Category Technology/Electronics

This is an overview of designing and building a custom lab instrument using the Multifluidic Evolutionary Component (MEC) system created at UC Riverside. Credit: UC Riverside

Uni of CA, Riverside researchers have created a Lego-like system of blocks that enables users to custom make chemical and biological research instruments quickly, easily and affordably. The system of 3D-printed blocks can be used in university labs, schools, hospitals, and anywhere there is a need to create scientific tools.

Each block, called Multifluidic Evolutionary Components (MECs) because of their flexibility and adaptability, performs a basic task found in a lab instrument, like pumping fluids, making measurements or interfacing with a user...

This is a schematic of an optical tweezer used in a vacuum chamber by Purdue University researchers, who controlled the “electron spin” of a levitated nanodiamond. The advance could find applications in quantum information processing, sensors and studies into the fundamental physics of quantum mechanics. Credit: Purdue University image/ Tongcang Li

Researchers have demonstrated how to control the “electron spin” of a nanodiamond while it is levitated with lasers in a vacuum, an advance that could find applications in quantum information processing, sensors, quantum mechanics studies, and measurement of magnetic and gravitational fields, which could be applied to computer memory and experiments to search for deviations from Newton’s law of gravitation. .

Electrons can be thought of as havin...

Associate Professor Yang Hyunsoo from the National University of Singapore, who led a research team to successfully embed a powerful magnetic memory chip on a plastic material, demonstrating the flexibility of the memory chip. Credit: National University of Singapore

This malleable memory chip is a breakthrough in the flexible electronics revolution, and brings researchers a step closer towards making flexible, wearable electronics a reality in the near future. It looks like a small piece of transparent film with tiny engravings on it, and is flexible enough to be bent into a tube. Yet, this piece of “smart” plastic demonstrates excellent performance in terms of data storage and processing capabilities.

Such devices have great potential in applications such as automotive, healthcare electr...

Researchers have developed hierarchical metallic metamaterial with multi-layered, fractal-like 3-D architectures to create structures at centimeter scales incorporating nanoscale features. Credit: Jim Stroup/Virginia Tech

For years, materials have been made at the nanoscale level to take advantage of their mechanical, optical, and energy properties, but efforts to scale these materials to larger sizes have resulted in diminished performance and structural integrity. Now, researchers describe a new process to create lightweight, strong and super elastic 3D printed metallic nanostructured materials with unprecedented scalability, 7 orders of magnitude control of arbitrary 3D architectures.

Strikingly, these multiscale metallic materials have displayed super elasticity because of their design...