Space-Based Hyperspectral Imaging

As space-based digital camera imagery is evolving, more and more advanced imaging technologies are being deployed in space to see more of the “unseen.”

Measuring Blood Glucose Levels with Lasers

DiaMonTech used the Ophir Pyrocam to measure and characterize all their laser developments.

Hybrid Microscope Streamlines Imaging for Research and Medicine

The new microscope is called a hybrid open-top light-sheet (OTLS) microscope.

New Products

The new products for November 2022, including an AI inspection system, a non-contact machine vision measuring system, and more.

A High-Speed Look at Additive Manufacturing

Despite additive manufacturing's popularity, there are still several technological barriers that must be addressed to understand the process.

Optical Modules

The Teledyne e2v Optimom 2M combines the latest innovations in imaging and optics into one turnkey imaging solution by mounting a proprietary image sensor onto a board with a fixed lens and optional Multi Focus lens technology.

A Systems Engineering Approach to Sustainable Power Systems

Research and development work continue to deliver cleaner, more efficient, and more diverse ways of generating the energy we need to power modern society.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest Grand Prize Winner

The platform was developed to democratize programmable matter; to make prototyping, innovation, and research with soft robotics incredibly quick and easy; and to enable researchers, designers, and makers of all backgrounds to unleash their creativity and bring their ideas to life.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Aerospace & Defense Category Winner — The Well-Dressed Spacecraft

The sustainability crisis extends to low-Earth Orbit (LEO), where human-made debris poses a ubiquitous threat.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Automotive/Transportation Category Winner — Betterfrost Ultra-Low Energy Defrost & Defog System

Betterfrost’s solution defrosts and defogs electric vehicles’ windshields with 20 times less power than current technology and extends the range of an EV by 38 km on an average commute in winter.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Consumer Product Design Category Winner — Green Screen

The core of the Green Screen consists of noise-absorbing mineral wool, which also serves as a vertical surface for evaporating rain coming from the roofs of the adjacent buildings.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Electronics/Sensors/IoT Winner - RF Fingerprinting for Industrial IoT Security

Some of the hardest to detect cyber-attacks are wireless, including man-in-the-middle attacks and rogue access points.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Manufacturing/Robotics/Automation Winner - Large-Scale 3D Printing with Tubes

The 3D printing industry has grown quickly over the last decade with average compound annual growth rates of around 27 percent leading to a market size of $17.7 billion in 2022.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Medical Category Winner — The Novel Squid Glaucoma microShunt

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness, affecting 80 million patients globally including 3 million patients in the U.S.

2022 Create the Future Design Contest: Sustainable Technologies/Future Energy Category Winner — SUNPave: Tomorrow’s Energy Today

When solar panels are placed horizontally, they harvest 15-20 percent less energy from the sun, and hence consumers end up paying a higher price for the harvested energy.

High-Performance MXene Electrodes for Next-Generation Battery

Two-dimensional MXene has become popular in the energy world because of its fast energy storage capability. But unstable voltage output limits applications.

Technique Extends Next-Generation Lithium Metal Batteries

The discovery could enable lightweight, low-cost, long-lasting energy storage for electric vehicles, houses, and more.

New Battery Technology Could Power Wearable, Self-Sustaining Fever Detector

Public temperature checks have become common practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers at Texas A&M University hope to make it possible to check the temperatures of large groups of people more quickly and at a less expensive cost than allowed by current methods.

Triggering Li-ion Battery Cells with Laser Radiation

Inducing TR in a battery cell allows engineers to test and improve the safety performance of overheated batteries that can potentially catch fire or explode.

Building Temperature-Resilient Batteries

In tests, the proof-of-concept batteries retained 87.5 percent and 115.9 percent of their energy capacity at -40 °C and 50 °C (-40 °F and 122 °F), respectively.

More Reliable Doppler LiDAR for Autonomous Navigation

The LiDAR sensor utilizes Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) technique to determine the distance to the target and the velocity between the sensor and target.

