Tech Briefs

Electronics & Software

Access our comprehensive library of technical briefs on electronics and software, from engineering experts at NASA and major government, university, and commercial laboratories.

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Briefs: Energy
A team has designed a new blueprint for solid-state batteries that are less dependent on specific chemical elements, particularly critical metals that are challenging to source due to supply chain issues. Their work could advance solid-state batteries that are efficient and affordable.
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Drawing inspiration from how spiders spin silk to make webs, a team of researchers has developed an innovative method of producing soft fibers that possess three key properties (strong, stretchable, and electrically conductive), and at the same time can be easily reused to produce new fibers.
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Briefs: Materials
Researchers have developed a colloidal synthesis method for alkaline earth chalcogenides. This method allows them to control the size of the nanocrystals in the material.
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Briefs: Energy
An international research collaboration led by UCLA has developed a way to use perovskite in solar cells while protecting it from the conditions that cause it to deteriorate.
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Briefs: Materials
New Lithium-Ion Battery Cathode Offers Higher Stability
In a new study, a research team led by the University of California, Irvine, created and analyzed a material for a Li-ion cathode that uses no cobalt and is instead rich in nickel.
Briefs: Semiconductors & ICs
Researchers have fabricated a novel device that could dramatically boost the conversion of heat into electricity. If perfected, the technology could help recoup some of the recoverable heat energy that is wasted in the U.S. at a rate of about $100 billion each year.
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Briefs: Energy
An Electric Vehicle Battery for All Seasons
Many EV owners worry about how effective their battery will be in very cold weather. To address that problem, a team of scientists developed a fluorine-containing electrolyte that performs well even in sub-zero temperatures.
Briefs: Energy
Researchers at Penn State University have achieved a breakthrough in electric vehicle (EV) battery design to enable a 10-minute charge time for a typical EV battery.
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Briefs: Lighting Technology
A team at Delft University of Technology has built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques for the first time. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision — e.g., underwater or for medical imaging.
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Briefs: Materials
A Penn State-led team of researchers have created a new process to fabricate large perovskite devices that is more cost- and time-effective than previously possible — and may accelerate future materials discovery.
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Briefs: Materials
A team of researchers is using aluminum foil to create batteries with higher energy density and greater stability. The team’s new battery system could enable EVs to run longer on a single charge and would be cheaper to manufacture – all while having a positive impact on the environment.
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Briefs: Power
Scientists at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering have developed a readily scalable method to optimize prelithiation, a process that helps mitigate lithium loss and improves battery life cycles by coating silicon anodes with stabilized lithium metal particles.
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Briefs: Energy
Grasping objects is a problem that is easy for a human, but challenging for a robot. Researchers designed a soft, 3D-printed robotic hand that cannot independently move its fingers but can still carry out a range of complex movements.
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Briefs: Manned Systems
Armed with 5G network technology, AI, and edge computing resources, a pilot project under development at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island aims to create an optimized refueling system designed to boost readiness for military aircraft.
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Briefs: AR/AI
Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have introduced a method for robust flight navigation agents to master vision-based fly-to-target tasks in intricate, unfamiliar environments.
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Briefs: Power
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have developed a propeller design optimization method that paves the way for quiet, efficient electric aviation.
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
There’s still more to explore with REFLEX, but this process could open new possibilities for new materials and microstructures across fields from electronics to optics to biomedical engineering.
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A novel nanostructure produces uniquely shaped light.
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Briefs: Lighting Technology
A wavelength of visible light is about 1,000 times larger than an electron, so the way the two affect each other is limited by that disparity. Now, researchers have come up with a way to make...
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
3D nanometer-scale metamaterial structures hold promise for advanced optical isolators.
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Briefs: Power
Researchers have employed a novel technique to investigate and modulate electric double layer dynamics at the solid/solid electrolyte interface.
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Briefs: Energy
Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered a 1,000 percent difference in the storage capacity of metal-free, water-based battery electrodes.
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Briefs: Energy
TU Wien has developed an oxygen-ion battery that has some important advantages. Although it does not allow for quite as high energy densities as the Li-ion battery, its storage capacity does not decrease irrevocably over time.
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Briefs: Materials
Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a conductive polymer coating – called HOS-PFM – that could enable longer lasting, more powerful lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
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Briefs: Medical
New research from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute (RI) aims to increase autonomy for individuals with motor impairments by introducing a head-worn device that will help them control a mobile manipulator.
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Briefs: Materials
The cellulose nanofiber coating counters bending damage and retains electrode function under water.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A research team at Hokkaido University has developed the first solid-state electrochemical thermal transistor. It's more stable than, and just as effective as, current liquid-state thermal transistors.
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Briefs: Medical
Boasting a 256-channel high-resolution sensing array and an energy-efficient machine learning processor, NeuralTree can extract and classify a broad set of biomarkers from real patient data and animal models of disease in-vivo.
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Briefs: Medical
Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center have designed a therapeutic device that applies a time-varying electromagnetic force to damaged mammalian tissue and is intended to enhance healing.
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