News

  • A new mechanism for extracting energy from light!

    September 11, 2013

    Penn researchers, Prof. Dawn Bonell (Penn’s vice provost for research and Trustee Professor of Materials Science and Engineering) and doctoral student David Conklin, recently published a paper in the journal ACS Nano that demonstrates a new mechanism for extracting energy from light, which could improve solar energy harvesting and optoelectronic devices. Read more here.

  • Keeping Penn Cool

    August 28, 2013

    Read more about Penn's energy efficient cooling system here.

  • A New Way to Study Catalytic Reactions

    July 24, 2013

    Researchers from Penn and two other institutions recently published a paper in Science in which they detail rate measurements on samples in which the length of the ceria(CeO2)-metal interface is tailored by the use of nanocrystals, demonstrating that CO oxidation in ceria-based catalysts is greatly enhanced at the ceria-metal interface.

  • Mark Allen--Scientific Director of Penn’s Singh Center for Nanotechnology

    June 19, 2013

    Mark G. Allen, a pioneer in the field of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) is named Scientific Director of Penn’s Singh Center for Nanotechnology. Read more here.

  • A new way to turn infrared light into mechanical energy

    May 22, 2013

    Researchers from Penn's Department of Material Science, led by assistant professor Ertugrul Cubukcu and postdoctoral researcher Fei Yi, along with graduate students Hai Zhu and Jason C. Reed, used a pattern of nanoantennas to develop a new way of turning infrared light into mechanical action.

  • High Speed Chemistry

    May 2, 2013

    Penn Chemistry recently announced the expansion of their state-of-the-art High Throughput Experimentation (HTE) laboratory, including two new pieces of instrumentation—a mass-directed liquid chromatograph and an ultra-performance liquid chromatograph—that will enable the facility to screen synthetic conditions for all sorts of new molecules and materials in many new and different ways.

  • Funding Innovation for Cleaner Cities

    April 8, 2013

    John Landis of Design and Dan Lee, Camillo Taylor and Vukan Vuchic of SEAS discuss auto fuel-efficiency standards and government involvement in this Knowledge@Wharton article.

  • Metamaterials

    April 2, 2013

    Professor Nader Engheta, the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, explains metamaterials in this short video. Metamaterials have a wide range of applications from bending waves around an object, rendering it effectively invisible, to using super lenses to boost energy transmission.

  • Complex Fluids

    February 14, 2013

    Paulo Arratia, Associate Professor at Penn in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, describes the role of fluid mechanics in energy production, amongst other things, in this ASME video.

  • Nanotribology

    February 4, 2013

    Prof. Robert Carpick (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) and his doctoral student, Tevis Jacobs, have experimentally demonstrated atomic attrition--the transfer of material, atom by atom, from one surface to another--with a transmission electron microscope (TEM). Read more here.