Category Technology/Electronics

Engineers have taken their inspiration from shells and grapefruits to create what they say is the first manufactured non-cuttable material.

This new material, which could be used in the security and health and safety industries, can turn back the force of a cutting tool upon itself. The lightweight material – named Proteus after the shape-changing mythical god — is made of ceramic spheres encased in a cellular aluminium structure that in tests could not be cut by angle grinders, drills or high-pressure water jets.

An international research team, led by Durham University, UK, and Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tool...

Researchers are pushing the boundaries of data speed with a brand new type of organic LED. An international research team, involving Newcastle University experts, developed a visible light communication (VLC) setup capable of a data rate of 2.2 Mb/s by employing a new type of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs).

To reach this speed, the scientists created new far-red/near-infrared, solution-processed OLEDs. And by extending the spectral range to 700-1000 nm, they successfully expanded the bandwidth and achieved the fastest-ever data speed for solution-based OLEDs.

Described in the journal Light Science & Applications, the new OLEDs create opportunities for new internet-of-things (IoT) connectivity, as well as wearable and implantable biosensors technol...

Mechanical control and modulation of light on a silicon chip could enhance lidar. Researchers have built a way that lidar could achieve higher-resolution detection of nearby fast-moving objects through mechanical control and modulation of light on a silicon chip.

A self-driving car has a hard time recognizing the difference between a toddler and a brown bag that suddenly appears into view because of limitations in how it senses objects using lidar.

The autonomous vehicle industry is exploring “frequency modulated continuous wave” (FMCW) lidar to solve this problem...

Imitating the functioning of neurons using semiconductor materials. While the optimization of conventional microelectronics is slowly reaching its physical limits, nature offers us a blueprint how information can be processed and stored efficiently: our own brain. Scientists have now successfully imitated the functioning of neurons using semiconductor materials.

Especially activities in the field of artificial intelligence, like teaching robots to walk or precise automatic image recognition, demand ever more powerful, yet at the same time more economical computer chips...