Research

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the first installment of its Sixth Assessment - the world's most comprehensive scientific study to date of climate change, its impacts and options to protect our planet. Paul N. Edwards, the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security and Senior Research Scholar at CISAC, served as a lead author. The report was four years in the making with work from more than 900 scientists and 195 governments.

A new study by researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator found that storing lithium-ion batteries at sub-freezing temperatures can crack some parts of the battery and separate them from surrounding materials, reducing their electric storage capacity. Using a combination of X-ray analysis methods at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource and machine learning techniques, researchers were able to identify individual cathode particles. By looking for battery materials better suited for temperature response, scientists could address the detachment issue.

A new type of rechargeable alkali metal-chlorine battery developed at Stanford by an international team of researchers can store up to six times more charge than ones that are currently used today. The new battery relies on the back-and-forth chemical conversion of sodium chloride (Na/Cl2) or lithium chloride (Li/Cl2) to chlorine. Researchers envision their batteries to be used one day where frequent charging is not practical or desirable, such as in satellites or remote sensors. More work remains to engineer the battery structure for consumer electronics or electric vehicles.

In this Future of Everything podcast, Simona Onori, assistant professor, energy resources engineering, discusses the global preparedness for the shift to electric vehicles. Her lab develops mathematical battery management systems that assess the internal chemistry of a battery to predict how much life is let and how long until the next charge is needed. These analyses, "battery biopsies" can help engineers and EV drivers get more life out of their batteries.

A research team from the DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Lab, Stanford University, Hewlett Packard Labs, Penn State University and Purdue University have taken the first snapshots of atoms moving inside the tiny switches that control the flow of electric current. They have discovered, among other things, a short-lived state that might someday be exploited for faster and more energy-efficient computing devices.

A team of Stanford researchers have developed what they refer to as an 'AI-at-the-edge' chip which eliminates time lag by doing both inference and training on the phone rather than training remotely in the cloud. The AI-at-the-edge chip was developed using RRAM, a memory technology which is "non-volatile." The chip can be scaled to commercial production, is fast and a prolific storehouse for data, while using minimal battery power. In addition, privacy is improved since the data never leaves the device where it is gathered.

Hau Lee, the Thoma Professor of Operations, Information & Technology and codirector of the Value Chain Innovation Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, discusses his article titled "Supply Chains with a Conscience" which explores how supply chains can and should be harnessed to run factories fairly and minimize ecological damage.

In June, the Senate passed, and the House of Representatives is poised to take up, a bill that will invest roughly $50 billion in new fabs (semiconductor fabrication plants), as well as fund research in new technologies. Stanford could help lead an initiative that will emerge from this chip stimulus act - creating a national "lab to fab" infrastructure to smooth the translation of academic discoveries into practical technologies.