Superconductors’ never-ending flow of electrical current could provide new options for energy storage and superefficient electrical transmission and generation, to name just a few benefits. But the signature zero electrical resistance of superconductors is reached only below a certain critical temperature, hundreds of degrees Celsius below freezing, and is very expensive to achieve. Physicists from…
How to Ice-Proof the Next Generation of Aircraft
35,000 feet is standard cruising altitude for a commercial jet airplane, but at those lofty heights the air temperature plummets below -51 degrees Celsius and ice can easily form on wings. To prevent ice formation and subsequent drag on the aircraft, current systems utilize the heat generated by burning fuel. But these high-temperature, fuel-dependent systems…
Scientists Discover Potential Sustainable Energy Technology for the Household Refrigerator
While many advancements have been in improving its efficiency, the refrigerator still consumes considerable amounts of energy each year. “Energy efficiency of a normal refrigerator is affected by the heat-insulating property of the thermal barriers of the freezer. This is due to its low inner temperature,” explained Jingyu Cao at the University of Science and…
Laser Sintering Optimized for Printed Electronics
Printed electronics use standard printing techniques to manufacture electronic devices on different substrates like glass, plastic films, and paper. Interest in this area is growing because of the potential to create cheaper circuits more efficiently than conventional methods. A new study by researchers at Soonchunhyang University in South Korea, published in AIP Advances, provides insights into…
Laser Technique Binds Aluminum with Plastic in Injection Molding
As developers in the automotive and airline industries push to make more efficient vehicles, they are turning their attention to designing sturdy, lightweight machines. Designing lightweight materials, however, requires carefully joining together different types of materials like metals and polymers, and these additional steps drive up manufacturing costs. New work in laser technology recently increased…
World’s Smallest House—Even A Mite Doesn’t Fit Through The Door!
A French nanorobotics team from the Femto-ST Institute in Besançon, France, assembled a new microrobotics system that pushes forward the frontiers of optical nanotechnologies. Combining several existing technologies, the μRobotex nanofactory builds microstructures in a large vacuum chamber and fixes components onto optical fiber tips with nanometer accuracy. The microhouse construction, reported in the Journal of…
Sequential Model Chips Away at Mysteries of Aircraft
Ice accumulation on aircraft wings is a common contributing factor to airplane accidents. Most existing models focus on either ice that freezes as a thin film on the airfoil, or immediately after it impacts the wing. Researchers have announced a new model, accounting for a combination of these forms, that they hope will melt our…
Alaskan Microgrids Offer Energy Resilience And Independence
The electrical grid in the contiguous United States is a behemoth of interconnected systems. If one section fails or is sabotaged, millions of citizens could be without power. Remote villages in Alaska provide an example of how safeguards could build resilience into a larger electrical grid. These communities rely on microgrids—small, local power stations that…
Using The Dark Side Of Excitons For Quantum Computing
To build tomorrow’s quantum computers, some researchers are turning to dark excitons, which are bound pairs of an electron and the absence of an electron called a hole. As a promising quantum bit, or qubit, it can store information in its spin state, analogous to how a regular, classical bit stores information in its off…
Acoustic Device Makes Piezoelectrics Sing to a Different Tune
In today’s “internet of things,” devices connect primarily over short ranges at high speeds, an environment in which surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices have shown promise for years, resulting in the shrinking size of your smartphone. To obtain ever faster speeds, however, SAW devices need to operate at higher frequencies, which limits output power and…
Advance in Light Filtering Technology Has Implications for LCD Screens, Lasers and Beyond
Vector polarizers are a light filtering technology hidden behind the operation of many optical systems. They can be found, for instance, in sunglasses, LCD screens, microscopes, microprocessors, laser machining and more. Optical physicists from Nanjing and Nankai University, China, and the University of Central Florida, U.S., published details of their new vector polarizer design this…
Hybrid Electrolyte Enhances Supercapacitance in Vertical Graphene Nanosheets
Supercapacitors can store more energy than and are preferable to batteries because they are able to charge faster, mainly due to the vertical graphene nanosheets (VGNs) that are larger and positioned closer together. VGNs are 3-D networks of carbon nanomaterial that grow in rows of vertical sheets, providing a large surface area for greater charge…
Improving Sensor Accuracy to Prevent Electrical Grid Overload
