Novel Techniques Examine Solar Cells with Nanoscale Precision

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have for the first time examined, with nanometer-scale precision, the variations in chemical composition...

Product of the Month: November 2017

WinSystems, Arlington, TX, released the PPC65B series IP65-rated panel PC in a thin, fanless design with an operating temperature range from -20 to +70 °C. The panel PC offers a rugged design for...

New Products: November 2017 Photonics & Imaging Technology

High-Energy UV lamp

McPherson, Inc. (Chelmsford, MA) introduces the flow-controlled windowless, hollow cathode UV lamp Model 629. This broad-spectrum source emits ionized...

2017 Create the Future Design Contest: Consumer Products Category Winner

Conformal Battery Russell Kittel, Krista Smith, Kathryn Chamberlain, Steve Risser, Christopher Jackson, and Megan Moore
Battelle
Columbus, OH...

2017 Create the Future Design Contest: Machinery Category Winner

EJBot: Versatile Climbing Robot for Industrial Vessel Inspection Dr. Mohamed Gouda Alkalla and Mohamed Fanni
Mansoura University
Mansoura, Ad-daqahliyah, Egypt...

2017 Create the Future Design Contest: Aerospace & Defense Category Winner

Airfoil Performance Monitor (APM) John Maris, Puthy Soupin, Ludovic Laberge, and Marie-Hélène Larose
Marinvent Corporation
Saint-bruno, Quebec, Canada...

Contacts for Hi-Rel Connectors: Comparing Technologies

Contact design is critical to the performance of any connector — especially for devices that must function in harsh environments where extremes of temperature, shock, and vibration are...

Products of Tomorrow: November 2017

This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that...

2017 Create the Future Design Contest: Electronics Winner

Integrated Multi-Color Light Emitting Device Made with Hybrid Crystal Structure Sang Choi,
NASA Langley Research Center;
Yeonjoon Park,
National Institute of...

2017 Create the Future Design Contest: Grand Prize Winner

Hi-Light - Solar Thermal Chemical Reactor Technology for Converting CO₂ to Hydrocarbons Xiangkun (Elvis) Cao, Jessica Akemi Cimada da Silva, David Erickson, and Tobias...

2017 Create the Future Design Contest: Sustainable Technologies Category Winner

Energy Saving Filter for Removal of Heavy Metals from Water Volodymyr Khranovskyy, R. Yakimova, Ivan Shtepliuk, P. Lima de Carvalho, and A. Pinto
Talent...

2017 Create the Future Design Contest: Automotive Category Winner

Heavy Duty Aftermarket Super Truck George Sturmon, Ed Murray, Josh Medling, Susan Schmidt, and Glen Harris
Enviro-Cool
Sullivan, MO

The Heavy Duty...

2017 Create the Future Design Contest: Medical Category Winner

Arterial Everter Jeffrey Plott, Adeyiza Momoh, Ian Sando, Brendan McCracken, Mohammed Tiba, Kevin Ward, Jeffrey Kozlow, and Paul Cederna
University of Michigan
Ann...

Line Scan Cameras

Area array and line scan cameras are each suited for unique machine vision applications. Area array cameras, for all intents and purposes, are “conventional” cameras that use sensors with two-dimensional pixel arrays....

Optical Monitoring System Enables Greater Accuracy In Thin-Film Coatings

The challenges in achieving greater accuracy in optical thin-film coatings, both historically and in today's coating processes, are many and deserve our scrutiny. The...

Injection Molding Service Saves Time and Money for Spring Manufacturer

Proto Labs
Maple Plain, MN
www.protolabs.com

As products get smaller, their components need to follow suit, and springs are no exception. In a variety of...

CoaXPress Blazes Trail for Faster, Higher Quality Machine Vision

Introduced in 2010, CoaXPress (CXP) has become a leading standard for high-end machine vision, as well as life sciences, security, and defense applications. The CXP standard...

Improved Surface Characterization with AFM Imaging

To shrink device size yet still tightly control performance, new technology often requires increasingly stringent surface specifications. Characterization tools, in turn, must keep pace by...

Flexible, Printable Electronics for Sensor Arrays

Printable electronics — flexible circuitry that is deposited on some type of plastic substrate — has been a major area of research for decades. But the ability to print the substrate...

Sample Holder for Evaluating Thin Film Sensor Materials in Gaseous Environments

Thin film gas sensors are small, lightweight, and relatively easy to operate; however, the testing of these thin film gas sensors is difficult in harsh...