Smart Textiles Powered by Soft Transmission Lines

The fibers measure subtle and complex fabric deformations.

Novel Chemical Glucose Sensing Method Based on Boronic Acids and Graphene Foam

Since it is a chemical sensor instead of being enzyme-based, the new technology is robust, has a long shelf-life and can be tuned to detect lower glucose concentrations than current systems.

Implantable Sensor Safely Biodegrades

The flexible, stretchable sensor biodegrades into materials that are absorbed by the body.

High Atomic Number Coatings for Fabrics

This new approach is useful for building radiation shields via the Z-grading method, the process of layering metal materials with different atomic numbers to provide radiation protection for protons, electrons, and x-rays.

First 3D-Printed Nanostructured Alloy is Strong, Ductile

"The potential of harnessing the combined benefits of additive manufacturing and HEAs for achieving novel properties remains largely unexplored."

Achieving Desired Level of Wettability for Unlikely Materials

MIT researchers have developed a way of making even the most unlikely pairings of materials take on a desired level of wettability.

3D Printing Materials with Tunable Mechanical Properties

The researchers created these sensing structures using just one material and a single run on a 3D printer.

Liquid Metal Turns Motion into Electricity, Even Underwater

The soft and stretchable device converts movement into electricity and can work in wet environments.

Soft Mate Lifting Device

This below-the-hook device enables gentle crane placement to decrease the risk of property damage.

NanoGear Molecular Gear

Oscillatory and rotational motions of different parts are combined to pave the way to developing super-miniaturized mechanical devices.

Locking Side Pull Hoist Ring

The integrated tool eliminates the need for manual operators or additional custom fixtures.

Antimicrobial Coating for Orthopedic Implants Prevents Dangerous Infections

The coating is customizable to individuals and requires less than 10 minutes to prepare and use.

Noninvasive Therapy for Cartilage Regeneration

The PEMF device could be wrapped around synovial joints where cartilage-degrading inflammation is located.

Extraction of Largely Unexplored Bodily Fluid Could Be a New Source of Biomarkers

Fluid could provide a new source of information for routine diagnostic testing.

New on the Market: November 2022

New products on the market in November 2022, including automotive relay, power inductors, RFID Read/Write modules, and more.

Florida Tech College of Engineering and Science

The Florida Institute of Technology is a private research university in Melbourne, FL. The university was founded in 1958 as Brevard Engineering College to support NASA in providing advanced education for professionals working in the space program.

Product of the Month

Automotive engineers utilize Adams software to build their virtual vehicle prototypes and Adams Real Time Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) capabilities to bridge the gap with physical tests.

Producing Oil from Duckweed

Scientists say that such oil-rich duckweed could easily be harvested to produce biofuels or other bioproducts.

5 Ws of 3D-Printed MEMS

A team at KTH Royal Institute of Technology has developed a new 3D printing technique that could be used to produce customized chip-based microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).

Space Radiation Research Fights Cancer on Earth

Inspired by NASA’s research of certain segments of DNA to estimate radiation damage, Promega Corp. used the technique to create its own diagnostic test which is used to customize cancer treatment.

Easing Industrial-Grade Ethernet Implementation

Equipment and test system designers need Ethernet devices that outperform consumer-grade components, while remaining easy to use.

The Evolution of COVID-19 Testing

One silver lining that the pandemic brought is an expansion of infectious-disease-testing technology.

Vote for Tech Briefs’ 28th Annual Readers’ Choice Awards

These 12 products are the nominees for the 2022 Tech Briefs Readers’ Choice Product of the Year.

New Products: November 2022 Photonics & Imaging Insider

See the new products, including a green laser, a ToF camera, an AI-capable microprocessors, and more.

Miniaturized Infrared Detectors

Extreme miniaturization of infrared (IR) detectors is critical for their integration into next-generation consumer electronics, wearables and ultra-small satellites. Thus far, however, IR detectors have...

