Category Technology/Electronics

Hydrogenation forms a mixture of lithium amide and hydride (light blue) as an outer shell around a lithium nitride particle (dark blue) nanoconfined in carbon. Nanoconfinement suppresses all other intermediate phases to prevent interface formation, which has the effect of dramatically improving the hydrogen storage performance

Lawrence Livermore scientists have collaborated with an interdisciplinary team of researchers including colleagues from Sandia National Laboratories to develop an efficient hydrogen storage system that could be a boon for hydrogen powered vehicles. Hydrogen is an excellent energy carrier, but the development of lightweight solid-state materials for compact, low-pressure storage is a huge challenge.

Complex metal hydrides are a promising class of hydrogen storage mate...

This mermaid graphic is created from laser-generated bubbles suspended in a liquid “screen” and illuminated with a halogen lamp. Credit: Kota Kumagai, Utsunomiya University

New technology creates color 3D images that don’t require special viewing devices. A new type of display creates 3D images by using a laser to form tiny bubbles inside a liquid “screen.” Instead of rendering a 3D scene on a flat surface, the display itself is three-dimensional, a property known as volumetric. This allows viewers to see a 3D image in the columnar display from all angles without any 3D glasses or headsets. The volumetric bubble display to create changeable color graphics.

“Creating a full-color updatable volumetric display is challenging because many three-dimensional pixels, or voxels, with different col...

Craig Chandler | University Communication Yang holds a piece of the atomic force microscope used to measure the beetle’s surface. A small wire can barely be seen in the middle of the piece. Unseen is a two-nano-size probe attached to the wire, which does the actual measuring.

A better understanding of beetle exoskeletons could help engineer lighter, stronger materials. Such materials could, for example, reduce gas-guzzling drag in vehicles and airplanes and reduce the weight of armor, lightening the load for the 21st-century knight. But revealing exoskeleton architecture at the nanoscale has proven difficult. Nebraska’s Ruiguo Yang, assistant professor of mechanical and materials engineering, and his colleagues found a way to analyze the fibrous nanostructure.

The lightweight exoskeleton i...

The Isomax cell configuration. Credit: UCSB Engineering

Mechanical engineer and materials scientist Jonathan Berger, UCSB Prof. Robert McMeeking and materials scientist Haydn N. G. Wadley from the University of Virginia, prove that the 3D pyramid-and-cross cell geometry Berger conceived is the first of its kind to achieve the performance predicted by theoretical bounds. Its lightness, strength and versatility, according to Berger, lends itself well to a variety of applications, from buildings to vehicles to packaging and transport.

Called Isomax™, the beauty of this solid foam – in this case loosely defined as a combination of a stiff substance and air pockets – lay in the geometry within...