Direct AC LED Engines

As the lighting industry continues to mature, vendors continue to pursue inexpensive lighting solutions that offer universal compatibility and are easy to install. For OEMs and manufacturers, LEDs have proven to be a...

3D-Printed Lab on Wheels

Next-generation manufacturing takes on a 50-year-old icon as ORNL researchers transform the classic Shelby Cobra sports car into a 3D-printed laboratory on wheels. Additive manufacturing enables the seamless...

Industrial Rotary Encoders: Selecting the Right Device for Your Application

Rotary encoders play important roles in motion control and industrial automation systems, providing control systems with information about the motion of motor...

Circuit Protection Challenges for Battery Management Systems

The market for higher-voltage automotive systems is expanding. The number of electric vehicles that use battery-powered drive systems having voltage equal to or higher than 48V is...

Demolition Probe Gives Construction Workers a Break

Initially designed for use on the Moon, the Electro-Hydraulic Fracturing system — developed at Auburn University with NASA funding — relies upon short, high-pulse power created by...

High-Voltage Power System for Hybrid Electric Aircraft Propulsion

Innovators at NASA’s Glenn Research Center have developed a variable-frequency, alternating current (AC) power system to enable turbo-electric and hybrid electric...

Aluminum as a Fuel

Batteries and combustion engines each have distinctive benefits and limitations. Batteries have simple construction and operate silently; however, their energy density (i.e., the energy per unit volume) is poor, and...

Generating Electricity with Energy-Harvesting Yarns

Researchers have developed yarns that generate electricity when they are stretched or twisted. The “twistron” yarns are constructed from carbon nanotubes — hollow cylinders of carbon...

Flexible, Water-Based Lithium-Ion Batteries

Researchers have developed a lithium-ion battery that uses a water-salt solution as its electrolyte — reaching the 4.0- Volt mark for electronics such as laptops — without the fire and...

Near-Zero-Power Temperature Sensor

A temperature sensor was developed that runs on 113 picowatts of power — about 10 billion times smaller than a Watt. The technology could enable devices that can be powered by harvesting energy from...

Facility Focus: Argonne National Laboratory

Located in Argonne, IL, Argonne National Laboratory (ARL) is a multidisciplinary science and engineering research center. Born out of the University of Chicago’s work on the Manhattan Project in...

Searching for the Failure Mechanisms in Lithium-Sulfur Batteries

It's difficult to see the details of atomic and topographical changes that lead to battery failure. However a team of researchers developed a method to see reactions leading to...

Inexpensive Method for Manufacturing Supercapacitor Electrodes

Supercapacitors can store and deliver energy faster than conventional batteries. But to realize advanced applications, supercapacitors need better electrodes, which connect the...

Electrical Requirements for Direct Current Electric Actuators

Servo control systems require accurate control of motion parameters such as acceleration, velocity, and position. This requires a controller that can apply current (torque) to...

Novel, Solid-State Hybrid Ultracapacitor Battery

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has developed a solid-state ultracapacitor with a unique combination of high capacitance and battery-like discharge characteristics. The high capacitance in...

Bulk Preparation of Holey Graphene via Controlled Catalytic Oxidation

Researchers at NASA have developed new methods to manufacture carbon materials (e.g., nanotubes, graphene) with holes through the graphitic surface of the particles. The...

Energy Storage Thermal Management

A well-designed thermal management system is critical to the life and performance of electric-drive vehicles (EDVs), hybrids (HEVs), plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), and all-electric vehicles (EVs). Temperature and...

Creating an Impedance Matching Method for Wireless Battery Charging

Keysight Technologies
Santa Rosa, CA
www.keysight.com

Implantable medical biosensors are commonly used to treat health problems via the unobtrusive collection of...

BOPPERS: Autonomous Underwater Environmental Monitoring System

A device has been developed that is capable of relatively lengthy unattended operations and high sampling frequency of underwater environmental data anywhere in the world. The...

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...

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...

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...

Simulation Helps Samsung Deliver Safer, More Efficient Lithium-Ion Battery Packs

Siemens PLM Software
Plano, TX
www.plm.automation.siemens.com

The use of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries has made the electric vehicle (EV) a...

Wireless Magnetic Field Powers Folding Robots

Folding robots based on origami have emerged as an exciting new frontier of robotic design. However, they generally require onboard batteries or a wired connection to a power source, making them...