Category Physics

An Impeller-based active mixer. Each fluid enters the mixing chamber through a separate inlet and is mixed in a narrow gap by an impeller rotating at a constant rate. Credit: Thomas Ober, Harvard SEAS/Wyss Institute

>>Researchers have designed new multimaterial printheads that mix and print concentrated viscoelastic inks that allow for the simultaneous control of composition and geometry during printing. Using active mixing and fast-switching nozzles, these novel printheads change material composition on the fly and could pave the way for entirely 3D printed wearable devices, soft robots, and electronics.

To print a flexible device, including the electronics, a 3D printer must be able to seamlessly transition from a flexible material that moves with your joints for wearable applications, t...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have “teleported” or transferred quantum information carried in light particles over 100 kilometers of optical fiber, 4X farther than the previous record. The experiment confirmed that quantum communication is feasible over long distances in fiber. Other research groups have teleported quantum information over longer distances in free space, but the ability to do so over conventional fiber-optic lines offers more flexibility for network design.

Teleportation is useful in both quantum communications and quantum computing, which offer prospects for novel capabilities such as unbreakable encryption and advanced code-breaking, respectively.
The new record, described in Optica, involved the transfer of quantum inform...

Active thermal cloak hides a circular object in conductive heat flow by “pumping” heat from hot end to cold end. Credit: Xu & Zhang/NTU

Light, sound, and now, heat – just as optical invisibility cloaks can bend and diffract light to shield an object from sight, and specially fabricated acoustic metamaterials can hide an object from sound waves, a recently developed thermal cloak can render an object thermally invisible by actively redirecting incident heat.

The system, designed at NTU, Singapore, has the potential to fine-tune temperature distribution and heat flow in electronic and semiconductor systems. It has application in devices with high requirements for efficient dissipation and homogenous thermal expansion, such as high-power engines, MRI instruments, and thermal sensors.

“Bec...

This image shows the self-folding process of smart shape-memory materials with slightly different responses to heat. Using materials that fold at slightly different rates is important to ensure that the components do not interfere with one another during the process. Credit: Credit: Qi Laboratory, Georgia Tech

Using components made from smart shape-memory materials with slightly different responses to heat, researchers have demonstrated 4D printing technology that allowed creation of complex self-folding structures. The technology, from Georgia Institute of Technology and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), could be used to create 3D structures that sequentially fold themselves from components that had been flat or rolled into a tube for shipment...