Continuously detach and recycle thermoplastic carbon fiber tapes with new recycling process. The sales market for plastic products is growing. At the same time, however, the environmental impact of non-degradable plastics is increasing and requires new recycling strategies. At Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT in Aachen, researchers have developed a novel recycling process to recover the fiber composite material of used pressure tanks in a peeling process and reuse it for new lightweight products. The aim is to recycle…

… practical insights into leading-edge research. At this year’s automatica trade show, the munich_i high-tech platform will highlight robotics and AI developments for the third time. More than 30 demos will be on display in the AI.Society exhibition. The i_Space stage program will include the award presentation for this year’s winner of the Robothon competition for young researchers as well as round table discussions and featured speakers. The High-tech Summit will also bring together some of the world’s leading researchers…

… to discover its key to success. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory were the first to use neutron reflectometry to peer inside a working solid-state battery and monitor its electrochemistry. They discovered that its excellent performance results from an extremely thin layer, across which charged lithium atoms quickly flow as they move from anode to cathode and blend into a solid electrolyte. “We want better batteries,” said ORNL’s Andrew Westover, who co-led a study published…

Ambitious £7 million investment will help deliver renewable energy from ocean tides at scale and help tidal stream energy contribute to delivering UK net zero goals. Researchers working to cut carbon emissions and boost energy security using tidal stream power are set to benefit from a £7 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council investment. ‘Co-design to deliver Scalable Tidal Stream Energy’ (CoTide) will bring together three multi-disciplinary teams from the universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Strathclyde. The group will…

The air taxi market is almost ready for take off, with companies such as Boeing, Hyundai, Airbus and Toyota building fleets to have commuters flitting through the sky. Europe and the US have both drafted new rules to pave the way for air taxis to begin operations within the decade, with Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) to follow suit. Increasingly sophisticated studies over recent years, including a recent paper by RMIT University’s Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) Research Team, have…

Michael Bartlett’s team at Virginia Tech has adapted kirigami, the ancient Japanese art of cutting paper, into a method for increasing the adhesive bond of ordinary tape by 60 times. Adhesive tape fulfills many purposes, from quickly fixing household appliances to ensuring a reliable seal on a mailed package. When using tape with a strong bond, removing it may only be possible by scraping and prying at the tape’s corners, hoping desperately that surface pieces don’t tear away with the…

… about fatigue resistance of materials. Recently, flexible and foldable devices have developed at a dramatic rate. More and more foldable devices appear in people’s lives. Long-term service requires the folded parts to endure repeated deformation which might cause fatigue damage to the devices. Consequently, the damage will affect the normal function of the devices. Inspired by the hinge of bivalve Cristaria plicata, which experiences hundreds of thousands of repeating opening-and-closing valve motions throughout the bivalve’s lifetime, a research team…

… and lead to low-cost, flexible displays. Low-cost, flexible displays that use very little energy could be a step closer, thanks to an innovation from the University of Surrey that solves a problem that has plagued source-gated transistors (SGT). SGTs are not widely used because current designs have a problem with how their performance changes with temperature. To solve this problem, scientists from the University of Surrey have developed a new design for the transistor part called the source. They…

Porous media such as concrete represent a spherical packing of different components. The mechanical properties of such mixtures are difficult to calculate due to their discretized nature. A team led by Prof. Holger Steeb (University of Stuttgart) and Prof. Stefan Luding (University of Twente, The Netherlands) has now been able to investigate an unexpected property of mixtures of granular media consisting of soft and stiff spherical particles. They used a combination of ultrasound investigating and X-ray computed tomographic imaging, allowing…

The Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) will showcase laser technology innovations at LASER World of PHOTONICS from June 27 to 30, 2023 in Hall B3 at Booth 210. In focus: highly specialized lasers, laser components, and individual complete solutions for laser material processing. Optical components for innovative applications, the latest developments in laser material processing, and customized system technology for industry: at the world’s leading photonics trade fair in Munich, the LZH will present current developments from photonic research. The…

Ultra-short pulsed (USP) lasers are versatile tools in laser materials processing, but work even more efficiently when the laser pulses are optimally manipulated in space and time. How important this is for the new high-power sources with 300 W and more could be experienced at the “7th UKP Workshop Ultrafast Laser Technology” in Aachen. Visitors could also see how USP lasers make the electrodes of batteries for electric cars or hydrogen systems significantly more efficient. At the end of April,…

Taking a cue from the structural complexity of trees and bones, Washington State University engineers have created a way to 3D-print two types of steel in the same circular layer using two welding machines. The resulting bimetallic material proved 33% to 42% stronger than either metal alone, thanks in part to pressure caused between the metals as they cool together. The new method uses commonplace, relatively inexpensive tools, so manufacturers and repair shops could use it in the near term. With…

Finding could revolutionize electronics, quantum computing. An advance in a topological insulator material — whose interior behaves like an electrical insulator but whose surface behaves like a conductor — could revolutionize the fields of next-generation electronics and quantum computing, according to scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Discovered in the 1980s, a topological material is a new phase of material whose discoverers received a Nobel Prize in 2016. Using only an electric field, ORNL researchers have transformed a normal insulator into a magnetic…

… hampered by a lack of accurate simulations of human behavior. Algorithms that accurately reflect the behaviour of road users – vital for the safe roll out of driverless vehicles – are still not available, warn scientists. They say there is “formidable complexity” in developing software that can predict the way people behave and interact on the roads, be they pedestrians, motorists or bike riders. To improve the modelling, a research team led by Professor Gustav Markkula from the Institute…

A new material developed by MIT engineers exhibits “record-breaking” vapor absorption. MIT engineers have synthesized a superabsorbent material that can soak up a record amount of moisture from the air, even in desert-like conditions. As the material absorbs water vapor, it can swell to make room for more moisture. Even in very dry conditions, with 30 percent relative humidity, the material can pull vapor from the air and hold in the moisture without leaking. The water could then be heated…

Optical Microsystems of Fraunhofer IPMS. Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS uses optical microsystems to enable fast and high-resolution light control. By using small, movable mirrors, the institute’s photonic systems can modulate light to create unique images and structures. The institute’s researchers are implementing 1-axis- and 2-axis tilting mirrors as well as piston mirrors. The mirrors are monolithically integrated on so-called CMOS backplanes. Fraunhofer IPMS develops spatial light modulators with up to several million mirrors on a semiconductor chip. Depending…