Category Technology/Electronics

This is a timelapse image of the walking device. Credit: Bart van Overbeeke

Scientists at Eindhoven University of Technology and Kent State University have developed a new material that can undulate and therefore propel itself forward under the influence of light. To this end, they clamp a strip of this polymer material in a rectangular frame. When illuminated it goes for a walk all on its own. This small device, the size of a paperclip, is the world’s first machine to convert light directly into walking, simply using one fixed light source.

The maximum speed is equivalent to that of a caterpillar, about 0.5cm/s. They think it can be used to transport small items in hard-to-reach places or to keep the surface of solar cells clean...

Single-Atomic Ruthenium Catalytic Sites on Nitrogen-Doped Graphene for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Acidic Medium. ACS Nano, 2017; DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b02148

Project disperses single atoms on graphene to match platinum standard. Rice University scientists have fabricated a durable catalyst for high-performance fuel cells by attaching single ruthenium atoms to graphene. Catalysts that drive the oxygen reduction reaction that lets fuel cells turn chemical energy into electricity are usually made of platinum, which stands up to the acidic nature of the cell’s charge-carrying electrolyte. But platinum is expensive.

The ruthenium-graphene combination may fit the bill...

A rendering of how changes in an electron’s motion (bottom view) alter the scattering of light (top view), as measured in a new experiment that scattered more than 500 photons of light from a single electron. Previous experiments had managed to scatter no more than a few photons at a time. Credit: Extreme Light Laboratory|University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Physicists from University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeing an everyday phenomenon in a new light. By focusing laser light to a brightness one billion times greater than the surface of the sun – the brightest light ever produced on Earth – the physicists have observed changes in a vision-enabling interaction between light and matter...