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.

Teaching Drones How to Navigate Real-World Weather

For drones to autonomously perform necessary but quotidian tasks, they must be able to adapt to wind conditions in real time.

Glassy Electrolyte Holds Promise for an All-Solid-State Sodium Battery

Lithium-ion batteries are currently the preferred technology for powering electric vehicles, but they’re too expensive for long-duration grid-scale energy storage systems.

Firefly-Inspired Robotic Lightning Bugs Take Flight

The ability to emit light also brings these microscale robots, which weigh barely more than a paper clip, one step closer to flying on their own outside the lab.

Tiny Motors to Power a Network of Nanomachines

Researchers from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin recently created the first ever solid-state optical nanomotor.

Designing Sodium-Ion Batteries with Extended Longevity

In batteries, electrolyte is the circulating “blood” that keeps the energy flowing. The electrolyte forms by dissolving salts in solvents, resulting in charged ions that flow between the positive and negative electrodes.

Active Flow Control System for Simple-Hinged Flaps

This simple, elegant invention can control flow separation resulting from the high flap deflections required by simple-hinged flap systems making such flaps a viable option for aircraft designers.

Product of the Month: September 2022 Tech Briefs

The compact optoNCDT 1420LL laser sensors from Micro-Epsilon, Ortenburg, Germany, perform precise distance measurements on metallic and structured surfaces. The sensor projects a small...

Lignin-Based Jet Fuel Packs More Power

An experimental plant-based jet fuel could increase engine performance and efficiency, while dispensing with aromatics, the pollution-causing compounds found in conventional fuels.

Enhancing Solar Option During Power Outages

Engineers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have designed a novel building-solar controller that optimizes solar energy with smart technology to keep microgrids operating for up to five days.

New Approach to Reducing EV Battery Testing Time

A new optimization framework created by researchers at University of Michigan could drastically reduce the cost of assessing how battery configurations will perform over the long haul.

Using AI to Help Scale Up Advanced Solar Cell Manufacturing

The system makes it possible to integrate data from prior experiments, and information based on personal observations by experienced workers, into the machine learning process.

Water-Activated Paper Battery

A team of researchers at EMPA have developed a water-activated disposable paper battery.

Electrolyte Additive Improves Battery Performance

The work could lead to improvements in the energy density of lithium batteries that power electric vehicles.

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.

Extending the Lifetime of Organic Aqueous Flow Batteries

Over the course of their research, the team discovered that these anthraquinones decompose slowly over time, regardless of how many times the battery has been used.

Designing a Human-Robot Collaboration System

Scientists analyzed the stability of the collaborative system based on speed and accuracy, as well as the conditions required for successfully performing tasks from geometric, force, and posture viewpoints.

New Technology Could Make Biopsies a Thing of the Past

MediSCAPE is a highspeed 3D microscope capable of capturing images of tissue structures that could guide surgeons to navigate tumors and their boundaries without needing to remove tissues and wait for pathology results.

Rice ‘Metalens’ Could Disrupt Vacuum UV Market

Tests showed the metalens they made could focus its 197-nanometer output onto a spot measuring 1.7 microns in diameter, increasing the power density of the light output by 21 times.

Upside-Down Design Expands Wide-Spectrum Super-Camera Abilities

Plasmonics is a technology that essentially traps the energy of light in groups of electrons oscillating together on a metal surface.

Researchers Demonstrate 40-Channel Optical Communication Link

It achieves 40 channels by combining a frequency comb light source based on a new photonic crystal resonator developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with an optimized mode-division multiplexer.

Webb Telescope Mirror Tech Improves Eye Surgery on Earth

Eye surgery patients on Earth are benefiting from early research on the NASA’s James Webb Telescope’s enormous mirrors.

Magazine Archives

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Tiny Limbs and Long Bodies: Coordinating Lizard Locomotion

Using biological experiments, robot models, and a geometric theory of locomotion, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology investigated how and why intermediate lizard...

Powertrain System Improves Wind, Water Turbine Efficiency and Environmental Impact

Purdue University engineers have designed a low-speed, high-torque powertrain system to reduce the operation costs, maintenance costs, and environmental...

Interuniversity Project to Design Wave-Powered Autonomous Robot

With the perpetual motion of its waves and tides, the Earth's ocean represents a highly predictable, theoretically limitless source of kinetic energy.

Walking Feeds Pressure to Pneumatic Robots That Could Help Those with Disabilities

Mechanical engineers at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering have built a handy extra limb able to grasp objects and go, powered only...