Category Technology/Electronics

New high-temperature superconducting materials are also compatible with high magnetic fields. In fusion reactor designs, superconductors are used to generate the magnetic fields that confine the 100 million degree C plasma. While increasing magnetic field strength offers potential ways to improve reactor performance, conventional low-temperature superconductors suffer dramatic drops in current carrying ability at high magnetic fields. Now, the emergence of high-temperature superconductors that can also operate at high magnetic fields opens a new, lower-cost path to fusion energy.

A typical measure of fusion plasma performance is called “plasma beta,” which is the ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic field pressure...

Implanted microLED devices light up, activating peripheral nerve cells in mice. The devices are being developed and studied by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a potential treatment for pain that does not respond to other therapies. Credit: Gereau lab/Washington University

Building on wireless technology that has the potential to interfere with pain, scientists have developed flexible, implantable devices that can activate – and, in theory, block – pain signals in the body and spinal cord before those signals reach the brain. The implants one day may be used in different parts of the body to fight pain that doesn’t respond to other therapies.

“Our eventual goal is to use this technology to treat pain ...

Engineered hydrogel being pulled away from a glass surface. The material shows a property called “tough wet adhesion” comparable to tendon and bone interface. The wavy edge instability at the interface is a hallmark of strongly adhered soft material on a rigid surface. Credit: Felice Frankel

New ‘water adhesive’ is tougher than natural adhesives employed by mussels and barnacles. The hydrogel, a transparent, rubber-like material, can adhere to surfaces such as glass, silicon, ceramics, aluminum, and titanium with a toughness comparable to the bond between tendon and cartilage on bone.

APPS: Protective coatings on underwater surfaces eg boats and submarines...

A hybrid 3-D optical microscope – mass spectrometry map showing optical brightness (height) and chemical distribution of poly(2vinylpyridine) (red) and poly(N-vinylcarbazole) (blue) signals of a 20 micron-by-20 micron area of a polymer blend. (ORNL/DOE)

The hybrid optical microscope/mass spectrometry-based imaging system developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory operates under ambient conditions and requires no pretreatment of samples to analyze chemical compounds with sub-micron resolution. One micron is equal to about 1/100th the width of a human hair.

“Knowing the chemical basis of material interactions that take place at interfaces is vital for designing and advancing new functional materials that are important for DOE missions such as organic photovoltaic...