Thursday, November 14, 2013 12:09:59 AM
NIOBF ...niobium ...graphene...TSEM =RF MEMS
micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)...***MEMS be on alert for anything related to MENS...its the big thing right now...
The micro-supercapacitors can also be fabricated directly on a chip using the same technique, making them highly useful for integration into micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS).
Video... scientific-accident-that-may-change-the-world-or-at-least-your-battery
http://www.upworthy.com/see-the-scientific-accident-that-may-change-the-world-or-at-least-your-battery-l
http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/science/more-good-news-on-those-carbon-supercapacitors.html
The recap: Graphene, a very simple carbon polymer, can be used as the basic component of a "supercapacitor" -- an electrical power storage device that charges far more rapidly than chemical batteries. Unlike other supercapacitors, though, graphene's structure also offers a high "energy density," -- it can hold a lot of electrons, meaning that it could conceivably rival or outperform batteries in the amount of charge it can hold. Kaner Lab researcher Maher El-Kady found a way to create sheets of graphene a single carbon atom thick by covering a plastic surface with graphite oxide solution and bombarding it with precisely controlled laser light.
English translation: He painted a DVD with a liquid carbon solution and stuck it into a standard-issue DVD burner.
The result: Absurdly cheap graphene sheets one atom thick, which held a surprising amount of charge without further modification.
That work was reported a year ago; we mentioned it due to the video virally making the rounds this week. Late Tuesday, UCLA announced that El-Kady and Kaner have a new article in press, in the upcoming issue of Nature Communications, describing a method by which El-Kady's earlier, slightly homebrewed fabricating process shown in the video can be made more efficient, raising the possibility of mass production. As the authors say in their article abstract,
More than 100 micro-supercapacitors can be produced on a single disc in 30?min or less.
El-Kady and Kaner found a way to embed small electrodes within each graphene unit, and place the whole thing on a flexible substrate that allows the supercapacitor to be bent. The team is already claiming energy density comparable to existing thin-film lithium ion batteries.
In the video we shared Tuesday, Kaner says that this technology, if it pans out, offers possibilities like a smart phone getting a full day's charge in a second or two, or an electric car reaching "full" in a minute. This week's press release from UCLA offers other intriguing possibilities:
The new micro-supercapacitors are also highly bendable and twistable, making them potentially useful as energy-storage devices in flexible electronics like roll-up displays and TVs, e-paper, and even wearable electronics. The researchers showed the utility of their new laser-scribed graphene micro-supercapacitor in an all-solid form, which would enable any new device incorporating them to be more easily shaped and flexible. The micro-supercapacitors can also be fabricated directly on a chip using the same technique, making them highly useful for integration into micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS). As they can be directly integrated on-chip, these micro-supercapacitors may help to better extract energy from solar, mechanical and thermal sources and thus make more efficient self-powered systems. They could also be fabricated on the backside of solar cells in both portable devices and rooftop installations to store power generated during the day for use after sundown, helping to provide electricity around the clock when connection to the grid is not possible.
Kaner says that his lab is now looking for partners in industry that can help make these graphene supercapacitors on an industrial scale.
It's tempting to be cynical about the possibility of a magic bullet energy storage solution; such a breakthrough could solve any number of problems from annoying dead smart phones to two-hour charge times for electric cars to an inefficient power distribution grid, and it's easy to really want this kind of thing to be true. Plenty of seemingly promising technical innovations in the last few years haven't lived up to their hopeful hype. There's always the chance that further study will reveal a fatal flaw in graphene supercapacitor technology. But for the time being, ReWire officially has its hopes up, at least a little.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1802352-molycorps-loss-is-niocorps-gain?source=email_rt_article_readmore
In the case of NioCorp Developments Ltd. (OTC:NIOBF), successful moves by its management team have translated into investors getting excited about the stock once again.
On September 23rd, the Company announced that it had hired a new CEO in Mark A. Smith, the former CEO of Molycorp Inc. (MCP), a Colorado-based rare-earths producer and operator of the famed Mountain Pass Rare Earth Elements facility in California.
Smith was successful in taking Molycorp public in 2008 even as Mountain Pass fell off the radar in the early 2000's when it closed due to US environmental restrictions and depressed prices for rare earth elements.
Soon after, Smith secured new environmental permits required to reopen Mountain Pass for production. For his efforts, Molycorp's stock shot up seven-fold in less than three years.
However, before he got to see Mountain Pass commence commercial production at the end of last year, he was abruptly let go by Molycorp.
Though it was never officially confirmed, Smith's departure occurred in the wake of an SEC probe into the Molycorp's public disclosures which began in August 2012.
