INSIDER

Transparent Graphene Electrodes Might Lead to New Generation of Solar Cells

A new way of making large sheets of high-quality, atomically thin graphene could lead to ultra-lightweight, flexible solar cells, and to new classes of...

Smallest Motor in the World

The smallest motor in the world — consisting of just 16 atoms – measures less than one nanometer or about 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. The rotor rotates on the surface of the...

Precision Spray Coating Makes Better Perovskite Solar Cells

Although perovskites are a promising alternative to silicon for solar cells, new manufacturing processes are needed to make them practical for commercial production. To help fill...

Potassium Metal Battery Emerges as a Rival to Lithium-Ion Technology

Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have demonstrated how to overcome a persistent challenge to potassium metal batteries — dendrites. Their new battery...

Solid State Batteries With Ten Times More Current Density

Solid state batteries are of great interest to the electric vehicle industry. New technology developed by scientists at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden and Xi'an...

Scavenger Technology Allows Robots to ‘Eat’ Metal for Energy

A new metal-air scavenger works like a battery, in that it provides power by repeatedly breaking and forming a series of chemical bonds. But it also works like a harvester, in...

Mini Rover Pedals Out of Trouble

The next generation of exploration rovers will need to be good at climbing hills covered with loose material and avoiding entrapment on soft granular surfaces. Built with wheeled appendages that can be...

Layered Solar Cell Technology Boosts Efficiency and Affordability

The future’s getting brighter for solar power. Researchers from CU Boulder have created a low-cost solar cell with one of the highest power-conversion efficiencies to date...

Inverse Design Software Automates Design Process for Optical, Nanophotonic Structures

Stanford University researchers created an inverse design codebase called SPINS that can help researchers explore different design methodologies to find...

Upconverting Nanolasers from Subwavelength Plasmons

A research team has used the Molecular Foundry, a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility, to create miniature lasers. These lasers are stable and work continuously. What...

Stretchy Electronics for Next Generation Smart Devices

A new manufacturing process could produce flexible electronics for things like virtual reality-enabled contact lenses, solar-powered skins that mold to the contours of your car, and...

Atomic Chains in Nanotubes Push the Electronics Frontier

Wearable tech and electronic cloth may be the way of the future, but to get there the wiring needs to be strong, flexible, and efficient.

New Etching Technique Produces Far Smaller Semiconductors

Microelectronics like semiconductor devices are at the heart of the technologies we use each day. As we move into an era where we are stretching the limits of Moore’s Law, it is...

Ultra-Low Power Chip for IoT Wi-Fi

More portable, fully wireless smart home setups; lower power wearables; batteryless smart devices, could all be made possible with this new ultra-low power Wi-Fi radio. It is housed in a chip smaller than...

Foldable Robots for Future Moon Mission

The newest edition of NASA's small, foldable robots successfully traversed rugged terrain in the Mars Yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Small, Precise Gyroscope Navigates Without GPS

A small, inexpensive, and highly accurate gyroscope, developed at the University of Michigan, navigates without GPS. The key to making the gyroscope is a nearly symmetrical mechanical resonator...

Robot Draws Blood and Inserts Catheters

Rutgers University engineers have created a tabletop device that can draw blood or insert catheters to deliver fluids and drugs. The device can accurately pinpoint blood vessels, improving success...

New Technology for Pathogen Detection is Driven by Lasers

Researchers at Purdue University have been working to develop new technologies to help stop the spread of foodborne illnesses, which kill 3,000 people a year, by detecting them more...

Using Light to Put a Twist on Electrons

Some molecules, including most of the ones in living organisms, have shapes that can exist in two different mirror-image versions. The right- and left-handed versions can sometimes have different...

Simple Retrofit Transforms Electron Microscopes into High-Speed Atom-Scale Cameras

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their collaborators have developed a way to retrofit the transmission electron...

Used Nissan LEAF Batteries Given “Second Life”

When electric vehicles end their life, the remaining storage capacity of the lithium battery is expected to be higher than 70%. After this, they can be reused for less demanding “second...

Researchers Develop A Roadmap to Use Perovskites for New Solar Cells

Materials called perovskites show strong potential for a new generation of solar cells, but they’ve had trouble gaining traction in a market dominated by silicon-based...

Fast-Charging Supercapacitor is an Energy Storage Breakthrough

A new bendable supercapacitor made from graphene, which charges quickly and safely stores a record-high level of energy for use over a long period, has been developed and...

New Electrode Design May Lead to More Powerful Batteries

New research by engineers at MIT and elsewhere could lead to batteries that can pack more power per pound and last longer, based on the long-sought goal of using pure lithium metal as...

“Pop-Up” Technique Fabricates Microrobots

A bulk-machined “Pop-Up” MEMS process was developed for creating mesoscale machines up to several centimeters in dimension.

Robot and Software Create Advanced Materials

Rutgers University engineers have developed an automated way to produce polymers, making it much easier to create advanced materials aimed at improving human health. While a human researcher may...

Microchip Capability Expanded with New 3D Inductor Technology

A team of engineers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has boosted the performance of its previously developed 3D inductor technology by adding as much as three orders...

Laser Diode Emits Deep UV Light

Nagoya University scientists have succeeded in designing a laser diode that emits deep-ultraviolet light. It emits the world's shortest lasing wavelength, at 271.8 nanometers, under pulsed electric current...

New Method Gives Robust Transistors

Scientists at Linköping University (Linköping, Sweden) have described a method to manufacture transistors using gallium nitride and aluminum nitride that have the ability to withstand voltages as high...