Single Event Upset Suppression System (SEUSS)

Electronic devices are getting smaller and more energy-efficient, meaning that they are more susceptible to single event upsets (SEUs) — malfunctions caused by particles in the atmosphere...

Piezoelectric Actuator with Dual Horns Separately Controllable to Drive Miniature Vehicles Along a Single Axis

Actuators are a critical driver of all the mechanisms used in space, and improvements of their operation mechanism enhance mission...

Crab Crawl Maneuver for Independently Steerable Wheeled Platforms

An industrial-class excavator was developed for use on the Moon and perhaps on Mars. The model mobility platform uses Ackerman Steering with active drives on all six...

Forging Graphene into Three-Dimensional Shapes

Graphene is a relative to graphite, which consists of millions of layers of graphene, and can be found in common pencil tips. Since graphene was isolated in 2004, researchers have learned to...

App Enables Smartphone Camera to Screen for Pancreatic Cancer

The five-year survival rate of pancreatic cancer is one of the worst — 9 percent — in part because there are no obvious symptoms or non-invasive screening tools to catch a...

Continuous Diagnostic System Predicts Industrial Robot Faults

Robots in production lines work with micrometer precision, unless a component fails. If, for example, the linear actuator used to precisely position a car body in front of an...

Method for Inflating Uniformly Stiff Tubular Booms

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) developed a foam-rigidized, inflatable, tubular space boom that can be transported, deployed, and inflated at remote locations. The lightweight...

High-Energy-Storage Capacitor

A method was created for electroless deposition of conformal ultrathin (<20 nm) metal oxides on the high-surface-area walls of commercial carbon nanofoam papers, typically 0.1–0.3 mm thick. The resulting...

Flexible Wearable Electronics Use Body Heat for Energy

Interest in wearable electronics for continuous, long-term health and performance monitoring is rapidly increasing. The reduction in power levels consumed by sensors and electronic...

Independent Navigation for the Visually Impaired Using a Wearable, Vision-Based Feedback System

Automatic navigation systems have been developed previously to aid the visually impaired, but these devices have not been as reliable and easy to...

Interim, In-Situ Additive Manufacturing Inspection

Researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center have developed a novel method for interim, in-situ dimensional inspection of additively manufactured parts. Additive manufacturing...

An Electron Caught in the Act

How fast is an electron? Australian scientists were able to measure it. Australia's fastest camera, located at the Attosecond Science Facility, has revealed the time it takes for molecules to break apart. The...

Scientists Demonstrate New Real-Time Technique for Studying Ionic Liquids at Electrode Interfaces

Ionic liquids—salts made by combining positively charged molecules (cations) and negatively charged molecules (anions) that are liquid at...

Optical Probing Deep into the Eye

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a scanning technology commonly used by ophthalmologists to check for eye diseases. A team of scientists has figured out how to retrofit these high-performance machines...

R&D Effort Produces Magnetic Devices to Enable More Powerful X-ray Lasers

A team of researchers have designed, built, and tested two devices, called superconducting undulators, which could make X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) more...

Mineral Analyzer Shakes Answers Out of Soil and Rocks

On the Curiosity rover, a tool called CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy) is helping scientists determine what minerals make up the Martian landscape, and whether single-celled or more...

Naval Research Laboratory

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) began operations in 1923 as the United States Navy's first modern research institution, and it continues today as one of the Navy's premier R&D resources. NRL's early 20th...

A Next Step from Powdered Metal and Selective Laser Sintering: Diodes

Learn about a new laser-based method for 3D printing of large metal objects called Diode-Based Additive Manufacturing (DiAM).

Sound-Off: How Can the SAE J3061 Standard Prevent Automotive Hacks?

In 2015, two security researchers demonstrated the remote hacking of a Jeep Cherokee. What guidance exists to prevent these kinds of automotive cyberattacks? A Tech Briefs...

Advanced Engine Cooling: Inventors Go Under the Hood to Give Old Trucks a Boost

What happens when you replace a truck’s fan assembly with an electric fan system? You increase horsepower, reduce under-hood temperature, and become a winner...

Unique Imaging of Dinosaur's Skull Tells Evolutionary Tale

Researchers using Los Alamos' unique neutron-imaging and high-energy X-ray capabilities have exposed the inner structures of the fossil skull of a 74-million-year-old tyrannosauroid...

New Dental Imaging Method Uses Squid Ink to Fish for Gum Disease

Squid ink might be a great ingredient to make black pasta, but it could also one day make getting checked for gum disease at the dentist less tedious and even painless. By...

