A new 3D-printing method will make it easier to manufacture and control the shape of soft robots, artificial muscles and wearable devices. Researchers at UC San Diego show that by controlling the printing temperature of liquid crystal elastomer, or LCE, they can control the material’s degree of stiffness and ability to contract–also known as degree of actuation. What’s more, they are able to change the stiffness of different areas in the same material by exposing it to heat. As a…
Researchers led by The University of Tokyo employed a new computer model to simulate the networks of force-carrying particles that give amorphous solids their strength even though they lack long range order. This work may lead to new advances in high-strength glass, which can be used for cooking, industrial, and smartphone applications. Amorphous solids such as glass–despite being brittle and having constituent particles that do not form ordered lattices–can possess surprising strength and rigidity. This is even more unexpected because…
One of the holy-grail questions in condensed matter physics is how superconductivity — the property of many electrons to go into a quantum soup state that can carry electricity without losses — emerges at relatively high temperatures in certain materials, and how these temperatures could be boosted even further. Now a research team at the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg is reporting in Physical Review Letters that a…
Electrochemical reactions, which will play an important role in the future of energy supply, can now be explained in detail, thanks to measurements carried out by TU Wien and DESY. Electrochemistry is playing an increasingly important role: Whether it is fuel cells, electrolysis or chemical energy storage, chemical reactions controlled by electric current are used. The decisive factor in all these applications is that the reactions are as fast and efficient as possible. An important step forward has now been…
Researchers have developed the world’s first photodetector that can see all shades of light, in a prototype device that radically shrinks one of the most fundamental elements of modern technology. Photodetectors work by converting information carried by light into an electrical signal and are used in a wide range of technologies, from gaming consoles to fibre optic communication, medical imaging and motion detectors. Currently photodetectors are unable to sense more than one colour in the one device. This means they…
An international team of researchers have found a way to refine and reliably produce an unpredictable and hard-to-control material that could impact environmental conservation, energy and consumer electronics. The material, Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2), holds tremendous potential for numerous applications in energy storage, water treatment, gas, chemical and light sensing. But high costs and fabrications challenges have held back wider use. “There are many different ways to fabricate this material, but no one has yet been able to make it in…
Study: Pointed tips on aluminum ‘octopods’ increase catalytic reactivity. Points matter when designing nanoparticles that drive important chemical reactions using the power of light. Researchers at Rice University’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) have long known that a nanoparticle’s shape affects how it interacts with light, and their latest study shows how shape affects a particle’s ability to use light to catalyze important chemical reactions. In a comparative study, LANP graduate students Lin Yuan and Minhan Lou and their colleagues studied…
3D printing has driven innovations in fields ranging from art to aerospace to medicine. However, the high-energy ultraviolet (UV) light used in most 3D printers to cure liquid resins into solid objects limits the technique’s applications. Visible-light curing, which would be more appropriate for some uses, such as tissue engineering and soft robotics, is slow. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have developed photopolymer resins that boost the speed of visible-light curing. With the help of computer-aided design, 3D-printed…
Automatic approach could enable precision fabrication of optical components and multimaterial structures. Researchers have developed an automated 3D printing method that can produce multicolor 3D microstructures using different materials. The new method could be used to make a variety of optical components including optical sensors and light-driven actuators as well as multimaterial structures for applications such as soft robotics and medical applications. “Combining multiple kinds of materials can be used to create a function that cannot be realized with a…
Analytical model from Rice University helps researchers fine-tune battery performance. A simpler and more efficient way to predict performance will lead to better batteries, according to Rice University engineers. That their method is 100,000 times faster than current modeling techniques is a nice bonus. The analytical model developed by materials scientist Ming Tang and graduate student Fan Wang of Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering doesn’t require complex numerical simulation to guide the selection and design of battery components and…
MPIE scientists publish their recent findings in Advanced Functional Materials Since the discovery of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) 30 years ago, already tons of these are produced each year and find application in different fields, for example in batteries, filter systems, or bicycle frames. Usually, the synthesis of carbon nanotubes takes place at temperatures above 700 °C using pure metal catalysts. But, how to make the synthesis more sustainable and open the way for new application possibilities? Prof. Joohyun Lim and…
Cooperation within the TopDyn research center paves the way for the investigation of two-dimensional phases and phase transitions In a collaboration between experimental physicists and theoretical physicists in the framework of the Dynamics and Topology (TopDyn) excellence project, a system of many small magnetic whirls could be engineered to form a regularly ordered state. Such a transition from a disordered to an ordered phase is analogous to the well-known crystallization, which, however, occurs here in two dimensions. For the research…
The results show how a particle’s surface and interior influence each other, an important thing to know when developing more robust batteries. The particles that make up lithium-ion battery electrodes are microscopic but mighty: They determine how much charge the battery can store, how fast it charges and discharges and how it holds up over time – all crucial for high performance in an electric vehicle or electronic device. Cracks and chemical reactions on a particle’s surface can degrade performance,…
Researchers identify the principles necessary for designing the core material of large-area solution processable solar cells. Future application as plastic-based photovoltaic paint technology. Researchers in Korea have successfully developed a high-efficiency large-area organic solution processable solar cell by controlling the speed at which the solution of raw materials for solar cells became solidified after being coated. The team led by Dr. Hae Jung Son from the Photo-electronic Hybrids Research Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced…
Jena research group receives two million euros to develop intelligent, recyclable plastic materials Sustainable plastics that have the ability for self-healing, have intelligent properties and can be recycled if required will be the subject of future research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany). A project in this field, coordinated by the chemist and materials scientist Prof. Ulrich S. Schubert, is being granted two million euros in funding from the Carl Zeiss Foundation. Repairing scratches with a hair dryer “Imagine scratched…
Scientists from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), Institute of Solid State Chemistry and Mechanochemistry (ISSC SB RAS), Pirogov Medical University and Yerevan State University have predicted new hard and superhard ternary compounds in the tungsten-molybdenum-boron system using computational methods. Their research was published in the journal Chemistry of Materials. According to Alexander Kvashnin, a senior research scientist at Skoltech and a co-author of the paper, the study is a natural follow-on to lengthy research into binary systems….
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