Category Physics

This is a conceptual illustration of pattern recognition process performed by hybrid gel oscillator system. Credit: Yan Fang

The potential to develop “materials that compute” has taken another leap at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, where researchers for the first time have demonstrated that the material can be designed to recognize simple patterns. This responsive, hybrid material, powered by its own chemical reactions, could one day be integrated into clothing and used to monitor the human body, or developed as a skin for “squishy” robots.

The computations were modeled utilizing Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) gels, a substance that oscillates in the absence of external stimuli, with an overlaying piezoelectric (PZ) cantilever. These BZ-PZ units combine Dr...

Iowa State engineers are developing real-world, low-cost applications for graphene. Credit: Photos by Christopher Gannon/Iowa State University.

Engineers have used laser-treatment process that allows them to use printed graphene for electric circuits and electrodes – even on paper and other fragile surfaces. The technology could lead to many real-world, low-cost applications for printed graphene electronics, including sensors, fuel cells and medical devices. Previous technology meant that graphene had to be treated to improve electrical conductivity and device performance. That usually meant high temperatures or chemicals – both could degrade flexible or disposable printing surfaces such as plastic films or even paper.

Das PhD and assistant/Prof Claussen came up with the idea of using lase...

The newly synthesized crystal is ferroelectric above room temperature (a-b, e-f) and turns into “plastic phase”, meaning highly deformable, at higher temperature (a to c). The electric polarity of each molecule can be aligned in one direction by applying electric field as it cools (c to e). Credit: Harada J. et al., July 11, 2016, Nature Chemistry, DOI: 10.1038/NCHEM.2567; image is copyrighted

A novel ferroelectric plastic crystal could accelerate the development of more flexible, cost-efficient and less toxic ferroelectrics than those currently in use. Applying an electric field to some materials causes their atoms to “switch” their electric polarization from one direction to another, making one side of the material positive and the other negative...

Using SLAC’s instrument for ultrafast electron diffraction, researchers were able to directly see the motions of atomic nuclei in vibrating molecules for the first time. In the experiment, a laser pulse (green) hit a spray of iodine gas (at right). This stimulated vibrations in the iodine molecules, which consist of two iodine atoms connected via a chemical bond (top left). The molecules were then hit by an electron beam (blue), generating a characteristic diffraction pattern (background) on a detector, from which the separation of the nuclei can be precisely determined. Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) gives new ways to study rapid nuclear motions in nature’s light-dependent processes...