Category Technology/Electronics

An Impeller-based active mixer. Each fluid enters the mixing chamber through a separate inlet and is mixed in a narrow gap by an impeller rotating at a constant rate. Credit: Thomas Ober, Harvard SEAS/Wyss Institute

>>Researchers have designed new multimaterial printheads that mix and print concentrated viscoelastic inks that allow for the simultaneous control of composition and geometry during printing. Using active mixing and fast-switching nozzles, these novel printheads change material composition on the fly and could pave the way for entirely 3D printed wearable devices, soft robots, and electronics.

To print a flexible device, including the electronics, a 3D printer must be able to seamlessly transition from a flexible material that moves with your joints for wearable applications, t...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have “teleported” or transferred quantum information carried in light particles over 100 kilometers of optical fiber, 4X farther than the previous record. The experiment confirmed that quantum communication is feasible over long distances in fiber. Other research groups have teleported quantum information over longer distances in free space, but the ability to do so over conventional fiber-optic lines offers more flexibility for network design.

Teleportation is useful in both quantum communications and quantum computing, which offer prospects for novel capabilities such as unbreakable encryption and advanced code-breaking, respectively.
The new record, described in Optica, involved the transfer of quantum inform...

This image shows the self-folding process of smart shape-memory materials with slightly different responses to heat. Using materials that fold at slightly different rates is important to ensure that the components do not interfere with one another during the process. Credit: Credit: Qi Laboratory, Georgia Tech

Using components made from smart shape-memory materials with slightly different responses to heat, researchers have demonstrated 4D printing technology that allowed creation of complex self-folding structures. The technology, from Georgia Institute of Technology and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), could be used to create 3D structures that sequentially fold themselves from components that had been flat or rolled into a tube for shipment...

Single GeV center in diamond. (left) Fluorescence mapping and (right) atomic structure model. Credit: Tokyo Institute of Technology

Germanium defects in a diamond crystal lattice act as a reliable source for single photons. Pure diamonds are naturally colorless, but gaps in the crystal structure or impurities of other elements can create colors and even emit fluorescence. Recently, researchers have shown that the fluorescent lattice defects could be useful as single photon sources for quantum cryptography and as bright luminescent makers in living cells.

Now a new type of diamond crystal defect that fluoresces to produce single photons in a narrow, high energy wavelength band has been demonstrated...