What is 'Metallic Wood?' Nickel, Plus Nano-Pores

By adding nanopores to nickel, James Pikul and his team created a kind of "metallic wood."

Product of the Month: February 2019

MakerBot, Brooklyn, NY, introduced the Method 3D printer that bridges the gap between desktop and industrial 3D printing. The printer includes a circulating heated chamber, dual performance...

Artificial Intelligence Device Identifies Objects at the Speed of Light

Numerous devices in everyday life use computerized cameras to identify objects — think of automated teller machines that can “read” handwritten dollar amounts when...

New on the Market: February 2019

Nozzles

The Lee Company, Westbrook, CT, offers single- and multi-orifice lube nozzles in a variety of configurations. The nozzles may include HI-BAR^® safety screens for additional...

5 Ws of My Skin Track UV

Who

The device can optimize treatment of neonatal jaundice, skin diseases, and seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and reduce risk of sunburn and skin cancer.

Material Removes Ice Buildup Without Power or Chemicals

From airplane wings, to overhead power lines, to the giant blades of wind turbines, a buildup of ice can cause problems ranging from impaired performance all the way to catastrophic...

Interactive Software Simplifies Complex Mold Design

Molding is a popular method for the mass production of objects. Essentially, two (or more) mold pieces are fit together, leaving the shape of the desired object as a hole. During...

Facility Focus: Savannah River National Laboratory

The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) — located in Aiken, SC — is the applied research and development laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River Site...

Q&A: Columbia University’s Jyotirmoy Mandal Creates a Cooling Polymer

Mandal, along with Professors Yuan Yang and Nanfang Yu, built upon earlier work demonstrating that many simple plastics and polymers are excellent heat radiators that...

Micro-Mirror Optical Tracking and Ranging System

An innovative optical sensing and tracking system was designed to detect, track, and determine object distance and direction in a wide, full, solid angle (160 × 160°) with an extremely high...

Method Increases Adhesive Properties of Silicone

Geckos, spiders, and beetles have special adhesive elements on their feet, enabling them to easily run along ceilings or walls. The science of bionics tries to imitate and control such...

Aluminum Extrusions Help Ski Maker Achieve Olympic-Sized Goals

Minalex Corp.
Whitehouse Station, NJ
www.minalex.com

In PyeongChang, South Korea this month, competitors representing 89 countries will be competing for Olympic gold....

Offshore Oil Workers Learn Survival Skills in Astronaut Training Pool

Spinoff is NASA's annual publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology. This commercialization has contributed to the development of products and...

Thermal-Compensating Optics Housing

Existing optics mounts sandwich the optic axially between two metal components, which can lead to optical surface damage and misalignment when exposed to fluctuating temperatures. Thermal-compensating...

Capacitive Pressure Sensor System and Packaging

Pressure sensors play an important role in engine maintenance and monitoring systems by diagnosing problems before they happen. To capture the most accurate data, however, these sensors must be...

High-Voltage Power Line Multi-Sensor System

Government infrastructure facilities such as water treatment facilities, power plants, laboratories, and the like may be targets for terrorist attacks. Similarly, oil pipelines, power grids,...

Scalable Manufacturing Process for Creating Spools of Graphene

For many researchers, graphene is ideal for use in filtration membranes. A single sheet of graphene resembles atomically thin chicken wire, and is composed of carbon atoms joined...

Products of Tomorrow: February 2019

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...

Steering-Mirror-Assisted Laser Fine Pointing

Pointing precision is a critical element of instrumentation for optical communications and ranging in space, affecting laser design, link power budgets, and SWaP. While star trackers possess...

Self-Powering Sensor Using a Nano-Energy Harvester

Existing nanosensor technologies depend on an external power source (typically a battery) to operate. Chemical and biological sensors based on nanowire or nanotube technologies exhibit...

Executive Forum: Electronics Design

As ubiquitous as electronics are today, they are finding even more uses as Internet of Things (IoT) applications expand. Tech Briefs posed questions to electronics industry executives to get their views on...

Connectors Prove Pivotal in Nanosatellite-Based Communication Network

Harwin
Farlington, Portsmouth, UK
www.harwin.com

There are certain areas of the planet that are simply too sparsely inhabited for it to be economically viable...

Printing Technology Uses Sound Waves to Control Size of Liquid Droplets

Liquid droplets are used in many applications, from printing ink on paper to creating microcapsules for drug delivery. Inkjet printing is the most common technique used...

Rocket Nozzle Side-Load Analysis Software

Lateral nozzle forces are known to cause severe structural damage during testing of any new rocket engine configuration under development. While three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD)...

Selecting a Software Programming Platform

Software development and testing comprises about half of the control system design and integration effort, so a programming platform that can ease and speed the process is vital. Such PC-based...