Electrical physicists from Czech Technical University have provided additional evidence that new current sensors introduce errors when assessing current through iron conductors. It’s crucial to correct this flaw in the new sensors so that operators of the electrical grid can correctly respond to threats to the system. The researchers show how a difference in a…
Tungsten Offers Nano-Interconnects a Path of Least Resistance
As microchips become ever smaller and therefore faster, the shrinking size of their copper interconnects leads to increased electrical resistivity at the nanoscale. Finding a solution to this impending technical bottleneck is a major problem for the semiconductor industry. One promising possibility involves reducing the resistivity size effect by altering the crystalline orientation of interconnect…
Enhancing the Sensing Capabilities of Diamonds with Quantum Properties
Pure diamond consists of carbon atoms in a perfect crystal lattice. But remove a few carbons and swap some others for nitrogen, and you get a diamond with special quantum-sensing properties. These properties are useful for quantum information applications and sensing magnetic fields, and as a platform for probing the mysteries of quantum physics. When…
High-Tech Electronics Made From Autumn Leaves
Northern China’s roadsides are peppered with deciduous phoenix trees, producing an abundance of fallen leaves in autumn. These leaves are generally burned in the colder season, exacerbating the country’s air pollution problem. Investigators in Shandong, China, recently discovered a new method to convert this organic waste matter into a porous carbon material that can be…
Why Space Dust Emits Radio Waves Upon Crashing Into A Spacecraft
When spacecraft and satellites travel through space they encounter tiny, fast moving particles of space dust and debris. If the particle travels fast enough, its impact appears to create electromagnetic radiation (in the form of radio waves) that can damage or even disable the craft’s electronic systems. A new study published this week in the…
Exploring Superconducting Properties of 3-D Printed Parts
3-D printing is revolutionizing many areas of manufacturing and science. In particular, 3-D printing of metals has found novel applications in fields as diverse as customized medical implants, jet engine bearings and rapid prototyping for the automotive industry. While many techniques can be used for 3-D printing with metals, most rely on computer-controlled melting or…
Challenger Disaster: How Do Hydrogen Droplets Behave When Hydrogen-Oxygen Burns?
Modern rockets and their launch vehicles commonly rely on hydrogen-oxygen mixtures as propellant, but this combination is highly explosive. The Challenger space shuttle catastrophe of 1986 is associated with self-ignition of such mixtures. Risks of explosion are mitigated by the evaporation and burning of droplets within hydrogen-oxygen aerosol mixtures. Inside rocket combustion chambers, the identical…
US Army Camera Captures Explosives in Fine Detail
When the script of Lawrence of Arabia called for wrecking a train, director David Lean found it easiest to go ahead and wreck a train, orchestrating and filming it with expert precision. Similarly, while it’s possible to study explosives, sans explosives, new techniques involving high-speed, high-fidelity imaging with optical filtering and signal processing techniques have…
Diamonds Closer to Becoming Ideal Semiconductors
Along with being a “girl’s best friend,” diamonds also have remarkable properties that could make them ideal semiconductors. This is welcome news for electronics; semiconductors are needed to meet the rising demand for more efficient electronics that deliver and convert power. The thirst for electronics is unlikely to cease and almost every appliance or device…
Combining Nanotextured Surfaces With Leidenfrost Effect for Extreme Water Repellency
Combining superhydrophobic surfaces with Leidenfrost levitation—picture a water droplet hovering over a hot surface rather than making physical contact with it—has been explored extensively for the past decade by researchers hoping to uncover the holy grail of water-repellent surfaces. In a new twist, a group of South Korean researchers from Seoul National University and Dankook…
A Model to Recycle to Smartphone Lithium Ion Batteries into Solar Power Systems
Despite their hefty price tag, smartphones have an average consumer lifetime of about three years. The lithium ion batteries that power them, however, can last for about five years—meaning that just about every discarded smartphone generates e-waste and squanders the battery’s twilight years. To cut down on the environmental waste and provide storage for rural…
Outsourcing Crystal Growth…To Space
Sometimes, distance can lend a new perspective to a problem. For Japanese researchers studying protein crystal growth, that distance was 250 miles up — the altitude at which the International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth. To better isolate the growth of protein crystals from the effects of gravity, the group of Katsuo Tsukamoto in…
Why Celestial Bodies Come in Different Sizes
Our solar system contains one massive object—the sun—and many smaller planets and asteroids. Now researchers from Duke University in Durham, N.C. have proposed a new explanation for the size diversity, which is found throughout the universe and is called hierarchy. The researchers report their finding in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing. “Since the…