Category Technology/Electronics

The novel topological insulator built in the Würzburg Institute of Physics: a controllable flow of hybrid optoelectronic particles (red) travels along its edges. (Picture: Karol Winkler)

For the first time, physicists have built a unique topological insulator in which optical and electronic excitations hybridize and flow together. Topological insulators are materials with very special properties. They conduct electricity or light particles on their surface or edges only but not on the inside. This unusual behaviour could eventually lead to technical innovations which is why topological insulators have been the subject of intense global research for several years.

Physicists of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, with colleagues from the Technion in Haifa, Is...

A single nanocluster of 22 gold atoms — Au22 — is only 1 nanometer in diameter, allowing it to easily slip through the bacterial cell wall.
Credit: Peidong Yang, UC Berkeley

Harvesting solar fuels through a bacterium’s unusual appetite for gold. Scientists have placed light-absorbing gold nanoclusters inside a bacterium, creating a biohybrid system that produces a higher yield of chemical products, such as biofuels, than previously demonstrated. The biohybrid captures sunlight and carbon dioxide to make chemicals useful not only on Earth but also in the exotic environment of space.

Moorella thermoacetica first made its debut as the first non-photosensitive bacterium to carry out artificial photosynthesis in a study led by Peidong Yang, a professor in UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry...

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed 3D printed assistive technology that can track and store their use — without using batteries or electronics. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington

Engineers have developed 3D printed devices that can track and store their own use – without using batteries or electronics. Instead, this system uses a method called backscatter, through which a device can share information by reflecting signals that have been transmitted to it with an antenna.

Cheap and easily customizable, 3D printed devices are perfect for assistive technology, like prosthetics or “smart” pill bottles that can help patients remember to take their daily medications...

The wireless device naturally absorbs into the body after a week or two.
Credit: Northwestern University

Biodegradable implant provides electrical stimulation that speeds nerve regeneration. Researchers at Northwestern University and Washington University School of Medicine have developed the first example of a bioelectronic medicine: an implantable, biodegradable wireless device that speeds nerve regeneration and improves the healing of a damaged nerve.

The collaborators – materials scientists and engineers at Northwestern and neurosurgeons at Washington University – developed a device that delivers regular pulses of electricity to damaged peripheral nerves in rats after a surgical repair process, accelerating the regrowth of nerves in their legs and enhancing the ultimate recovery of musc...