototype designed for high-speed, long-distance autonomous exploration on the Moon and Mars. 

Dubbed Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain (ERNEST), it underwent field tests in the Colorado Desert. The robotic rover successfully traveled 16 miles over 37 hours with minimal human intervention.

“This testing is helping us refine the mobility hardware and autonomy software to navigate extreme distances across a wide range of terrain and lighting conditions anticipated on the Moon,” said Issa Nesnas, a principal technologist at JPL. 

Active suspension system

For the last thirty years, NASA has used a mechanical setup called the “rocker-bogie” suspension system. It is the architecture behind every Mars rover from Sojourner to Perseverance that keeps their wheels grounded.

But it has some problems. Send a passive rover up a loose, sandy slope steeper than 15 degrees, and it will likely get stuck, spin its wheels, or risk a catastrophic tip-over. 

The ERNEST prototype introduces an innovative active suspension system that manages its own weight distribution. 

Equipped with four steerable wheels and a front-powered gimbal, the rover can navigate extreme terrain using unique gaits like squirming, wheel-walking, obstacle-climbing, and even driving sideways. 

Plus, a built-in clutch mechanism allows ERNEST to switch back to a passive mode when efficient, less-demanding driving is needed, blending high-capability mobility with energy conservation.

The 4-foot-long prototype is a testbed designed to advance both robotic autonomy and extreme terrain mobility for future Moon and Mars missions.

ERNEST achieves higher speeds and longer driving distances through its enhanced independent decision-making and a unique ability to lift its individual mesh wheels over obstacles that would trap current Mars rovers.

Ultimately, these technological improvements will inform the design of next-generation rovers capable of exploring previously inaccessible, rough extraterrestrial landscapes.

During recent testing, the vehicle clocked speeds up to 0.6 mph (1 kph) over 37 hours of driving across seven days — an order of magnitude faster than the autonomous navigation speeds of Curiosity and Perseverance. 

“You could do a science road trip across the Moon — or Mars — with this vehicle,” said James Keane, a JPL planetary scientist working on lunar missions.

Preparing for the rough, unknown terrain

Using reinforcement learning, computers ran thousands of hours of virtual simulations over single weekends, punishing the virtual rover with impossible physics scenarios until it learned the optimal way to climb, crawl, and survive.

The software was then loaded directly into the physical rover. Engineers took it out into the desert heat and turned it loose. ERNEST handled the rest. 

The team even ran the rover through the deep, confusing shadows of dusk and dawn. This simulated the extreme lighting conditions future astronauts and robots will face at the Moon’s south pole.

Building on this success, a new project will merge ERNEST’s active suspension control with long-range intelligent navigation. This will allow the rover to plan paths, deciding when to climb surmountable obstacles and when to steer clear of major hazards. 

It will help to prepare future missions for the most rugged landscapes on the Moon and Mars.

💾

A team of researchers from China and Japan has developed a ultra-flexible brain implant electrode array. 

It overcomes a major hurdle in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs): the physical mismatch between stiff metal electrodes and soft brain tissue, which typically leads to chronic inflammation and signal degradation.

The development comes from Tsinghua University’s Shenzhen International Graduate School, the University of Tokyo and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shenzhen-Hong Kong Institute of Brain Science.

Researchers tested the flexible brain implant in animal trials. Interestingly, it achieved long-term signal clarity and safe, stable functionality over an 18-month period.

Soft brain implant

Neuroscientists pursuing the dream of a highly functional brain-computer interface often face the issue of the fleshy wall. The human brain is naturally soft. The advanced electrode arrays implanted in the brain to read thoughts or restore movement are made of rigid metals like platinum.

When you put something hard against something soft inside a moving body, friction wins. Over time, the brain jiggles, the metal rubs, and chronic inflammation forms a wall of protective scar tissue. Signals degrade, and the implant goes blind.

The new development is based on an all-organic, ultra-flexible implant material called Chip (conductive hydrogel with interfacial percolation). 

