Category Technology/Electronics

Dr. Cao-Thang Dinh, left, and Dr. Md Golam Kibria (both ECE) demonstrate their new catalyst. In a paper published today in Science, their team demonstrated most efficient and stable process for converting climate-warming carbon dioxide into the building blocks for plastics, all powered using renewable electricity. Credit: Laura Pedersen

Engineering team designs most efficient and stable process for converting climate-warming CO2 into a key chemical building block. A new technology from U of T Engineering is taking a substantial step towards enabling manufacturers to create plastics out of two key ingredients: sunshine and pollution...

Illustration of the quantum entanglement achieved between the two clouds of atoms starting from a single Bose-Einstein condensate. Credit: Iagoba Apellaniz. UPV/EHU

Scientists have achieved, in an experiment, quantum entanglement between 2 Bose-Einstein condensates, spatially separated from each other. Quantum entanglement was discovered by Schrödinger and later studied by Einstein and other scientists in the last century. The groups of entangled particles lose their individuality and behave as a single entity. Any change in one of the particles leads to an immediate response in the other, even if they are spatially separated...

RoboFly, the first wireless insect-sized flying robot, is slightly heavier than a toothpick. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington

RoboFly is slightly heavier than a toothpick and is powered by a laser beam. Insect-sized flying robots could help with time-consuming tasks like surveying crop growth on large farms or sniffing out gas leaks. These robots soar by fluttering tiny wings because they are too small to use propellers, like those seen on their larger drone cousins. Small size is advantageous: These robots are cheap to make and can easily slip into tight places that are inaccessible to big drones.

But current flying robo-insects are still tethered to the ground. The electronics they need to power and control their wings are too heavy for these miniature robots to carry...

When the MOF is carbonised it transforms into a nano-diatom, much like a dragon egg turns into a fire-born dragon after fire treatment in Game of Thrones. Credit: Jingwei Hou

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London, University of Cambridge and Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have discovered how a pinch of salt can be used to drastically improve the performance of batteries. They found that adding salt to the inside of a supermolecular sponge and then baking it at a high temperature transformed the sponge into a carbon-based structure. Surprisingly, the salt reacted with the sponge in special ways and turned it from a homogeneous mass to an intricate structure with fibres, struts, pillars and webs...