Category Technology/Electronics

Researchers at Toyota Central R&D Labs have recently created an insect-scale aerial robot with flapping wings, powered using wireless radiofrequency technology. This robot, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, is based on a radiofrequency power receiver with a remarkable power-to-weight density of 4,900 W kg-1.

“Small drones typically have a very limited operating time due to their power source,” Takashi Ozaki, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “The purpose of our recent research was to overcome this limitation. Currently, no-contact power supply using electromagnetic waves has been put to practical use in various products, but it was unknown how far it could be applied to small flying robots.”

The main object...

Engineers have reached a theoretical limit for efficiently converting analog data into digital bits in an emerging computer technology. The digital design of our everyday computers is good for reading email and gaming, but today’s problem-solving computers are working with vast amounts of data...

When two superconducting regions are separated by a strip of non-superconducting material, a special quantum effect can occur, coupling both regions: The Josephson effect. If the spacer material is a half-metal ferromagnet novel implications for spintronic applications arise. An international team has now for the first time designed a material system that exhibits an unusually long-range Josephson effect: Here, regions of superconducting YBa2Cu3O7 are separated by a region of half-metallic, ferromagnetic manganite (La2/3Sr1/3MnO3) one micron wide.

With the help of magneto-transport measurements, the researchers were able to demonstrate the presence of a supercurrent circulating through the manganite — this supercurrent is arising from the superconducting co...

Lasers in conventional laser printers for paper printouts are very small. 3D laser printers for 3-dimensional microstructures and nanostructures, by contrast, have required big and expensive laser systems so far. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Heidelberg University now use another process for this purpose. Two-step absorption works with inexpensive and small, blue laser diodes. As a result, much smaller printers can be used. Work is reported in Nature Photonics.

Presently, laser printing is the method of choice for additive manufacture ...