Smith's name was cleared this past June when the investigation ended with no legal action taken by the Commission.
Niocorp didn't hesitate to pounce on Smith.
Smith's track record of moving a start-up company through to production in a relatively short time has gotten investors excited about Niocorp's future.
But that's not all.
In a time when raising capital has been rather tough for junior miners, Niocorp is managing to buck the trend - thanks to management once again.
Following Smith's appointment as CEO as well as a director, Niocorp announced and recently completed the first tranche of a new private placement financing to raise gross proceeds of $10 million. As of October 22nd, 6.187 million shares were subscribed for gross proceeds of $927,992.
The new CEO personally picked up 3.4 million shares while Niocorp President Peter Dickie subscribed for 500,000 shares.
Here, management's willingness to participate in the private placement certainly shows they're betting on the future success of the company. This also shows that management is bullish on the long term upside of the industry as well.
While there are many interesting uses for niobium, its primary use is as an alloying agent for strengthening steel. And global steel demand is expected to rise in the next couple of years.
The World Steel Association, a group comprised of 170 steel producers, forecasts 2013 production to rise 3.1% to 1.475 billion tons.
With the global economy showing signs of recovery, steel output is expected to climb another 3.3% in 2014 to reach 1.52 billion tons. This should bode well for niobium producers.
NioCorp operates the Elk Creek Carbonatite in South East Nebraska -- the only primary niobium project in the United States.
Elk Creek is the highest-grade, large-tonnage undeveloped niobium deposit in North America, with over 19.0 million tonnes indicated and over 83.0 million tonnes inferred.
Yet even with all that potential, shares had barely moved for most of 2013 -- a trend which changed recently thanks to the big move by the company.
Niocorp's stock is up 38% since the former Molycorp leader signed on as CEO. I see further upside as he settles in and begins leading the company in a new direction.
****now remember this is a pennypenny stock...is the niobium; so keep an eye out for this...see the next article below the chart...
http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/science/new-supercapacitor-breakthrough-from-ucla.html
Imagine a 'Battery' that Charges 100 Times Faster
Researchers at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have found a way to use niobium oxide as a matrix to allow the fabrication of supercapacitors the size of batteries, but which could conceivably charge and deliver power hundreds of times as quickly as typical batteries can.
Batteries and supercapacitors differ in the way they store electrical power. Batteries store power in the form of chemical energy, and while that's a very efficient way to store a considerable amount of power, it makes charging and power delivery relatively slow: electrons (or other charged particles, lithium ions being one common example) must work their way through a solid substance in both directions, which takes time.
Supercapacitors, on the other hand, essentially just "hang" those charged particles on a matrix without forcing them to migrate though a solid material, meaning that charging can take place as fast as the electrons can move. But the technology is limited by the fact that storage takes place only along the capacitor material's surface area, which means that once the material gets larger than wafer-thin, its storage capacity per unit of weight drops.
Think of the two storage technologies as different parts of a movie theater, with electrically charged particles as moviegoers. The ranks of seats are like a battery: you can hold a whole lot of people there, but once the aisle seats fill up it can take some time to get people to the seats in the interior. Supercapacitors are more like the aisles: you can fill them and empty them really quickly, but they don't hold nearly as many people.
The breakthrough by the team at the Samueli School of Engineering -- led by led by professor of materials science and engineering Bruce Dunn -- involved using a crystalline matrix of niobium oxide that's essentially "porous" on a molecular scale: it's got as much open space in its makeup as solid material, meaning it's got a large expanse of internal surface area on which charged particles can be stored.
"With this work, we are blurring the lines between what is a battery and what is a supercapacitor," said Veronica Augustyn, a graduate student in materials science told UCLA's Bill Kisliuk. "The discovery takes the disadvantages of capacitors and the disadvantages of batteries and does away with them." Augustyn is lead author of a paper describing the breakthrough, published April 14 in the journal Nature Materials.
The work suggests that electrodes 40 microns thick -- a bit more than a thousandth of an inch -- could be charged and discharged as efficiently as supercapacitors that are far thinner. And as Kisliuk points out, existing commercial batteries these days often use electrodes about that size.
Bruce Dunn closes Kisliuk's post with the most optimistic obligatory cautionary disclaimer we here at ReWire have seen in quite some time:
Dunn emphasizes that although the electrodes are an important first step, "further engineering at the nanoscale and beyond will be necessary to achieve practical devices with high energy density that can charge in under a minute."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://seekingalpha.com/news-article/6754991-towerjazz-and-cavendish-kinetics-collaborate-to-deliver-high-volume-tunable-rf-mems-products-for-fast-growing-4g-mobile-market
NIOBF
TSEM
micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)...***MEMS be on alert for anything related to MENS...its the big thing right now...
