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LAWRENCE — Panasonic Energy Co. Ltd. (Panasonic Energy) — a Panasonic Group Company — and the University of Kansas today announced that they have signed an agreement aimed at promoting the development of next-generation technologies and the cultivation of specialist expertise in the field of lithium-ion batteries.
Researchers show promising material for solar energy gets its curious boost from entropy
LAWRENCE — Described in a study appearing in Advanced Materials, University of Kansas researchers have discovered a microscopic mechanism partly explaining the outstanding performance of new carbon-based organic solar cells.
Kansans help expand trombone repertoire with new recording
LAWRENCE — A new recording by University of Kansas School of Music faculty members Michael Davidson and Ellen Sommer also features contributions from musicians and music educators from across the state. “Skybreak” includes works from Lawrence-based musician P.J. Kelley, Benedictine College band director Tom Davoren and Baldwin City High School band director Stuart O’Neil.
KU Engineering associate dean recognized nationally for leadership and mentoring
LAWRENCE — Suzanne Shontz, University of Kansas School of Engineering associate dean for research and graduate programs, was named the 2024 winner of the James Corones Award in Leadership, Community Building and Communication from the Krell Institute. The award will be presented later this year at the KU Lawrence campus.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Joe Monaco, Office of Public Affairs, 785-864-7100, [email protected], @UnivOfKansas
LAWRENCE — Panasonic Energy Co. Ltd. (Panasonic Energy) — a Panasonic Group Company — and the University of Kansas today announced that they have signed an agreement aimed at promoting the development of next-generation technologies and the cultivation of specialist expertise in the field of lithium-ion batteries.
The University of Kansas is a flagship university in the U.S. state of Kansas, where Panasonic Energy is currently constructing its second North American factory. Located in the city of De Soto, the factory is expected to commence production by the end of March 2025 and will have an annual production capacity of approximately 30 GWh. The factory constitutes a crucial part of Panasonic Energy’s strategy to boost its EV battery production capacity in North America.
The project is a significant step in realizing the commitment to reduce CO2 emissions through the widespread adoption of electric vehicles, generating employment in the De Soto area and the surrounding economic zones of Kansas, thereby contributing to the revitalization of the U.S. manufacturing sector and the overall economy.
In the wake of the 2011 University Engineering Initiative Act, Kansas has been producing engineering graduates to meet industry demand, with KU playing a key role in this initiative. As a member of the Association of American Universities, the university is equipped with an energy and battery-related research lab and high-level research capabilities. With its extensive expertise in battery development and manufacturing, Panasonic Energy will collaborate with the university to further innovate battery-related technology and nurture specialist talent. This partnership aims to help promote the regional development of Kansas and achieve a sustainable society. Further details of these initiatives will be determined through ongoing discussions between the two parties.
About Panasonic Energy Co. Ltd.
Panasonic Energy Co. Ltd., established in April 2022 as part of the Panasonic Group’s switch to an operating company system, provides innovative battery technology-based products and solutions globally. Through its automotive lithium-ion batteries, storage battery systems and dry batteries, the company brings safe, reliable and convenient power to a broad range of business areas, from mobility and social infrastructure to medical and consumer products. Panasonic Energy is committed to contributing to a society that realizes happiness and environmental sustainability, and through its business activities the company aims to address societal issues while taking the lead on environmental initiatives. Learn more online.
About the University of Kansas
The University of Kansas is a major research and teaching university and a member of the Association of American Universities, a select group of public and private research universities that represent excellence in graduate and professional education and the highest achievements in research internationally. KU has more than 28,000 students across five campuses and 14 schools, including the state of Kansas’ only schools of medicine and pharmacy. The university has 48 graduate programs ranked in the top 50 nationally by U.S. News & World Report. Through its KU Medical Center, the university provides medical outreach to all 105 counties in Kansas. Each year, the university conducts more than $400 million in externally sponsored research. The university seeks to drive economic development in the Midwest through its partnership with KU Innovation Park, a nonprofit economic development organization and business incubator that is home to 72 companies employing more than 725 people and supporting an annual payroll of $48 million. The Park works toward building a more modern, resilient and diverse regional economy for Lawrence, Douglas County and the state of Kansas.
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Researchers show promising material for solar energy gets its curious boost from entropy
LAWRENCE — Solar energy is critical for a clean-energy future. Traditionally, solar energy is harvested using silicon – the same semiconductor material used in everyday electronic devices. But silicon solar panels have drawbacks: For instance, they’re expensive and hard to mount on curved surfaces.
Researchers have developed alternative materials for solar-energy harvesting to solve such shortcomings. Among the most promising of these are called “organic” semiconductors, carbon-based semiconductors that are Earth-abundant, cheaper and environmentally friendly.
