Electrical/​Electronics

Wireless Electronic ‘Stickers’ Gauge Forces Between Touching Objects

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed electronic “stickers” that measure the force exerted by one object upon another. The force stickers are wireless, run without batteries and fit in tight spaces. That makes them versatile for a wide range of applications.

Making Conductive, Biodegradable Wires from Designed Proteins

The miniscule wires — the size of transistors on silicon chips or one thousandth of the breadth of the finest human hair — are made completely of natural amino acids and heme molecules, found in proteins such as hemoglobin, which transports oxygen in red blood cells.

A Thermoelectric Cooler to Restore Sensation in Amputees

This advancement, one of the first of its kind, enables a useful new capability for a variety of applications, including improved prostheses, haptics for new modalities in augmented reality (AR), and thermally modulated therapeutics for applications such as pain management. The technology also has a variety of potential industrial and research applications.

First Transformable Nanoscale Electronic Devices

The nanoscale electronic parts in devices like smartphones are solid, static objects that once designed and built cannot transform into anything else. But a team from University of California Irvine has reported the discovery of nanoscale devices that can transform into many different shapes and sizes even though they exist in solid states.

A Better Link for Enabling Intelligent Automation

IO-Link is a digital advancement combining the essential electrical and electronic characteristics of other connectivity methods. The resulting devices and architecture are enabling designers to create more intelligent equipment, streamline installation, and reduce overall costs.

Tiny Power Converters Run on Vibrational Energy

Scientists at the University of California San Diego and CEA-Leti have developed a ground-breaking piezoelectric-based DC-DC converter that unifies all power switches onto a single chip to...

A New Carbon Material Sets Energy-Storage Record, Likely to Advance Supercapacitors

Guided by machine learning, chemists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed a record-setting carbonaceous supercapacitor...

DNA Origami Folded into Tiny Motor

Scientists have created the world’s first working nanoscale electromotor, according to research published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The science team designed a turbine engineered from DNA...

How Much Do You Know About Oscilloscopes?

One of the most widely used test instruments, the oscilloscope's primary function is to provide a graph of a signal’s voltage over time. Its applications include acoustic research, television-production engineering, and electronics design. So, how much do you know about oscilloscopes? Find out with this quiz.

RISING STAR AWARDS 2025 SPONSORS

Home How to Enter Terms & Conditions Meet the Judges Hall of Stars Sponsors   We are deeply grateful to our sponsors for their invaluable support of this year’s Rising Star Awards...

RISING STAR AWARDS: PAST WINNERS

Home How to Enter Terms & Conditions Meet the Judges Hall of Stars Sponsors   Meet the trailblazing women engineers who made history as winners of last year’s Rising Star Awards, chosen...

RISING STAR AWARDS 2025 JUDGES

Home How to Enter Terms & Conditions Meet the Judges Hall of Stars Sponsors   Thank you to our esteemed panel of judges, comprising leaders from engineering and technology fields, who bring...

RISING STAR AWARD RULES

Home How to Enter Terms & Conditions Meet the Judges Hall of Stars Sponsors   The Women in Engineering: Rising Star Awards program celebrates and recognizes women engineers who are enhancing the...

RISING STAR AWARDS NOMINATION

Home How to Enter Terms & Conditions Meet the Judges Hall of Stars Sponsors   Nominations for the 2025 Rising Star Awards have closed. All entries are being evaluated by a panel of judges...

RISING STAR AWARDS 2025 WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Home How to Enter Terms & Conditions Meet the Judges Hall of Stars Sponsors   Platinum Sponsors See all sponsors The wait is over. We’re thrilled to announce the...

RISING STAR AWARDS 2024

  Women have been making significant improvements to engineering and are at the forefront of innovation and sustainable development. SAE Media Group shines the spotlight on their achievements with its inaugural...

Powering Wearables: Balancing Battery Life with Power Efficiency

Wearable medical devices must balance the need for continuous monitoring with power efficiency.

Brain-Inspired AI Code Library Notches Milestone

The open source code library — snnTorch — has surpassed 100,000 downloads and is used in a wide variety of projects, from NASA satellite tracking efforts to semiconductor companies optimizing chips for AI.

NASA’s Ruggedized Video Camera Ready for Earth

A ruggedized video camera designed to withstand the shock, vibration, and extreme temperatures of space is now ready for extreme conditions on Earth.

New on the Market

See what's new on the market, including a new feature for RJG's CoPilot process control system, Renishaw's expanded RenAM 500, AIRMAR's three medium ultra-wide transducers, Coilcraft's molded power inductors, VP810 vapor phase soldering systems from ASSCON, and more.

Highest-Resolution Single-Photon Superconducting Camera

The NIST camera is made up of grids of ultrathin electrical wires, cooled to near absolute zero, in which current moves with no resistance until a wire is struck by a photon. In these superconducting-nanowire cameras, the energy imparted by even a single photon can be detected because it shuts down the superconductivity at a particular location (pixel) on the grid. Combining all the locations and intensities of all the photons makes up an image.

Computing Breakthrough: First Logical Quantum Processor

Harvard researchers have realized a key milestone in the quest for stable, scalable quantum computing, an ultra-high-speed technology that will enable game-changing advances in a variety of fields, including medicine, science, and finance.

Executive Roundtable: Artificial Intelligence

What are the opportunities and risks AI offers in manufacturing? How can manufacturers successfully implement AI and prepare their workforce to integrate it into their processes? What’s its future outlook? Tech Briefs asked four industry experts in this roundtable.

Videos of the Month

See the videos of the month, including one on Purdue University researchers teaching robots how to navigate the swaying deck of a boat, one on a Carnegie Mellon-led team developing a soft robot to better understand an organism — the pleurocystitid — that existed 450 million years ago, and more.

Piezo Composites with Carbon Fibers for Motion Sensors

An international research group has engineered a novel high-strength flexible device by combining piezoelectric composites with unidirectional carbon fiber (UDCF), an anisotropic...

Researchers Create First Functional Semiconductor Made from Graphene

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created the world’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene, a single sheet of carbon atoms held...

Self-Powered Sensor Automatically Harvests Magnetic Energy

MIT researchers have developed a battery-free, self-powered sensor that can harvest energy from its environment.