Category Technology/Electronics

Substituting the cathode material with oxygen and cobalt prevents lithium from breaking chemical bonds and preserves the material’s structure. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Scientists have synthesized a new cathode material from iron fluoride that surpasses the capacity limits of traditional lithium-ion batteries. As the demand for smartphones, electric vehicles, and renewable energy continues to rise, scientists are searching for ways to improve lithium-ion batteries – the most common type of battery found in home electronics and a promising solution for grid-scale energy storage. Increasing the energy density of lithium-ion batteries could facilitate the development of advanced technologies with long-lasting batteries, as well as the widespread use of wind and solar energy...

MIT engineers have created soft, 3-D-printed structures whose movements can be controlled with a wave of a magnet, much like marionettes without the strings. Credit: Felice Frankel

New printing technique could be used to develop remotely controlled biomedical devices. MIT engineers have created soft, 3D-printed structures whose movements can be controlled with a wave of a magnet. The menagerie of structures that can be magnetically manipulated includes a smooth ring that wrinkles up, a long tube that squeezes shut, a sheet that folds itself, and a spider-like “grabber” that can crawl, roll, jump, and snap together fast enough to catch a passing ball. It can even be directed to wrap itself around a small pill and carry it across a table.

The researchers fabricated each structure from a new ...

The newly developed e-wristband is self-powered, highly sensitive and washable. Credit: Image courtesy of American Chemical Society

Electronic textiles could allow a person to control household appliances or computers from a distance simply by touching a wristband or other item of clothing – something that could be particularly helpful for those with limited mobility. Now researchers, reporting in ACS Nano, have developed a new type of e-textile that is self-powered, highly sensitive and washable.

E-textiles are not new, but most existing versions have poor air permeability, can’t be laundered or are too costly or complex to mass-produce...

The fabricated transceiver only measures 3 mm × 4 mm and consists of four transmitting and receiving elements. The subcomponents of TRX1 are displayed. Credit: IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium 2018

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology have designed and fabricated a tiny, but incredibly fast, reliable, and accurate 28-GHz transceiver meant for stable high-speed 5G communications. The fabricated transceiver trumps previous designs in various regards by taking a new approach for beam steering.

The importance of wireless communications is evident in modern societies, and thus, a lot of work has been done on 5G communications as it is the upcoming big step in mobile networks...