Category Technology/Electronics

The discovery may aid Water Purification and Oil Refining. Researchers have observed droplets spontaneously fling themselves from thin fibers. As long as the strands are moderately hydrophobic and relatively thin, small droplets combining into one are apt to dance themselves right off of the tightrope.

“We were studying how insect wings with a hairy structure clean themselves, and an undergrad Adam Williams saw two droplets merge and suddenly leave a strand of hair,” said Chuan-Hua Chen, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke. “Since we couldn’t easily reproduce the effect, we thought it was just an artifact, perhaps due to the slight breeze created by the humidifier in the experiment.”

IMAGES: self-propelled removal of drops from a hydrophobic fiber, ...

Stretchy, bendable electronics could have many uses, such as monitoring patients’ health and keeping tabs on airplanes. Credit: Benjamin Leever, Ph.D.

A new world of flexible, bendable, even stretchable electronics is emerging from research labs to address a wide range of potentially game-changing uses. Over the last few years, a team of chemists and materials scientists has begun exploring military applications in harsh environments for aircraft, explosive devices and even combatants themselves.

“Basically, we are using a hybrid technology that mixes traditional electronics with flexible, high-performance electronics and new 3-D printing technologies,” says Benjamin J. Leever, Ph.D., who is at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base...

Researchers are testing an array of new combinations that may vastly expand the options available to create faster, smaller, more efficient energy storage, advanced electronics and wear-resistant materials.

They created 2 entirely new, layered 2D materials using molybdenum, titanium and carbon. “By ‘sandwiching’ one or two atomic layers of a transition metal like titanium, between monoatomic layers of another metal, such as molybdenum, with carbon atoms holding them together, we discovered that a stable material can be produced,” Anasori said. “It was impossible to produce a 2D material having just 3 or 4 molybdenum layers in such structures, but because we added the extra layer of titanium as a connector, we were able to synthesize them.”

It represents a new way of combining element...

20 km Space Tower

This is the present-day realm of creative thinking over space elevators, in the use of a giant tower to carry us to space. Scientists working on space elevators are thinking about materials and designs that can be used to access space as an alternative to rocket technology. A sign of the times is the upcoming Space Elevator Conference 2015 which takes place this month in Seattle.

Imagine, said The Spaceward Foundation, the space elevator, serving as a track on which electric vehicles called “climbers” can travel up and down carrying about 10 tons of payload. “There are no intense gravity-loads during the trip, no acoustic vibration, no onboard fuel, nor any of the rest of the drama (and cost) associated with rocket launches,” it added.

Canadian company, Thoth Technology ...