Category Physics

Giant Pacific octopus. Credit: © pr2is / Fotolia

A new type of user-interactive electronic skin, with a color change perceptible to the human eye, has been achieved with a much-reduced level of strain. This could have applications in robotics, prosthetics and wearable technology. The ability of some animals, including chameleons, octopus, and squid, to change their skin colour for camouflage, temperature control, or communication is well known.

While science has been able to replicate these abilities with artificial skin, the colour changes are often only visible to the naked eye when the material is put under huge mechanical strain...

The new device is smaller than a thumbnail with a size of 0.1 x 4mm, and could be integrated into everyday electronic devices like smartphones. Credit: CUDOS

Researchers develop new platform making next-generation electronic devices more advanced. Integrated circuits, ie chips, are used in everyday electronic equipment like mobile phones and computers. It is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece of semiconductor material, normally silicon. But this material has some limitations when it comes to processing data. To overcome this, researchers are developing optical circuits made of chalcogenide glass. This is used for ultrafast telecommunication networks, transferring information at the speed of light.

Integrating these glass optical circuits into silicon chips could lead to a...

Vanderbilt undergraduate Thomas Metke demonstrates the ultrathin energy harvesting device which is taped across his elbow. As he flexes his arm the current the device generates is displayed on the computer display. Credit: John Russell, Vanderbilt University

Imagine slipping into a jacket, shirt or skirt that powers your cell phone, fitness tracker and other personal electronic devices as you walk, wave and even when you are sitting. A new, ultrathin energy harvesting system developed at Vanderbilt University’s Nanomaterials and Energy Devices Laboratory has the potential to do just that...

Coupling the Leidenfrost Effect and Elastic Deformations to Power Sustained Bouncing, Nature Physics, DOI: 10.1038/nphys4194

Water droplets float in a hot pan because of Leidenfrost effect. Now, physicists have discovered a variation: the elastic Leidenfrost effect. It explains why hydrogel balls jump around on a hot plate making high-pitched sounds. Physicist Scott Waitukaitis (Leiden University / AMOLF) stumbled across a YouTube video of bouncing hydrogel balls on a hot plate and was so inspired that he decided to write an NWO Veni grant proposal to explore the phenomenon.

The dance of water droplets in a frying pan is a well-known phenomenon called the Leidenfrost effect. The warm undersides of the droplets vaporize so quickly that they float around on a cushion of vapor...