In the past, trying to use hydrogels, which are water-swollen polymer networks, for brain implants was difficult. These materials are biocompatible but have some issues, such as poor electrical conductivity and a tendency to swell like sponges when in contact with bodily fluids. Swelling distorts the microscopic grid of electrode channels, ruining any hope of micro-engineering. 

The researchers defeated both problems with a manufacturing hack.

To begin with, the hydrogel was pre-anchored to a rigid, ultrathin parylene substrate to fully lock its shape. Then, it was carved using high-precision photolithography while it was completely dry.

The result is a 128-channel array that is a mere 9 micrometers thick — far thinner than a strand of human hair. Moreover, microscopic channels were packed tightly to achieve a data density 10 times higher than any previous hydrogel implant.

As per the study paper, it has an electrical conductivity of 2,512 S/cm, letting it catch the faintest whispers of cellular thought. 

Tested on rabbits

To see if the material could survive the wet environment of a living body, the team implanted the arrays into rabbits. 

For over 550 days, the freely moving animals broadcast crystal-clear neural activity. Even after 18 months, the signal-to-noise ratio remained at 94 percent of its day-one clarity. When the researchers examined the brain tissue using histological staining, they found almost no inflammation, no angry immune response, and no thick scar tissue.

“The resulting all-organic ECoG array conforms to the cortical surface, minimizing foreign body response and providing exceptional signal quality, with the longest record up to 550 d[ays],” the team noted in the study paper. 

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that it demonstrated exceptional durability and safety by tolerating 1,000 cycles of 30 percent tensile strain. It is the absolute maximum deformation real brain tissue can withstand. 

Throughout this intense stress testing, the material maintained stable electrical performance, showing less than a 4 percent variation in its conductivity.

BCIs are advancing rapidly, but their long-term survival inside the body has always been the weak point. Invasive brain implants should ideally last a lifetime rather than just a few years. This new class of organic hydrogel could eventually solve the gap between machine and mind, offering a durable solution for the long term.

💾

A new class of ultrathin polymer membranes, dubbed Polymers of Locked Intrinsic Microporosity (PLIMs), has been developed through a global research collaboration.

These membranes can separate complex hydrocarbon mixtures (like crude oil), potentially transforming the energy-intensive refining process.

Modifying membrane structure

Every single day, standard crude oil refining uses the thermal distillation method. This process boils oil to separate it into useful fractions like gasoline, plastics, and jet fuel. It works well, but it carries an environmental price tag. It consumes a high amount of energy.

Now, a team of international researchers has created a workaround that could take the heat out of the equation entirely.

The Polymers of Locked Intrinsic Microporosity (PLIMs) are ultrathin membranes that can filter out complex hydrocarbon mixtures at a microscopic level without needing a heat source.

“Membranes can, in principle, do the same job as distillation or evaporation, using far less energy,” explained Andrew Livingston, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Vice President Research and Innovation at Queen Mary University of London, and CEO of Exactmer. 

“The problem has been finding materials that are both fast and selective when exposed to real hydrocarbon mixtures,” the lead researcher added.

The study introduces a novel fabrication method that injects a crosslinking agent during membrane formation to create highly efficient separating layers. It combines two features that have eluded scientists for decades: extreme molecular selectivity and incredibly fast transport speeds.

Testing of membrane

Membranes promise a cleaner, low-energy alternative to massive boilers. In this concept, rather than boiling the liquid, it is run through a molecular sieve that catches specific molecules based on their size.

In practice, organic liquids like crude oil ruined everything.

The team focused on highly porous polymers, materials possessing an internal structure like a sub-nanometer sponge. However, these materials have a flaw. When exposed to harsh hydrocarbons, it swells. As the polymer expands, the tiny pores dilate, allowing larger molecules to slip through. The filter becomes useless.

To fix this, the team altered the fabrication process and introduced an in situ crosslinking agent directly into the polymer film during its formation.

“The key was stabilizing the structure before the polymer had a chance to swell,” said Dr Zhiwei Jiang. “This preserves the tiny pores that make molecular separation possible, while still allowing hydrocarbons to flow through very quickly.”

