Lithium metal batteries (LMBs), that use pure lithium (Li) for their negative electrodes, are attracting significant attention due to their extremely high theoretical capacity. However, their practical applications are limited by low cycling stability and safety issues, arising from dendrite formation, electrolyte breakdown and uneven solid-electrolyte interface formation.

As countries invest in green hydrogen to decarbonize heavy industry, transportation, and energy systems, researchers are seeking faster ways to accelerate the development of hydrogen technologies. Solid oxide electrolysis cells are among the most efficient systems for producing green hydrogen from steam, but identifying their optimal operating conditions requires thousands of computationally intensive simulations, slowing innovation and increasing development costs.

In its CZS Nexus program, the Carl Zeiss Foundation has awarded grants to two young scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The researchers will each receive EUR 1.5 million to establish their own interdisciplinary working groups at KIT. Dr. Laura Marie Helleckes investigates how biotechnology processes can be transferred from the laboratory to industrial production. Dr. Bianca Schacherl uses modern X-ray techniques to gain new insights for cancer treatment by analyzing radioactive materials in biological samples.

Five years ago, 1,000 volunteers across Switzerland buried more than 2,000 pairs of cotton underwear. The unconventional citizen science project, led by the University of Zurich and Agroscope, aimed to gain a better understanding of the activity of soil organisms. The newly published findings show that land use is the most important factor in determining decomposition rates and soil life.

Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology developed DCA2MC, a divide-and-conquer approach for model checking linear temporal properties. The method splits large verification problems into smaller, independently checkable tasks to address state-space explosion and improve performance through parallelization. A supporting tool is implemented in Maude and provides an environment integrating with external model checkers such as Spin, while a semi-automated method helps select effective layer configurations. Case studies demonstrated improved verification of larger state spaces.

A research team at The University of Tokyo has succeeded in an atomic-scale double-slit experiment that treats neighboring atoms as “two slits,” and demonstrated that it is possible to read out the vibration of atoms from the fringe pattern formed by electrons. Applying this method to research and development of semiconductor materials may make it possible to investigate, at the atomic level, regions where heat accumulates or flows inefficiently.