A new study could guide the design of more powerful and faster charging lithium-ion batteries. MIT researchers measured lithium intercalation rates in a variety of battery materials, and used those data to develop a new model of how the reaction rate is controlled.

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) disposal is a major environmental concern. While defluorination presents an environmentally friendly approach for recycling PTFE, traditional defluorination methods are energy-intensive, require extreme conditions, and ignore fluorine recovery. Now, an international research team has developed an approach that enables room-temperature defluorination with high fluorine recovery yield under optimal conditions using sodium dispersion. The method is useful for recycling not only PTFE but also other per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

In the era of instant data exchange and growing risks of cyberattacks, scientists are seeking secure methods of transmitting information. One promising solution is quantum cryptography – a quantum technology that uses single photons to establish encryption keys. A team from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw has developed and tested in urban infrastructure a novel system for quantum key distribution (QKD). The system employs so-called high-dimensional encoding. The proposed setup is simpler to build and scale than existing solutions, while being based on a phenomenon known to physicists for nearly two centuries – the Talbot effect. The research results have been published in prestigious journals: “Optica Quantum”, “Optica”, and “Physical Review Applied”.