When the researchers tested the membranes against real Arabian Extra Light crude oil, the results defied standard expectations. The PLIM system successfully stripped out 99.8% of heavy hydrocarbons (those with more than 15 carbon atoms). It also slashed corrosive sulfur compounds by 93%. 

This is a massive victory for refineries, as sulfur frequently degrades downstream equipment and catalysts.

The membrane performed just as well on lighter refinery streams, such as virgin naphtha. It sorted out smaller molecules destined for fuel upgrading from heavier components used to manufacture everyday plastics. It did all this while operating at flow rates comparable to those of commercial water desalination systems.

Moreover, this team designed the material with mass manufacturing in mind from day one.

Using standard roll-to-roll processing, PLIM sheets were manufactured over a meter wide. These sheets were wrapped into spiral-wound modules, the exact shape used in existing industrial filtration plants worldwide.

The membranes also proved they have stamina, running continuously for 30 days without a drop in performance.

The results were published in the journal Science on June 18.

💾

SpaceX might be stealing the spotlight right now with its blockbuster stock market debut, but things are moving just as fast over at Tesla.

The technical specifications of Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab have reportedly been leaked from its official U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certification documents. 

The regulatory filing, certified on May 26, 2026, confirms several of Tesla’s design goals while revealing a few mechanical surprises regarding the robotaxi’s drivetrain and overall mass.

In February, Tesla announced that production of the upcoming two-seater Cybercab had begun. The company’s official X account shared a photo showcasing the first robotaxi rolling off the assembly line at Gigafactory Texas. However, not many details were disclosed back then.

First Cybercab off the production line at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/kY8vCqtrCA

— Tesla (@Tesla) February 17, 2026

Vehicle specifications

The Cybercab serves as Tesla’s purpose-built, fully autonomous vehicle designed exclusively for Robotaxi service. The two-seater achieves an unusually light overall mass for an electric vehicle by eliminating driver controls such as a steering wheel or pedals.

According to EPA filings, Tesla has built an EV that weighs a mere 3,113 pounds. This puts the vehicle’s weight roughly 700 pounds below the lightest Tesla Model 3 configuration.

As it is so light, it doesn’t need a massive, heavy battery. It runs on a compact 48-kWh pack and a single front-mounted 219-horsepower motor.

According to The Verge, the Tesla Cybercab is poised to become one of the most efficient electric vehicles ever certified, boasting a 165-watt-hour-per-mile (Wh/mi) rating that yields an expected real-world range of 290 to 300 miles after EPA adjustments. 

This hyper-efficiency allows the robotaxi to travel roughly six miles on a single kilowatt-hour (kWh) of power — outperforming standard EVs that typically get only three to four miles per kWh.

Way behind Waymo

Yet, for all its technical brilliance, the Cybercab remains stuck.

Musk confidently promised investors last summer that autonomous ride-hailing would cover half the U.S. population by the end of the year. It didn’t happen. The service remains locked down to just three Texas cities: Austin, Dallas, and Houston.

The fleet itself is microscopic. Tesla currently holds permits for just 42 unsupervised Model Y robotaxis in Texas, and only 14 of those are actively driving without a human safety monitor behind the wheel. 

Meanwhile, Alphabet’s Waymo is utterly dominating the asphalt. Waymo operates a rapidly scaling fleet of over 3,000 driverless vehicles across 11 major U.S. cities.

Tesla fans often point to safety data as a benefit. The company has logged only 18 automated driving crashes with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) compared to Waymo’s 697. However, experts say that it is simply a game of numbers. If you barely have any cars on the road, you barely have any crashes.

The pieces are moving behind the scenes, though. Tesla has quietly filed municipal plans to build dedicated “robocar” car washes and automated charging stations in Las Vegas and Austin. The infrastructure is coming. The engineering is certified. Now, Tesla just has to prove it can actually scale the service before its competitors leave it in the dust.

💾

Researchers at the National University of Singapore and Applied Materials have developed a method to grow extremely thin films on chips. 

Interestingly, the tungsten disulfide film is only 0.7 nanometers thick, protecting the tiny copper wires inside microchips.

