Category Physics

They’re also cheaper, faster and fabricated with an inkjet printer.

Sure, you could attach two screens with a hinge and call a cell phone “foldable,” but what if you could roll it up and put it in your wallet? Or stretch it around your wrist to wear it as a watch?The next step in digital displays being developed at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis could make that a reality.

First, there were light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. Then, organic LEDs, or OLEDs. Now, researchers in the lab of Chuan Wang, assistant professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, have developed a new material that has the best of both technologies and a novel way to fabricate it — using an inkjet printer.

The research was publis...

Thin structures made of black phosphorus can tune the properties of light, with implications for science and technology. Most of us control light all the time without even thinking about it, usually in mundane ways: we don a pair of sunglasses and put on sunscreen, and close — or open — our window blinds.

But the control of light can also come in high-tech forms. The screen of the computer, tablet, or phone on which you are reading this is one example. Another is telecommunications, which controls light to create signals that carry data along fiber-optic cables.

Scientists also use high-tech methods to control light in the laboratory, and now, thanks to a new breakthrough that uses a specialized material only three atoms thick, they can control light more precisely than ever bef...

Totimorphic structural materials can achieve any shape. Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a shape-shifting material that can take and hold any possible shape, paving the way for a new type of multifunctional material that could be used in a range of applications, from robotics and biotechnology to architecture.

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Today’s shape-shifting materials and structures can only transition between a few stable configurations but we have shown how to create structural materials that have an arbitrary range of shape-morphing capabilities,” said L Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, of Organismic and ...

Large-area electronics (LAE) is an emerging technology for electronic device manufacture, such as printing or large-scale lithography, the process used to create flat panel displays and solar cells. Using LAE processes, engineers could create systems that are large (several square meters squared) and highly flexible; for instance, based on paper or plastic.

Over the past decade or so, many teams worldwide have been working on LAE systems. This has led to the creation of numerous innovative devices, such as large, flexible and sensing artificial skins for robots.

Researchers at Princeton University have recently realized a new wireless system based on LAE technology that can operate at gigahertz frequencies...