Category Technology/Electronics

Electrostatic levitation. The UV source causes the metal to be ionized, giving it an electric charge and causing levitation in between the electrodes. The laser melts the metal. The new project involves electromagnetic in stead of electrostatic levitation. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Twente

Crystals that don’t experience mechanical stress during growth, will be of superior quality. Levitate the liquid metal, is the idea behind the new project ‘Perfecting metal crystals’. UT scientists want to grow crystals from a metal melt that is levitated by an electromagnetic field, under vacuum conditions. The liquid is no longer kept within a container and isn’t mechanically stressed by the walls of this container...

Argonne high-energy physicist Wei Gai and engineer Scott Doran work on a newly developed positron target that could help provide a key component for the proposed International Linear Collider. Credit: Wes Agresta/Argonne National Laboratory

Although a lot of time and effort in particle physics are devoted to finding ways to increase the energy of certain experiments, sometimes it is even more important to find ways to safely, quickly and easily remove energy from an experiment. Researchers at the U.S. DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory have recently developed a new ultra-low-friction sliding contact mechanism that uses chilled water to remove heat from a key component of a next-generation collider.

For the past two years, Gai et al have been attempting to assemble a working prototype for a ...

The highly sensitive magnetic field sensor. (Photograph: ETH Zurich / Peter Rüegg)

Researchers have succeeded in measuring tiny changes in strong magnetic fields with unprecedented precision. In their experiments, the scientists magnetised a water droplet inside an MRI scanner, a device that is used for medical imaging. They were able to detect even the tiniest variations of the magnetic field strength within the droplet. These changes were up to a trillion times smaller than the 7 tesla field strength of the MRI scanner used in the experiment.

“Until now, it was possible only to measure such small variations in weak magnetic fields,” says Klaas Prüssmann, Professor of Bioimaging at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich...

This is an illustration of proton hopping during catalytic reaction. Credit: Waseda University

Simpler process and higher efficiency creates great expectations for consumer market. Waseda University researchers have developed a new method for producing hydrogen, which is fast, irreversible, and takes place at much lower temperature using less energy. This innovation will improve fuel cell systems for automobiles and homes. Hydrogen has normally been extracted from methane and steam using a nickel catalyst at temperatures of over 700°C. However, the high temperature creates major challenges for widespread use.

The group led by Professor Yasushi Sekine, Waseda developed a method which allows hydrogen extraction at temperatures as low as 150~200°C...