Atomically thin material

We are building a digital world of roaring AI models and fast supercomputers, but the physical wires carrying that data are choking.

Computer chips are shrinking toward their absolute physical limits, leaving the microscopic copper wires inside them with virtually no breathing room.

The issue isn’t actually the copper itself. It is the bulky insulation wrapped around it.

Every nanoscale copper wire inside a modern processor requires two bodyguard layers. A barrier layer keeps runaway copper atoms from leaking out and short-circuiting the chip. Meanwhile, a liner layer acts as a structural glue, ensuring the copper sticks smoothly to the chip’s foundation. 

Today, the tech industry uses tantalum-based materials for these coatings. But these are hard to scale down.

Yet as chip components shrink, these bulky coatings consume half the wire’s cross-section, spiking electrical resistance and choking chip performance.

To solve this, researchers have successfully grown an ultrathin film of tungsten disulfide that acts as both a liner and a barrier.

And its total thickness is just 0.7 nanometers. 

Reduces electrical resistance

Conventional engineering logic dictated that you needed two entirely separate materials to handle the dual jobs of adhesion and insulation. How does a single layer of atoms replace a bulky, multi-material stack? It happens through an intentional structural labyrinth.

Using advanced computational modeling, the NUS Department of Chemistry discovered that the tungsten disulfide (WS2) film grows in a chaotic, polycrystalline pattern. It is made of tiny, microscopic grains. When layered, these grains are completely mismatched.

“The calculations showed us that the polycrystalline nature of these films, which might initially seem like a limitation compared with a perfect single crystal, is actually an asset. The random grain orientations between layers create a labyrinth that copper atoms struggle to traverse,” said Professor Richard Wong from the NUS Department of Chemistry, who is also a co-director of the Corporate Lab.

“This gives us a design principle where we engineer the grain structure to optimize barrier performance instead of pursuing perfect crystallinity,” Wong added. 

This random alignment creates a winding, staggered barrier rather than a straight path. As a result, the overlapping boundaries trap copper atoms in a structural labyrinth, blocking them from leaking through.

When tested under heavy-duty processing demands, the WS2 atomic shield delivered definitive results. It slashed electrical resistance by a millionfold, leaving a 20-nanometer wire’s space wide open for copper current by shrinking the coating’s footprint to just 7 percent. 

Plus, the method extended the projected lifespan of the wiring by more than 10 times under extreme electrical stress.

Plasma-free process

Designed for immediate commercial viability, the team’s plasma-free growth process operates at a low 350°C (662°F) to prevent damage to underlying chip components. 

This method is the first to simultaneously meet all four strict industry manufacturing standards: low-temperature execution, uniform coverage across full wafers, atomic-level thickness control, and over 95 percent conformal coating inside deep, narrow trenches.

With global chip demand hurtling toward US$1 trillion annually, this atom-thin shield arrives just in time. The team notes the new material is thinner than any barrier target set on the international semiconductor technology roadmap through 2037.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Electronics.

💾

At Eurosatory 2026, German defense giant Rheinmetall showcased its Containerized Missile Launcher (CML), a dedicated multi-launcher for the platform. 

It is a fully autonomous, modular weapon system that turns ordinary civilian and military logistics networks into rapid-launch missile bases.

The CML acts as a force multiplier for the company’s new FV-014 Loitering Munition System (LMS). 

Operating as part of Rheinmetall’s integrated reconnaissance and strike network, this combined system blends long-range scouting with precise strike capabilities. 

Moreover, the newly introduced CML is a critical network element that enables forces to rapidly deploy and launch multiple FV-014 “kamikaze” drones to engage battlefield targets efficiently.

360-degree gimbal

The 20 kg FV-014 functions as a portable loitering munition, providing frontline troops with an immediate link between reconnaissance and organic artillery support.

It features an aerodynamic wing design powered by a quiet electric propulsion system, allowing for stealthy operations. To enable long-term target observation, the drone is equipped with a 360-degree swiveling nose gimbal that provides frontline forces with comprehensive situational awareness.