The micro-supercapacitors can also be fabricated directly on a chip using the same technique, making them highly useful for integration into micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS).
Video... scientific-accident-that-may-change-the-world-or-at-least-your-battery
http://www.upworthy.com/see-the-scientific-accident-that-may-change-the-world-or-at-least-your-battery-l
http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/science/more-good-news-on-those-carbon-supercapacitors.html
The recap: Graphene, a very simple carbon polymer, can be used as the basic component of a "supercapacitor" -- an electrical power storage device that charges far more rapidly than chemical batteries. Unlike other supercapacitors, though, graphene's structure also offers a high "energy density," -- it can hold a lot of electrons, meaning that it could conceivably rival or outperform batteries in the amount of charge it can hold. Kaner Lab researcher Maher El-Kady found a way to create sheets of graphene a single carbon atom thick by covering a plastic surface with graphite oxide solution and bombarding it with precisely controlled laser light.
English translation: He painted a DVD with a liquid carbon solution and stuck it into a standard-issue DVD burner.
The result: Absurdly cheap graphene sheets one atom thick, which held a surprising amount of charge without further modification.
That work was reported a year ago; we mentioned it due to the video virally making the rounds this week. Late Tuesday, UCLA announced that El-Kady and Kaner have a new article in press, in the upcoming issue of Nature Communications, describing a method by which El-Kady's earlier, slightly homebrewed fabricating process shown in the video can be made more efficient, raising the possibility of mass production. As the authors say in their article abstract,
More than 100 micro-supercapacitors can be produced on a single disc in 30?min or less.
El-Kady and Kaner found a way to embed small electrodes within each graphene unit, and place the whole thing on a flexible substrate that allows the supercapacitor to be bent. The team is already claiming energy density comparable to existing thin-film lithium ion batteries.
In the video we shared Tuesday, Kaner says that this technology, if it pans out, offers possibilities like a smart phone getting a full day's charge in a second or two, or an electric car reaching "full" in a minute. This week's press release from UCLA offers other intriguing possibilities:
The new micro-supercapacitors are also highly bendable and twistable, making them potentially useful as energy-storage devices in flexible electronics like roll-up displays and TVs, e-paper, and even wearable electronics. The researchers showed the utility of their new laser-scribed graphene micro-supercapacitor in an all-solid form, which would enable any new device incorporating them to be more easily shaped and flexible. The micro-supercapacitors can also be fabricated directly on a chip using the same technique, making them highly useful for integration into micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) or complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS). As they can be directly integrated on-chip, these micro-supercapacitors may help to better extract energy from solar, mechanical and thermal sources and thus make more efficient self-powered systems. They could also be fabricated on the backside of solar cells in both portable devices and rooftop installations to store power generated during the day for use after sundown, helping to provide electricity around the clock when connection to the grid is not possible.
Kaner says that his lab is now looking for partners in industry that can help make these graphene supercapacitors on an industrial scale.
It's tempting to be cynical about the possibility of a magic bullet energy storage solution; such a breakthrough could solve any number of problems from annoying dead smart phones to two-hour charge times for electric cars to an inefficient power distribution grid, and it's easy to really want this kind of thing to be true. Plenty of seemingly promising technical innovations in the last few years haven't lived up to their hopeful hype. There's always the chance that further study will reveal a fatal flaw in graphene supercapacitor technology. But for the time being, ReWire officially has its hopes up, at least a little.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1802352-molycorps-loss-is-niocorps-gain?source=email_rt_article_readmore
In the case of NioCorp Developments Ltd. (OTC:NIOBF), successful moves by its management team have translated into investors getting excited about the stock once again.
On September 23rd, the Company announced that it had hired a new CEO in Mark A. Smith, the former CEO of Molycorp Inc. (MCP), a Colorado-based rare-earths producer and operator of the famed Mountain Pass Rare Earth Elements facility in California.
Smith was successful in taking Molycorp public in 2008 even as Mountain Pass fell off the radar in the early 2000's when it closed due to US environmental restrictions and depressed prices for rare earth elements.
Soon after, Smith secured new environmental permits required to reopen Mountain Pass for production. For his efforts, Molycorp's stock shot up seven-fold in less than three years.
However, before he got to see Mountain Pass commence commercial production at the end of last year, he was abruptly let go by Molycorp.
Though it was never officially confirmed, Smith's departure occurred in the wake of an SEC probe into the Molycorp's public disclosures which began in August 2012.
Smith's name was cleared this past June when the investigation ended with no legal action taken by the Commission.