Future Smartwatches Could Sense Hand Movement Using Ultrasound imaging

New research has shown future wearable devices, such as smartwatches, could use ultrasound imaging to sense hand gestures. The research team is led by Professor Mike...

Non-Invasive Imaging Predicts Cancer Malignancy

A new study by Osaka University scientists shows that non-labeling multiphoton microscopy (NL-MPM) can be used for quantitative imaging of cancer that is safe and requires no resection,...

A Semiconductor Breakthrough: Carbon Nanotubes Boost Thermoelectric Performance

In a report published in October, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) used single-walled carbon...

Sound-Off: Without ‘100-Percent’ Security Assurance, Should We Drive Autonomous Cars?

In a Tech Briefs presentation, a reader asked our automotive expert: “How can we achieve autonomous cars without 100-percent cybersecurity?”

Body Energy as a Power Source

Smartphones, fitness trackers, and medical equipment have a constant hunger for power. The solution: power supply by means of energy produced by body movements. Two systems that meet this requirement were...

Asphalt Helps Batteries Charge Faster

A touch of asphalt may be the secret to creating high-capacity lithium metal batteries that charge 10 to 20 times faster than commercial lithium-ion batteries, according to Rice University...

New Solar Power Receivers are Better at Absorbing Sunlight

Sandia National Laboratories engineers have developed new fractal-like, concentrating solar power receivers for small- to medium-scale use that are up to 20 percent more...

Electric ‘Smart’ Paper Picks Up on Pipe Leaks

Although spills inside a lab can often spell trouble, a University of Washington scientist found a way to turn an accidentally doused conductive material into an inventive new sensor. The lab...

Sound-Off: Thermoset Composites vs. Traditional Metals

New plastics are helping automotive manufacturers reduce the weight of their vehicles. But how do thermoset composites stack up against traditional metals? A Tech Briefs reader asks our automotive expert.

Soft Sensor Material Enables Tactile Technology

iSoft, a new type of soft and stretchable sensor, is capable of sensing in real time, and can perform “multimodal” sensing of stimuli such as continuous contact and stretching in all...

New Way to Test Body Armor

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new way to investigate the high-performance fibers used in modern body armor. The testing of soft body armor has been a...

Technique Produces Wearable Gas Sensors

A transfer technique could allow high-performance gallium nitride gas sensors to be grown on sapphire substrates and then transferred to metallic or flexible polymer support materials. The process...

Is It Hot in Here? New Double-Sided Fabric Will Find Your 'Comfortable' Temperature

A reversible fabric from Stanford University could warm up or cool down its wearers, depending on their preference – and which side of the material faces...

Scientists Develop Extreme Light Trapping Technology

A silicon solar cell harvests the energy of the sun as light travels down through light-absorbent silicon. To reduce weight and cost, solar cells are thin, and while silicon absorbs...

‘Twisted’ Light Could Illuminate New Path for Wireless Communications

Scientists have taken an important step towards using ‘twisted’ light as a form of wireless, high-capacity data transmission which could make fiber optics...

Prototype Shows How Tiny Photodetectors Can Double Their Efficiency

Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have developed a photodetector by combining two distinct inorganic materials and producing quantum mechanical...

New Products: November 2017 Photonics & Imaging Insider

Laser Confocal Scanning Microscope

The new Olympus (Waltham, MA) LEXT® OLS5000 3D laser confocal scanning microscope delivers precise imaging in a fast, easy-to-use system...

NASA Supercomputer Simulations Reveal 'Noisy' Aerodynamics

Simulation allows NASA researchers to better understand and predict the changes that contribute to aircraft noise.

Sound-Off: Can Executives Make or Break Your Cybersecurity Program?

In a live presentation last week, Michael G. Morgan revealed what distinguishes a good cybersecurity program from a bad one: support from the top.

With a Commercial Printer, Researchers Manufacture Motion Sensors in Bulk

Using a commercial printer and some silver ink, researchers from Florida State University have found a novel way of producing motion sensors en masse. The low-profile...

Magnetic System Turns Heat into Motion

Scientists at the University of Exeter have discovered a technique to transform ambient heat into motion in nanoscale devices. This thermal ratchet is made from a material known as “artificial...

New Motion Sensors Enable Low-Cost Wearables

Researchers from Florida State University developed a class of motion sensors made using buckypaper. The new technology is versatile, and the sensors are affordable to print.