The system delivers a flight endurance of up to 70 minutes, with a maximum operational range of 100 kilometers and a 60-kilometer data link capacity.

To ensure precise target engagement, the FV-014 drone is armed with an in-house-developed High-Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) payload manufactured by Rheinmetall. 

This specialized warhead provides a combat capability, combining anti-personnel fragmentation effects with deep anti-armor penetration. 

Despite the drone’s lightweight design, this highly effective payload can punch through more than 600 mm of armor plating, making it lethal against heavily armored combat vehicles and fortified enemy positions.

Modern warfare demands speed, and this system is built to minimize reaction times.

According to the company, the FV-014 runs on an advanced software architecture that allows a single operator to command multiple drones in a coordinated swarm formation. 

Interestingly, the system strictly enforces a “human-in-the-loop” protocol, ensuring a human operator retains final authority over any lethal strike. 

Furthermore, this intelligent flight system is designed for high-interference battlefields, allowing the drone to navigate and operate reliably even when facing intense electronic warfare or signal jamming.

Mass-producible drone network

As per the company, the FV-014 is a central pillar of the Rheinmetall Reconnaissance Network (AWV), controlled via a user-friendly ground station.

In pooling data with other assets, such as the LUNA NG reconnaissance drone, the system creates a comprehensive battlefield picture that enables rapid target engagement.

Developed and produced entirely within the European Union, the FV-014 has been engineered from the ground up for high-volume industrial mass production. It would ensure rapid scalability for modern defense needs. 

The system’s strategic importance was validated in February 2026 during a successful live-fire demonstration for a NATO customer. This milestone culminated rapidly in a massive, multi-billion-euro framework agreement signed with the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) in April 2026. It solidifies the drone’s position as a cornerstone of future European defense procurement.

With production lines ramping up, the future of distributed, autonomous artillery has arrived, and it comes packed inside a shipping container.

💾

Irish firm Net Zero Energy (NZE) aims to construct Rathrush Green Energy Park, a 600MW Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) facility located outside Rathoe in Co. Carlow.

It is a massive, €2 billion infrastructure project designed to tackle the biggest issue facing clean energy today: what to do when the wind stops blowing and the sun refuses to shine. 

The answer is the new facility built on a 50-acre site. It will act as a giant, green infrastructure for the entire country when needed the most. 

“By making available 600MW of renewable energy at the flick of a switch, this project can satisfy as much as 10% of Ireland’s peak energy requirement. Rathrush Green Energy Park provides significant, secure, sustainable long-duration energy storage for the Irish grid,” said Tim Cowhig, NZE chairman. 

Hydrogen production

The strategy addresses a major flaw in current clean energy infrastructure: waste during peak production.

On exceptionally windy or sunny days, Ireland’s renewable sources often generate far more electricity than consumers need or the national grid can handle. Without a way to store this surplus, wind turbines and solar panels are routinely shut off, completely wasting vast amounts of clean power.

Rathrush would capture that discarded energy. It will use the excess electricity to split water and create green hydrogen. Then comes the subterranean twist.

The plan is to compress the green hydrogen gas and pump it deep underground for storage within custom-engineered, lined rock caverns. When peak demand strains the national grid, the stored hydrogen will be released, feeding above-ground turbines to instantly generate clean electricity.

It is a massive scale-up for Irish infrastructure. Upon completion, the park will generate 30 times as much green energy as the famous Turlough Hill pumped-storage facility in Wicklow. According to the company, it is expected to have seven times the generating capacity of the Ardnacrusha hydropower plant. 

Cutting emissions

The company also mapped out the future facility’s environmental payoff. Interestingly, it is projected to displace 180,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions every single year. 

Mathematically, that is the equivalent of taking 40,000 combustion-engine cars off Irish roads permanently. It also offers a shield against the punishing climate-target fines that loom over the state budget if carbon goals are missed. 

In addition to cutting emissions, the facility could protect local consumers from volatile global energy prices. 

Ireland’s energy security is uniquely vulnerable, as underscored by an annual spend a €10 billion on imported fossil fuels. 

