Category Technology/Electronics

Smartphones that don’t scratch or shatter. Metal-free pacemakers. Electronics for space and other harsh environments. These could all be made possible thanks to a new ceramic welding technology developed by a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego and the University of California Riverside.

The process, published in the Aug. 23 issue of Science, uses an ultrafast pulsed laser to melt ceramic materials along the interface and fuse them together. It works in ambient conditions and uses less than 50 watts of laser power, making it more practical than current ceramic welding methods that require heating the parts in a furnace.

Ceramics...

Security researchers have created ShareAR, a toolkit that lets developers build collaborative and interactive features into AR apps without sacrificing their users’ privacy and security. A few summers ago throngs of people began using the Pokemon Go app, the first mass-market augmented reality game, to collect virtual creatures hiding in the physical world.

For now, AR remains mostly a solo activity, but soon people might be using the technology for a variety of group activities, such as playing multi-user games or collaborating on work or creative projects...

Scientists develop solution processable ferroelectric nylons. Scientists have solved a four decade long challenge of producing very thin nylon films that can be used for instance in electronic memory components. The thin nylon films are several 100 times thinner than human hair and could thus be attractive for applications in bendable electronic devices or for electronics in clothing.

As the microelectronic industry is now shifting toward wearable electronic gadgets and electronic (e-)textiles, the comprising electronic materials, such as ferroelectrics, should be integrated with our clothes...

Excess heat given off by smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices can be annoying, but beyond that it contributes to malfunctions and, in extreme cases, can even cause lithium batteries to explode. To guard against such ills, engineers often insert glass, plastic or even layers of air as insulation to prevent heat-generating components like microprocessors from causing damage or discomforting users.

Now, Stanford researchers have shown that a few layers of atomically thin materials, stacked like sheets of paper atop hot spots, can...