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.

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...

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...

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...

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.

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.

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...

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...

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...

Test Your Knowledge About Automated Automobiles

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

An Automatic Drawing Machine for Metamaterials

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

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...

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,...

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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...

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...

New Products: November 2022 Photonics & Imaging Insider

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

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.

The Evolution of COVID-19 Testing

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

Easing Industrial-Grade Ethernet Implementation

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

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.

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).