“They can potentially lower the production cost for solar panels because these materials can be coated on arbitrary surfaces using solution-based methods — just like how we paint a wall,” said Wai-Lun Chan, associate professor of physics & astronomy at the University of Kansas. “These organic materials can be tuned to absorb light at selected wavelengths, which can be used to create transparent solar panels or panels with different colors. These characteristics make organic solar panels particularly suitable for use in next-generation green and sustainable buildings.”
While organic semiconductors already have been used in the display panel of consumer electronics such as cell phones, TVs and virtual-reality headsets, they have not yet been widely used in commercial solar panels. One shortcoming of organic solar cells has been their low light-to-electric conversion efficiency, about 12% versus single crystalline silicon solar cells that perform at an efficiency of 25%.
According to Chan, electrons in organic semiconductors typically bind to their positive counterparts known as “holes.” In this way, light absorbed by organic semiconductors often produces electrically neutral quasiparticles known as “excitons.”
But the recent development of a new class of organic semiconductors known as non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) changed this paradigm. Organic solar cells made with NFAs can reach an efficiency closer to the 20% mark.
Despite their outstanding performance, it’s remained unclear to the scientific community why this new class of NFAs significantly outperforms other organic semiconductors.
In a breakthrough study appearing in Advanced Materials, Chan and his team, including graduate students Kushal Rijal, Neno Fuller and Fatimah Rudayni from the Department of Physics & Astronomy, and in collaboration with Cindy Berrie, professor of chemistry at KU, have discovered a microscopic mechanism that solves in part the outstanding performance achieved by an NFA.
The key to this discovery were measurements taken by lead author Rijal using an experimental technique dubbed the “time-resolved two photon photoemission spectroscopy,” or TR-TPPE. This method allowed the team to track the energy of excited electrons with a sub-picosecond time resolution (less than a trillionth of one second).
“In these measurements, Kushal (Rijal) observed that some of the optically excited electrons in the NFA can gain energy from the environment instead of losing energy to the environment,” Chan said. “This observation is counterintuitive because excited electrons typically lose their energy to the environment like a cup of hot coffee losing its heat to the surrounding.”
The team, whose work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, believes this unusual process occurs on the microscopic scale because of the quantum behavior of electrons, which allow an excited electron to appear simultaneously on several molecules. This quantum weirdness pairs with the second law of thermodynamics, which holds that every physical process will lead to an increase in the total entropy (often known as “disorder”) to produce the unusual energy gain process.
“In most cases, a hot object transfers heat to its cold surroundings because the heat transfer leads to an increase in the total entropy,” Rijal said. “But we found for organic molecules arranged in a specific nanoscale structure, the typical direction of the heat flow is reversed for the total entropy to increase. This reversed heat flow allows neutral excitons to gain heat from the environment and dissociates into a pair of positive and negative charges. These free charges can in turn produce electrical current.”
Based on their experimental findings, the team proposes that this entropy-driven charge separation mechanism allows organic solar cells made with NFAs to achieve a much better efficiency.
“Understanding the underlying charge separation mechanism will allow researchers to design new nanostructures to take advantage of entropy to direct heat, or energy, flow on the nanoscale,” Rijal said. “Despite entropy being a well-known concept in physics and chemistry, it’s rarely been actively utilized to improve the performance of energy conversion devices.”
Not only that: While KU team members believe the mechanism discovered in this work can be utilized to produce more efficient solar cells, they also think it can help researchers design more efficient photocatalysts for solar-fuel production, a photochemical process using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into organic fuels.
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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman
Kansans help expand trombone repertoire with new recording
LAWRENCE — On his last recording, Michael Davidson was one of the three Drei Bones. On his new recording, “Skybreak” (Post Haus Acoustic), the University of Kansas School of Music professor is a trombone alone.
But he is pleased to have as a collaborator his fellow faculty member Ellen Sommer on piano. She’s one of several Kansas and KU connections in the making of the new recording, Davidson said.
“My goal was to commission some new music for trombone and piano,” Davidson said. “There is a lot of trombone music written for major symphony orchestra players and soloists — virtuoso players, in other words. While this kind of music is excellent repertoire, it is also true that it is music that would be considered aspirational for many student trombonists, younger trombonists or gifted amateurs. My goal was to commission some works that could be played by a wider musical clientele.
“I consider the pieces I commissioned to be great music. But they’re not virtuosic in the sense of extreme range or technique, nor do they require extended techniques such as multiphonics. They’re at a medium, or medium-advanced, level of difficulty. That said, these commissions all present musical challenges and rewards.”
Take, for instance, the first piece on the record, P.J. Kelley’s “Victory Lap,” which Davidson commissioned using grants from KU and the McKinney/Morgan Stanley charitable trust.