“By harnessing an energy source which was heretofore being wasted, we can insulate consumers from future fossil fuel crises and price shocks such as we saw in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and more recently, in the Middle East,” said Peter Harte, NZE Chief Executive. 

The construction phase is estimated to employ up to 1,500 workers at its peak. Once the facility goes live, it will anchor 70 permanent, highly skilled operational jobs in the Carlow region. 

NZE is currently steering the project through its community consultation phase to address local questions regarding the scale of the infrastructure. If all goes according to schedule, the developers intend to formally lodge their planning application by the end of the year. 

💾

Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in the US have figured out how to use ordinary microwave technology to mine dead batteries. It sounds crazy, but it works. 

The team developed a microwave-based method to upcycle old lithium-ion battery cathodes. 

Interestingly, the microwave method slashes the time required to turn old lithium cobalt oxide powder into nanosheets from 7 days to just 2 hours.

Recycling cathodes

The development comes at an important time. Millions of early-generation electric vehicle batteries are reaching the end of their lifespans. Usually, the old vehicle parts head straight for the landfill. That is a massive waste of precious metals. 

Batteries use cathodes, which are packed with expensive, hard-to-find minerals like lithium and cobalt. Cobalt is especially problematic. The Democratic Republic of the Congo mines roughly 70 percent of the world’s supply, leaving global tech supply chains incredibly vulnerable to political disruption.

“Cobalt is a critical material for almost all consumer electronics,” said Clare Davis-Wheeler Chin, a Sandia nanomaterials chemist and an inventor of the method. 

“Since there’s only one main source of cobalt, it would be very easy for the cobalt supply chain to just disappear. We’re about to have an abundance of old EV batteries that are either going to go to the landfill or that we can mine to develop a domestic supply,” added Chin. 

Using an adjustable microwave reactor and a large positively charged chemical ion, researchers can break down old battery cathode powder.

Microwaves are known for uneven heating, a quirk that usually frustrates anyone trying to reheat leftovers. For battery chemists, however, that uneven hot-and-cold friction is a feature, not a bug. The localized heat spikes violently rip the stubborn lithium cobalt oxide cathode powder apart, unraveling it into microscopic layers called nanosheets.

The speed of the process is interesting. Standard methods of breaking down this material take a full week of high-temperature baking. The microwave method does it in just two hours.

It is also incredibly efficient. Previous laboratory attempts to create these nanosheets maxed out at a 60 percent yield, but Sandia’s microwave technique successfully converts 95 percent of the starting material.

“When you have nanosheets, ion exchange can access the entire sheet, and you can maximize the amount of critical materials that can be exchanged,” said Aliya Lapp, a Sandia electrochemist with expertise in galvanic ion exchange.

Economically beneficial

The flexibility of these ultra-thin nanosheets allows easy replacement of aged metal ions to keep pace with changing market trends. For example, substituting expensive cobalt with cheaper, higher-performing nickel to meet modern automotive standards. 

Interestingly, this method automatically heals microscopic defects and removes impurities accumulated over a decade of use. It eliminates the complex processing steps required by standard recycling. 

Furthermore, any extracted cobalt can be captured using a specialized molecular framework and reused, thereby allowing researchers to design two upgraded, industry-ready cathodes from the remains of a single dead battery.

Standard recycling centers operate like massive, energy-hogging blast furnaces. Sandia’s process keeps things cool, cheap, and fast. Preliminary economic modeling indicates the technique could boost battery recycling profits by a massive 30 percent compared to standard commercial methods. 

The tech is moving quickly out of the lab. The research team has already filed two patents and interviewed 80 industrial leaders to prep the technology for the commercial market.

Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a technique to carve microscopic liquid-cooling channels directly inside silicon semiconductor chips. 

Interestingly, the computer architecture slashed the energy required for cooling by pumping ordinary, room-temperature water straight through the chip’s internal structure.

“As the performance of AI semiconductors and advanced electronic packaging becomes increasingly limited by heat, we expect this technology to serve as a foundational cooling solution for future high-performance computing systems,” said Professor Sung Jin Kim. 

