When an electric vehicle is parked outside, its temperature can swing wildly from day to night and season to season, which can lead to deterioration of the battery. To dampen these fluctuations and extend the battery's lifespan, researchers have designed an all-season thermal cloak that can cool an electric vehicle by 8°C on a hot day and warm it by 6.8°C at night. The cloak, made predominantly of silica and aluminum, can do so passively without outside energy input and operates without any modification between hot or cold weather. This prototype is described July 11 in the newly launched Device, an application-oriented sister journal to Matter, Joule, and Cell.

Companion robots enhanced with artificial intelligence may one day help alleviate the loneliness epidemic, suggests a new report from researchers at Auckland, Duke, and Cornell Universities.

A University of Minnesota Twin Cities team has, for the first time, synthesized a thin film of a unique topological semimetal material that has the potential to generate more computing power and memory storage while using significantly less energy. The researchers were also able to closely study the material, leading to some important findings about the physics behind its unique properties.

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have gained attention for their high power-conversion efficiencies and low-cost solution processing. However, ensuring their stability at high temperatures has been a challenge, as the points of contact between their different layers ("interfaces") are susceptible to degradation, leading to energy loss and decreased performance.

On the moon, there are raw materials that humanity could one day mine and use. Various space agencies, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), are already planning missions to better explore Earth's satellite and find minerals. This calls for appropriate exploration vehicles. Swiss researchers led by ETH Zurich are now pursuing the idea of sending not just one solitary rover on an exploration tour, but rather an entire team of vehicles and flying devices that complement each other.