UV-to-Red-Light Converting Films Accelerate Plant Growth

An interdisciplinary team from Hokkaido University’s Engineering and Agriculture departments and the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD) has developed...

World's Smallest Photon Achieved in Dielectric Nanocavity

Until recently, it was widely believed among physicists that it was impossible to compress light below the so-called diffraction limit, except when using metal nanoparticles, which...

Reliable Power for Long-Term Lunar Surface Operations

To open the Moon to continuous multi-year human and robotic operation, Astrobotic is developing LunaGrid™ — a commercial power system for the surface of the Moon.

Bringing Touch to Virtual Reality

The system aims to add the sense of touch to the metaverse for use in virtual-reality shopping and gaming, and potentially facilitate the work of astronauts and other professions that require the use of thick gloves.

Heat-Proof Carbides May Revolutionize Aerospace Technology

The new materials are hard enough to stir molten steel and can withstand temperatures above 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit — about the same temperatures found just a few hundred miles above the surface of the sun.

Test Your Knowledge About 3D Printing in Space

Take this quiz to find out how much you know about the rise of 3D printing in space and its future outlook.

The Burrowing Mole Crab Robot

The unassuming Pacific mole crab, Emerita analoga, is about to make some waves. UC Berkeley researchers have debuted a unique robot inspired by this burrowing crustacean that may someday help evaluate the soil...

Tentacle Robot Can Gently Grasp Fragile Objects

If you’ve ever played the claw game at an arcade, you know how hard it is to grab and hold onto objects using robotic grippers. Imagine how much more nerve-wracking that game would be if,...

Gripper Robot Can Grasp Objects from Very Fine to Large

The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) announced that it has developed a gripper capable of all gripping movements, inspired by elephant trunks. It mimics how elephants...

An Automatic Drawing Machine for Metamaterials

The drawing machine uses pens with ink containing conductive material or regular mechanical pencils with varying graphite content.

Test Your Knowledge About Automated Automobiles

See how much you know about automated automobiles with this quiz.

Beaming Clean Energy from Space

Once considered science fiction, technology capable of collecting solar power in space and beaming it to Earth to provide a global supply of clean and affordable energy is moving closer to reality. Through...

Extensive NREL Power Electronics Capabilities

Imagine a technology that can convert, amplify, limit, filter, control, and transform electricity in countless ways to supply power to the electrical grid. These are power electronics, and the...

Sleep Mode Makes Internet of Energy More Energy Efficient

A group of scientists in Nagoya University, Japan, have developed a possible solution to one of the biggest problems of the Internet of Energy, energy efficiency. They did so by...

AI Material That Adapts to Its Surroundings

UCLA engineers have designed a new class of material that can learn behaviors over time and develop a “muscle memory” of its own.

Q&A: Nanoelectronic Heart Cell Sensor

Professor Jun Yao and his team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, have created a tiny sensor that can simultaneously measure electrical and mechanical cellular responses in cardiac tissue.

The Skillful Skydiving of Wingless Springtails

Early in the pandemic, Víctor Ortega-Jiménez was exploring creeks near his home and observing springtails. The organisms are the most abundant non-insect hexapods on earth, and...

NYU Tandon Researchers Explore a More Frictionless Future

Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Elisa Riedo and her team have discovered a fundamental friction law that is leading to a deeper understanding of energy dissipation...

High-Power Electrostatic Actuators to Realize Artificial Muscles

Electrostatic actuators are simple and lightweight devices that emulate human muscles. However, their usage has primarily been restricted to moving small devices since they...

The Power of Power Electronics for a Sustainable Future

Power electronics are critical for renewable energy. They require special design and testing to ensure that they will reliably perform their critical duties.

How Artemis I Launched

The Artemis I launch took place at Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with support from University of Central Florida alums, faculty, and students. However, it didn’t go off without a hitch.

Advanced LiDAR — On the Road to SAE Level 3 Partially Automated Driving

For automated driving, LiDAR combines the best features of two of the other sensing technologies: radar and cameras.