Micro-channel tech

The rapid advancement of high-performance AI chips has created a severe energy crisis for data centers, which require massive amounts of electricity both to power intensive computations and to cool down the resulting heat. 

Typical cooling methods, such as roaring air fans and external copper heat spreaders, are reaching their physical limits. Hence, the industry is urgently looking for thermal alternatives. 

To appreciate this development, you have to understand why standard liquid cooling is flagging.

Most modern liquid systems rely on an external “cold plate” pressed against the outside of a chip. The coolant has to travel from one end of the hardware to the other. This long trek creates immense fluid resistance.

It requires heavy-duty pumps pushing with massive pressure, which consumes a ton of energy. And at times, the fluid warms up along the way, leaving some parts of the processor chilled and others dangerously hot.

The KAIST team developed a liquid-cooling technology that cools semiconductors from the inside out. It uses ordinary room-temperature water to tackle high-heat-flux conditions at the source.

The design features multiple tiny inlets and outlets scattered uniformly across the chip.

The innovation centers on a “manifold microchannel” structure embedded directly inside the silicon, which mimics an efficient logistics network by using multiple strategic inlet and outlet points. 

This decentralized design shortens the fluid’s travel distance, reducing flow resistance and pumping pressure. The researchers used a multi-fidelity optimization framework to perfectly balance channel dimensions and flow rates.

10x higher efficiency

The KAIST team combined rapid 1D computational models with heavy-duty simulations to map an optimal, perfectly uniform flow. And the experimental results blew past expectations.

Notably, the system registered a cooling Coefficient of Performance (COP) of 106,000. That is an abstract engineering metric, but the context is historic: it is ten times higher than the previous world record published in Nature in 2020. 

In plain terms, it means chip manufacturers need just one-tenth of the pumping power to remove the same amount of heat from a machine. Even under an extreme thermal load of 2,000 watts per square centimeter, the system kept the chip comfortably below 100°C (212°F).

Yet, the most disruptive detail of the experiment is how it’s made.

The researchers didn’t use exotic, hyper-expensive materials like synthetic diamond; instead, they used plain water. Furthermore, the entire fabrication process happens below 350°C (662°F).

It means the process is entirely compatible with existing commercial semiconductor manufacturing lines. Foundries can integrate this plumbing technique into current chip designs without buying billions of dollars in new machinery.

The development was published in the journal Energy Conversion and Management.

💾

Researchers at Canada’s Western University designed a foam-backed floating photovoltaic (FPV) system. 

It was tested in a stormwater pond in Ontario, Canada. The system generated 7.7 megawatt-hours of electricity over a year, outperforming a standard reference floating system by about 2.7 percent.

“The results of this study established foam-based FPV as a promising and adaptable platform for renewable energy generation,” the team noted in the study paper. 

The ice solution

Solar power has long had a geography problem.

To build the massive solar farms required to displace fossil fuels, developers need land. Usually, that means competing with agriculture or cutting into natural conservation areas. The solution in warmer climates has been “floatovoltaics“—placing solar panels on giant plastic pontoons over lakes and reservoirs.

But if you try that in a Canadian winter, thick moving ice will crush the structures like aluminum cans.

Now, researchers have solved the cold-weather problem using a deceptively simple combination of materials: shipping foam and hot tub bubbles. In particular, a monocrystalline foam-backed FPV system was fabricated.

It shows that floating solar can not only survive freezing temperatures but actually thrive in them. 

Compared with tilted plastic rafts used in warmer climates, this design attaches flexible solar panels directly to thick, waterproof foam sheets, reducing wind exposure.

To prevent ice damage, an underwater air-bubbler system was installed. A shore-based pump pushes bubbles from the bottom of the pond, carrying warmer deep water to the surface to keep the area around the panels ice-free. It acted like a localized defroster.

The results showed that on days when the rest of the pond was frozen, the water directly surrounding the solar array remained completely clear. 

