Category Technology/Electronics

Engineered carbon fibers embedded with active nanoparticles (top) can be fabricated into structural materials that are lightweight and flexible (bottom). Credit: UC Riverside

New material creates fuel cell catalysts at a hundredth of the cost. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, describe the development of an inexpensive, efficient catalyst material for a type of fuel cell called a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), which turns the chemical energy of hydrogen into electricity and is among the most promising fuel cell types to power cars and electronics.

The catalyst developed at UCR is made of porous carbon nanofibers embedded with a compound made from a relatively abundant metal such as cobalt, which is more than 100X less expensive than platinum...

Working principle of virtual vortices: intertwined short vortices of opposite directions are emitted to trap and stabilize the particle. Credit: University of Bristol

Acoustic tractor beams use the power of sound to hold particles in mid-air, and unlike magnetic levitation, they can grab most solids or liquids. For the first time University of Bristol engineers have shown it is possible to stably trap objects larger than the wavelength of sound in an acoustic tractor beam. This discovery opens the door to the manipulation of drug capsules or micro-surgical implements within the body. Container-less transportation of delicate larger samples is now also a possibility and could lead to levitating humans.

Researchers previously thought that acoustic tractor beams were fundamentally limited to ...

Electric fields drive the rotating nano-crane – 100,000 times faster than previous methods. Credit: Enzo Kopperger / TUM

Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a novel electric propulsion technology for nanorobots. It allows molecular machines to move a 100000X faster than with the biochemical processes used to date. This makes nanobots fast enough to do assembly line work in molecular factories. The new research results will appear as the cover story on 19th January in the renowned scientific journal Science.

Up and down, up and down. The points of light alternate back and forth in lockstep. They are produced by glowing molecules affixed to the ends of tiny robot arms. Prof...

A schematic image of DFB Si laser; Inset: photograph of a fabricated DFB device. (b) Emission spectra of the Si laser as a function of pump power; Background: a cross-sectional SEM image of the DFB structure.

Integrated Si photonics incorporates the essence of the two pillar industries of “microelectronics” and “optoelectronics”, which is expected to bring new technological revolution in a variety of fields such as communication, sensing, lighting, display, imaging, detection, etc. Si lasers are the key to achieve integrated Si photonics. However, the optical gains of Si are lower than those of III-V compound semiconductors by one order of magnitude or two, due to its indirect bandgap feature...