Rice Scientists Make Polymers with Light-Triggered Nanoparticles
Rice University scientists plan to employ the power of the sun to build functional synthetic polymers using photosensitive quantum dots — microscopic semiconducting particles —…
Materials Science
Shark Skin-Inspired Designs Improve Aerodynamic Performance
To build more aerodynamic machines, researchers are drawing inspiration from an unlikely source: the ocean. A team of evolutionary biologists and engineers at Harvard University,…
MIT Engineers Show How Hairy Tongues Help Bats Drink
Animals have evolved all manner of adaptations to get the nutrients they need. For nectar-feeding bats, long snouts and tongues let them dip in and…
Volcanic Ash Reduces the Energy Required to Manufacture Concrete
MIT engineers working with scientists in Kuwait have found that volcanic rocks, when pulverized into a fine ash, can be used as a sustainable additive…
Engineers Develop Automated Process for Discovering Optimal Structure for Metamaterials
For decades, materials scientists have taken inspiration from the natural world. They’ll identify a biological material that has some desirable trait — such as the…
Silk Fibers May Represent Natural Metamaterials, Capable of light Confinement
New research has demonstrated how the nano-architecture of a silkworm’s fiber causes “Anderson localization of light,” a discovery that could lead to various innovations and…
This Ultrathin Miniaturized System Can Deliver Drugs Directly to the Brain
MIT researchers have devised a miniaturized system that can deliver tiny quantities of medicine to brain regions as small as 1 cubic millimeter. This type…
Scientists Design Nanotech Hybrid Material for Bendable Heating Elements
The iridescent shimmer of a string of pearls may one day be more than pretty adornment. Scientists now report in ACS Applied Nano Materials a…
Graphene Girders Could Double the Life of Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Batteries
New research led by WMG, at the University of Warwick has found an effective approach to replacing graphite in the anodes of lithium-ion batteries using…
Is This New Design a Major Step Toward Portable AI Devices?
When it comes to processing power, the human brain just can’t be beat. Packed within the squishy, football-sized organ are somewhere around 100 billion neurons….
Metal-Mesh Breakthrough Could Solve Rechargeable Battery Issues
A type of battery first invented nearly five decades ago could catapult to the forefront of energy storage technologies, thanks to a new finding by…
Programmable Droplets Improve Efficiency and Reduce Costs to Test Biological Samples
MIT researchers have developed hardware that uses electric fields to move droplets of chemical or biological solutions around a surface, mixing them in ways that…
Topological Materials Boost the Efficiency of Thermoelectric Devices Threefold
What if you could run your air conditioner not on conventional electricity, but on the sun’s heat during a warm summer’s day? With advancements in…
Researchers Create Frequency Comb to Encrypt Data and Protect Cryptocurrencies
Data travels through thousands of miles of fiber optic cables underneath the world’s oceans–via pulses of light. And according to experts, the data in these…
New Technique Dramatically Cuts Production Time of Nanotube Fibers
The terms “handmade” and “high tech” are not commonly found in the same sentence, but they both apply to a Rice University method to quickly…
MIT Develops Ultrafine High Performance Polyethylene Fibers
Researchers at MIT have developed a process that can produce ultrafine fibers — whose diameter is measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter —…
Physicists Improve Optical Efficiency in Hexagonal Boron Nitride
A team of physicists, headed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), have demonstrated the means to improve the optical loss characteristics and transmission efficiency…
Contact Effects Could Limit How Small a Nano Device Can Be
Carbon nanotubes bound for electronics not only need to be as clean as possible to maximize their utility in next-generation nanoscale devices, but contact effects…