INSIDER

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...

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...

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.

Playing Nice: How Self-Driving Cars and Human-Driven Cars Could Share the Road

Akin to when Model Ts traveled alongside horses and buggies, autonomous vehicles (AVs) and human-driven vehicles (HVs) will someday share the road. How to best...

How Flying Insects and Drones Can Discern Up from Down

Scientists have developed a theory that can explain how flying insects determine the gravity direction without using accelerometers. It also forms a substantial step in the creation of...

Researchers Take Stock of the Most Promising Control Scheme for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors

Electrical machines consume nearly half of all the electrical power generated worldwide, making them one of the top contributors to carbon...

Computer-Guided Drawing Machine Fabricates Paper Metamaterials

Scientists have developed a new technique for fabricating metamaterials from sheets of paper, using a computer to guide the movement of conductive ink pens and mechanical...

New Ultrathin Capacitor Could Enable Energy-Efficient Microchips

The silicon-based computer chips that power our modern devices require vast amounts of energy to operate. Despite ever-improving computing efficiency, information technology...

A New Neuromorphic Chip for AI on The Edge

An international team of researchers has designed and built a chip that runs computations directly in memory and can run a wide variety of AI applications — all at a fraction of the energy...

Leading Experts Suggest Guidelines for Assessing Emerging Transistor Performance

To continue making smartphones, laptops, and other devices more powerful, yet energy efficient, industry is intensely focused on identifying promising...

Strain-Sensing Smart Skin Ready to Deploy

A strain-sensing smart skin developed at Rice University uses very small carbon nanotube structures to monitor and detect damage in large structures. The “strain paint” uses the fluorescent...

Smart Microrobots Walk Autonomously

A collaborative effort has installed electronic “brains” on solar-powered robots that are 100 to 250 micrometers in size — smaller than an ant’s head — so that they can walk autonomously without...

NIST is Calibrating Gear Artifacts

Gears are sophisticated parts that play a vital role in cars, airplanes, construction and mining equipment, food processing, clock making, and more. And, companies are still trying to make them better —...

Eyes on Self-Driving Cars Reduce Accidents

Robotic eyes on autonomous vehicles could improve pedestrian safety, according to a new study at the University of Tokyo. Participants played out scenarios in virtual reality (VR) and had to decide...

Light-Sensing 3D-Printed Device Could Help People with Lupus

A team of engineers and doctors at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have designed a unique 3D-printed light-sensing medical device that is placed directly on the skin and...

Advanced Microscope Techniques Could Improve Computer Memories

Anyone who has watched steam billow up from a boiling kettle or seen ice crystals form on a wet window in winter has observed what scientists call a phase transition. Phase...

Thin Device Triggers One of Quantum Mechanics’ Strangest Phenomena

An ultrathin invention could make future computing, sensing and encryption technologies remarkably smaller and more powerful by helping scientists control a strange but...

New Products

High-Speed InGaAs Photodiodes OSI Optoelectronics (Hawthorne, CA) has introduced infrared-sensitive, pigtail-packaged High-Speed InGaAs Photodiodes with active areas of 75 µm and 120 µm. The single/multi-mode fiber is optically...

Highly Conductive Aluminum Can Equal Copper

A first-ever simulation of aluminum conductivity offers a recipe for an inexpensive substitute for copper.

Model Predicts Seasonal Variability of Solar and Wind Power

Researchers at Columbia University, supported in part by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, conducted a study that modeled the seasonal variability of solar and...

New Perovskite Solar Cell Has a Commercially Viable Lifetime

Princeton Engineering researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable...

The Battery Powering a Truly Green Revolution in Personal Electronics

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced that they have figured out how to engineer a biofilm that harvests the energy in evaporation and...

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...