Ultrathin, Ultralight “Nanocardboard” Recovers Shape After Bending

When choosing materials to make something, tradeoffs need to be made among properties such as thickness, stiffness, and weight. A new material called nanocardboard was...

Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) 370 Resin for High-Temperature Applications

RTM370 imide resin was developed to address the limitations of conventional imide resins, which are generated from commercially available symmetrical biphenyl...

Manufacturing Technique Helps Inkjet Printers Deliver Ink More Evenly

When a coffee mug leaves a ring, the outer edges of that ring are darker than the inside of the ring. That's because the solute is separated from the liquid during the...

Designing Self-Propelled, Chemically Active Sheets

Researchers have created a two-dimensional, shape-changing sheet that moves autonomously in a reactant-filled fluid. The integrated system utilizes a chemical reaction to activate the fluid...

Micro-Robot Climbs on Vertical and Upside-Down Conductive Surfaces

Jet engines can have up to 25,000 individual parts, making regular maintenance a tedious task that can take more than a month per engine. Many components are located deep...

Foot Pedal Controller

A novel foot-pedal-operated system and device were developed to control translational and rotational movement of an object in three-dimensional (3D) space. The Foot Pedal Controller system enables operators to control...

New Products: February 2019 Motion Design

Motor Control Integrated Circuit

Microsemi Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Microchip Technology (Aliso Viejo, CA), announced the LX7720 radiation-tolerant motor control integrated...

Advanced Connector Technologies: From Aerospace to Racecars to Robots

Different types of motion encountered in dynamic environments require designers to specify connectors for boards, wiring, and devices that can meet significant g-forces,...

Robots Bring Airplane Production Up to Speed

Robots are helping a European airplane manufacturer cut into an eight-year backlog of orders for one of its most popular aircraft.

Implementing Anti-Rotational Guidance for Stepper Motor Linear Actuators

Integrating lead screws with stepper motors is a simple and cost-effective method for getting precise linear motion. But achieving that precision requires...

Tiny Robots Grow Bio-inspired Shapes

Hundreds of small robots can work in a team to create biology-inspired shapes without an underlying master plan, purely based on local communication and movement. To achieve this, the biological...

Artificial Joint Restores Wrist-Like Movements

For patients missing a hand, one of the biggest challenges to regaining a high level of function is the inability to rotate one's wrist (pronate and supinate). These are essential movements...

Innovative Technique Could Pave the Way for New Generation of Flexible Electronic Components

The quest to develop microelectronic devices with increasingly smaller size, which underpins the progress of the global semiconductor industry...

A Wireless, Battery-Free, Biodegradable Blood Flow Sensor

A new device developed by Stanford University researchers could make it easier for doctors to monitor the success of blood vessel surgery. The sensor monitors the flow of blood...

Computer Chip Vulnerabilities Discovered

A Washington State University research team has uncovered significant and previously unknown vulnerabilities in high-performance computer chips that could lead to failures in modern electronics....

3D-Printed Rubber Repairs Itself

A new material development from USC brings us a step closer to self-healing sneakers.

A Morphing Soft Actuator Expands the Motion Options

Even a shape-morphing plane is possible, says Harvard's Ehsan Hajiesmaili.

Answering Your Questions: Are There Regulations for Machine Learning in Vehicles?

How do you regulate a system that, in effect, is learning as it goes?

Accelerating SENT Troubleshooting and Debug Using an Oscilloscope

The SENT (Single Edge Nibble Transmission) bus continues to gain acceptance across the automotive industry and is widely used to transmit high-resolution readings from...

Graphene Breakthrough Puts Nanolithography ‘Back in the Toolbox’

Graphene may play a greater role in tomorrow electronics, thanks to an achievement from the Technical University of Denmark.

Inside Story: Low Outgassing Adhesives from Master Bond

Master Bond (Hackensack, NJ) focuses on developing the best in epoxies, silicones, UV cures, and other specialty adhesive systems including compounds that have passed NASA...

Porous Carbon Fibers: How a Car Could Someday Store Its Energy 'Everywhere'

Tesla uses batteries to store energy underneath the car seats. What if we could store energy everywhere on the vehicle?

Walking Robot Moves Without GPS

Ants are able to use polarized light and ultraviolet radiation to locate themselves in space. AntBot mimics this ability to explore its environment randomly and go home automatically, without GPS or...

Speedy Motor Modeling

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have created open source software that scales up analysis of motor designs to run on the fastest computers available.

Answering Your Questions: What Areas of Study Are Desirable for the Autonomous Industry?

With self-driving vehicles poised to take the road, how can today’s engineers prepare themselves to support an autonomous future?