“P.J. Kelley is also the recording engineer,” Davidson said. “He is a very talented young professional, one of my former bass trombone students, and has a DMA degree from KU.”
Davidson said “Victory Lap” employs an A-B-A format.
“It starts off with really thunderous, declamatory playing in both parts, and perhaps some multiple-tonguing for the trombonist, depending on the tempo one takes,” Davidson said. “That is followed by a beautiful middle section – this section is really a ballad. And then the fierce intensity of the A section returns.”
Davidson called the title track, a commissioned piece by Texas A&M trombone professor David Wilborn, “second to none.”
“His music always has a commercial feel to it, at least to me,” Davidson said. “Sometimes there is a little swing, a little jazz. Sometimes there’s a little rock ’n’ roll … Toward the end of ‘Skybreak,’ Wilborn writes a section that is clearly an exuberant jazz waltz, which I think is awesome. … It’s a beautiful piece; at times cheerful, energetic and contemplative – all in four minutes.”
Another new composition on the LP commissioned from a KU alumnus is Tom Davoren’s “Grace,” which Davidson likened to a song from a Broadway musical score. Davoren directs the band at Benedictine College but also has an international reputation as a composer for large ensembles; his catalog includes wind band and brass band compositions, as well as a concerto written for United States Marine Band “The President’s Own” euphoniumist Hiram Diaz.
Stuart O’Neil, band director at Baldwin City High School, wrote “Two Pieces for Trombone and Piano.” Davidson said O’Neil’s piece “reminds me a little bit of the Gymnopédies by Erik Satie because of its peaceful beginning motive and overall piano scoring.”
It builds from there, Davidson said, noting that O’Neil “uses the trombone’s opening statement in both movements of the work.”
In addition to the new works by living composers, Davidson said, he also picked two pieces by 20th-century composers “that I believe are under-recorded — Vagn Holmboe’s Sonata for Trombone and Piano, op. 172, and Alexander Arutiunian’s Concerto pour Trombone et Orchestre.”
Davidson said it was nice to have pianist Sommer, who is associate professor of the practice, on stage in Swarthout Recital Hall during the recording.
“Ellen is a world-class collaborative pianist,” he said. “She has performed all over the world with many name artists. You can hear her musicianship on display in several long solos on the CD. Her performance on the Arutiunian and the Holmboe tracks is just outstanding, but my favorite is her interpretation of the piano interlude in ‘Skybreak.’ Her input, musicianship and collegiality were much appreciated during the recording process.”
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Contact: Cody Howard, School of Engineering, 785-864-2936, [email protected], @kuengineering
KU Engineering associate dean recognized nationally for leadership and mentoring
LAWRENCE — Suzanne Shontz, University of Kansas School of Engineering associate dean for research and graduate programs, was named the 2024 winner of the James Corones Award in Leadership, Community Building and Communication from the Krell Institute. The award will be presented later this year at the KU Lawrence campus.
The Krell Institute is an Iowa-based nonprofit founded in 1997 to serve science, technology and education communities and support the U.S. Department of Energy’s Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.
A committee of Krell Institute collaborators and staff recognized Shontz “for her mentoring and leadership on the campuses she’s served and in the broader research community.” The committee also cited “her hands-on efforts to help budding scientists develop a wide range of communications skills, from workshops on poster preparation to scientific writing. What’s more, Associate Dean Shontz has been active early in the STEM pipeline, having organized summer camps for middle and high school students.”
“I’m very honored to receive this award, which is named after one of my co-authors. It recognizes my leadership roles and mentoring efforts at KU and the other campuses I previously served. Also noted is my leadership in the applied mathematics and computational science community,” Shontz said.
Krell President Shelly Olsan noted Shontz’s exceptional academic career and leadership in professional activities that highlight her dedication to her field.
“Dr. Shontz’s efforts teaching the next generation of scientists to communicate their work to broader communities have a clear relationship to this award and its founder,” Olsan said.
The Corones Award is named for Krell Institute founder James Corones, who died in 2017, and recognizes midcareer scientists and engineers for their research impact, mentoring, scientific-community activities and their commitment to communicating science and technology.
In her addition to her role as associate dean, Shontz is a professor the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. She directs the computational bioengineering track in the school’s Bioengineering Program and the Mathematical Methods in Interdisciplinary Computing Center at KU’s Institute for Information Sciences. She is also affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Before joining KU in August 2014, she was on the faculty at Mississippi State and Pennsylvania State universities and previously was a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of Minnesota’s Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. In 2011, she was named an NSF Presidential Early Career for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) Award recipient.
Shontz received her doctorate in applied mathematics from Cornell University in 2005 after earning a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics and Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Northern Iowa in 1999 and her master’s degrees in computer science and applied mathematics from Cornell University in 2002.
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