Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

Imagine pointing your smartphone at a salty snack you found at the back of your pantry and immediately knowing if its ingredients had turned rancid. Devices called spectrometers can detect dangerous chemicals based on a unique “fingerprint” of absorbed and emitted light. But these light-splitting instruments have long been both bulky and expensive, preventing their use outside the lab.

Until now. Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a spectrometer that is so small and simple that it could integrate with the camera of a typical cell phone without sacrificing accuracy...

‘Hybrid’ cathodes could provide more power for a given weight and volume. Researchers around the globe have been on a quest for batteries that pack a punch but are smaller and lighter than today’s versions, potentially enabling electric cars to travel further or portable electronics to run for longer without recharging. Now, researchers at MIT and in China say they’ve made a major advance in this area, with a new version of a key component for lithium batteries, the cathode.

The team describes their concept as a “hybrid” cathode, because it combines aspects of two different approaches that have b...

Rutgers engineers’ unique smart materials change shape as temperatures change. The flexible, lightweight materials could lead to better shock absorption, morphing airplane or drone wings, soft robotics and tiny implantable biomedical devices. Their research is published in the journal Materials Horizons.

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, turns digital blueprints to physical objects by building them layer by layer. 4D printing is based on this technology, with one big difference: it uses special materials and sophisticated designs to print objects that change shape with environmental conditions such as temperature acting as a trigger, said senior author Howon Lee, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering...

Using a new type of dual polymer material capable of responding dynamically to its environment, Brown University researchers have developed a set of modular hydrogel components that could be useful in a variety of “soft robotic” and biomedical applications.

The components, which are patterned by a 3D printer, are capable of bending, twisting or sticking together in response to treatment with certain chemicals. For a paper published in the journal Polymer Chemistry, the researchers demonstrated a soft gripper capable of actuating on demand to pick up small objects...