While at DuPont Chemical Company, Charles Kettering, from Loudonville, was responsible for Freon, used in refrigeration and air conditioning systems. Roy J. Plunkett, from New Carlisle, discovered Teflon in 1938. Today, along with DuPont, many companies along the energy supply chain have made their homes in the Buckeye State.
New material could improve efficiency of solar power
Ohio State University chemists and their colleagues have created a new material that overcomes two of the major obstacles to solar power: it has an absorption spectrum that closely matches that of the solar spectrum, and it generates long-lived excited electrons that should allow solar cells to generate electricity more efficiently.
Spintronics adds new dimension to semiconductor development
Spintronics – short for spin-based electronics – may soon provide tinier, faster and more robust components for small electronic devices and computers. The spintronics approach stores electronic data through magnetic properties caused by the spinning of electrons, in addition to the fundamental electrical charge of electrons that is used by more conventional computers.
Understanding materials at the nanostructure level
Somnath Ghosh, Ph.D., a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering at The Ohio State University, believes that to develop new materials, it is paramount for researchers to understand material characteristics at the atomic level, especially when designing and fabricating nanostructures.