Higher energy yield

Keeping the ice away didn’t break the energy bank, either. Over a year of continuous monitoring, the air-bubbler system consumed as little as 0.02 percent of the total energy the panels generated. At its peak during the worst winter storms, it reduced yield by only 14.5 percent. 

“A regression model developed in this study indicated that the foam-based FPV system generated 7.7. MWh/year, representing up to 2.7% more energy than other PV models,” the study noted. 

It also pulled double duty as a water conservation tool.

In sitting flat against the water’s surface, the foam-backed array acted as a physical shield, blocking direct sunlight and cutting off the wind that typically drives evaporation. The researchers calculated that the relationship between solar coverage and water savings is linear, meaning that every additional square meter of panel added results in a predictable drop in water loss.

“FPV coverage linearly reduced pond evaporation, aiding agricultural water conservation,” the study stated.

If scaled up to cover just half of the Ontario stormwater pond, this innovative setup would trap and save roughly 927 cubic meters of water annually. 

For local communities and farmers, that means keeping hundreds of thousands of gallons of precious water in the reservoir to support agricultural irrigation when it is needed most.

With the concept proven on a small scale, the researchers are looking to take their foam-and-bubble design out of the pond. The next step is testing the technology on a larger scale across harsher, more diverse bodies of water. 

The findings were published in the journal Applied Energy.

💾

Slicing through the atmosphere at 55,000 feet, NASA’s experimental X-59 reached a vital milestone on Friday, June 12, by hitting Mach 1.4 (roughly 924 mph).

Hitting these exact numbers is a huge deal. Mach 1.4 at 55,000 feet represents the identical speed and cruising height the aircraft will use when it eventually flies over populated American towns.

“Each flight brings NASA one step closer to flying the X-59 over communities and gathering feedback that could help shape the future of commercial supersonic flight over land,” NASA stated. 

Achieving flight conditions

For over fifty years, international aviation regulators have strictly banned civilian supersonic flights over land due to the deafening, window-rattling disruption of sonic booms. 

Established in 1973, this absolute ban has locked commercial air travel to standard subsonic speeds to protect populated areas on the ground.

Developed in partnership with Lockheed Martin, NASA’s X-59 is an experimental aircraft designed for supersonic flight.

In a rapid sequence of testing milestones, NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less first flew the X-59 to Mach 1.1 (713 mph) at 43,400 feet during an 81-minute flight from Edwards Air Force Base on June 5. 

Just one week later, on June 12, the experimental craft successfully pushed its performance envelope even further, accelerating to Mach 1.4 at even higher altitude.

How does the plane bypass the classic explosion? It comes down to design. Standard supersonic jets create air-pressure ripples that quickly clump together into a single, massive shockwave.

The X-59 is built like a needle. Its ultra-long, slender shape separates those air-pressure waves and prevents any combination from occurring. Rather than a loud boom, people on the ground should theoretically hear a gentle, car-door-like “thump.”

Currently, pilots are steadily pushing the aircraft through a battery of complex maneuvers, varying speeds, and diverse altitudes to find its absolute physical performance limits.

Engineers will thoroughly measure the aircraft’s supersonic acoustic signature using ground microphone arrays to confirm that the quiet thump is performing exactly as intended.

Eventually, NASA will take the X-59 out of isolated test spaces and fly it directly over several U.S. communities to openly survey real public perception of the sound.

The F-15 companion

Right now, verifying the plane’s actual acoustic signature is a bit tricky. During these early test flights, the X-59 is trailed closely by a NASA F-15 research fighter jet.

The trailing jet is about to become a critical scientific tool. In upcoming tests, engineers will mount a specialized, shock-sensing probe to the F-15’s nose. This will let researchers fly directly into the wake of the X-59, mapping out its invisible pressure waves and gathering real-time data on its low-boom performance.

Once the data from the community overflights has been fully gathered, NASA plans to hand the findings to international regulatory boards. The hope is to replace the decades-old speed limits with a new, noise-based standard. 

If the public agrees that the X-59 is quiet enough, the aviation industry could see a cutting of cross-country commercial flight times squarely in half.

💾