Niocorp didn't hesitate to pounce on Smith.
Smith's track record of moving a start-up company through to production in a relatively short time has gotten investors excited about Niocorp's future.
But that's not all.
In a time when raising capital has been rather tough for junior miners, Niocorp is managing to buck the trend - thanks to management once again.
Following Smith's appointment as CEO as well as a director, Niocorp announced and recently completed the first tranche of a new private placement financing to raise gross proceeds of $10 million. As of October 22nd, 6.187 million shares were subscribed for gross proceeds of $927,992.
The new CEO personally picked up 3.4 million shares while Niocorp President Peter Dickie subscribed for 500,000 shares.
Here, management's willingness to participate in the private placement certainly shows they're betting on the future success of the company. This also shows that management is bullish on the long term upside of the industry as well.
While there are many interesting uses for niobium, its primary use is as an alloying agent for strengthening steel. And global steel demand is expected to rise in the next couple of years.
The World Steel Association, a group comprised of 170 steel producers, forecasts 2013 production to rise 3.1% to 1.475 billion tons.
With the global economy showing signs of recovery, steel output is expected to climb another 3.3% in 2014 to reach 1.52 billion tons. This should bode well for niobium producers.
NioCorp operates the Elk Creek Carbonatite in South East Nebraska -- the only primary niobium project in the United States.
Elk Creek is the highest-grade, large-tonnage undeveloped niobium deposit in North America, with over 19.0 million tonnes indicated and over 83.0 million tonnes inferred.
Yet even with all that potential, shares had barely moved for most of 2013 -- a trend which changed recently thanks to the big move by the company.
Niocorp's stock is up 38% since the former Molycorp leader signed on as CEO. I see further upside as he settles in and begins leading the company in a new direction.
****now remember this is a pennypenny stock...is the niobium; so keep an eye out for this...see the next article below the chart...
http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/science/new-supercapacitor-breakthrough-from-ucla.html
Imagine a 'Battery' that Charges 100 Times Faster
Researchers at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have found a way to use niobium oxide as a matrix to allow the fabrication of supercapacitors the size of batteries, but which could conceivably charge and deliver power hundreds of times as quickly as typical batteries can.
Batteries and supercapacitors differ in the way they store electrical power. Batteries store power in the form of chemical energy, and while that's a very efficient way to store a considerable amount of power, it makes charging and power delivery relatively slow: electrons (or other charged particles, lithium ions being one common example) must work their way through a solid substance in both directions, which takes time.
Supercapacitors, on the other hand, essentially just "hang" those charged particles on a matrix without forcing them to migrate though a solid material, meaning that charging can take place as fast as the electrons can move. But the technology is limited by the fact that storage takes place only along the capacitor material's surface area, which means that once the material gets larger than wafer-thin, its storage capacity per unit of weight drops.
Think of the two storage technologies as different parts of a movie theater, with electrically charged particles as moviegoers. The ranks of seats are like a battery: you can hold a whole lot of people there, but once the aisle seats fill up it can take some time to get people to the seats in the interior. Supercapacitors are more like the aisles: you can fill them and empty them really quickly, but they don't hold nearly as many people.
The breakthrough by the team at the Samueli School of Engineering -- led by led by professor of materials science and engineering Bruce Dunn -- involved using a crystalline matrix of niobium oxide that's essentially "porous" on a molecular scale: it's got as much open space in its makeup as solid material, meaning it's got a large expanse of internal surface area on which charged particles can be stored.
"With this work, we are blurring the lines between what is a battery and what is a supercapacitor," said Veronica Augustyn, a graduate student in materials science told UCLA's Bill Kisliuk. "The discovery takes the disadvantages of capacitors and the disadvantages of batteries and does away with them." Augustyn is lead author of a paper describing the breakthrough, published April 14 in the journal Nature Materials.
The work suggests that electrodes 40 microns thick -- a bit more than a thousandth of an inch -- could be charged and discharged as efficiently as supercapacitors that are far thinner. And as Kisliuk points out, existing commercial batteries these days often use electrodes about that size.
Bruce Dunn closes Kisliuk's post with the most optimistic obligatory cautionary disclaimer we here at ReWire have seen in quite some time:
Dunn emphasizes that although the electrodes are an important first step, "further engineering at the nanoscale and beyond will be necessary to achieve practical devices with high energy density that can charge in under a minute."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://seekingalpha.com/news-article/6754991-towerjazz-and-cavendish-kinetics-collaborate-to-deliver-high-volume-tunable-rf-mems-products-for-fast-growing-4g-mobile-market
NIOBF
TSEM
“A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can
choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his
circumstances. James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
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