INSIDER: Physical Sciences
DNA-nanoparticle motors are exactly as they sound — tiny artificial motors that use the structures of DNA and RNA to propel motion by enzymatic RNA degradation. Essentially,...
INSIDER: Design
The electronics industry is approaching a limit to the number of transistors that can be packed onto the surface of a computer chip. So, chip manufacturers are looking to build up rather than out.
INSIDER: Electronics & Computers
Existing computer systems have separate data processing and storage devices, making them inefficient for processing complex data like AI. A Korea Advanced Institute of Science and...
Briefs: Nanotechnology
Researchers have designed a way to levitate and propel objects using only light by creating specific nanoscale patterning on the objects' surfaces. The work could be a step toward developing a spacecraft that could reach the nearest planet outside of our solar system in 20 years, powered and accelerated only by light. Read on to learn more.
Briefs: Physical Sciences
MIT engineers have shown they can prevent cracks from spreading between composite’s layers, using an approach they developed called “nanostitching,” in which they deposit chemically grown microscopic forests of carbon nanotubes between composite layers. Read on to learn more about it.
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Researchers have introduced a microfluidic system that utilizes porous “inverse colloidal crystal” structures to dramatically improve the efficiency of microdroplet generation. Read on to learn more about it.
INSIDER: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Cornell researchers in physics and engineering have created the smallest walking robot yet. Its mission: to be tiny enough to interact with waves of visible light and still move...
INSIDER: Robotics, Automation & Control
A novel device couples magnetic fields and kirigami design principles to remotely control the movement of a flexible dimpled surface, allowing it to manipulate...
INSIDER: Aerospace
Active electronics — components that can control electrical signals — usually contain semiconductor devices that receive, store, and process information. These...
Briefs: RF & Microwave Electronics
In a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a team of Caltech engineers reports building a metasurface patterned with miniscule tunable antennas capable of reflecting an incoming beam of optical light to create many sidebands, or channels, of different optical frequencies. Read on to learn more.
INSIDER: Physical Sciences
A peek through an optical microscope reveals a hidden universe teeming with life. Nature has devised ingenious methods for micro-organisms to navigate their viscous...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
The “nanoswimmers” could be used to remediate contaminated soil, improve water filtration, or even deliver drugs to targeted areas of the body.
Quiz: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Energy harvesting is an increasingly important technology. It’s important in many different fields, from the Internet of Things to medicine and beyond. How much do you know about energy harvesting? Test your knowledge with this quiz.
INSIDER: Materials
Physicists at the University of Cambridge Cavendish Laboratory have discovered two new ways to improve organic semiconductors by removing more electrons from the...
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Engineers have developed an ultra-sensitive sensor made with graphene that can detect extraordinarily low concentrations of lead ions in water. The device achieves a record limit of detection of lead down to the femtomolar range, which is one million times more sensitive than previous sensing technologies. Read on to learn more.
INSIDER: Design
Researchers have developed an artificial motor at the supramolecular level that can develop impressive power. The wind-up motor is a tiny ribbon made of special molecules. When energy is applied, the...
INSIDER: Photonics/Optics
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have for the first time succeeded in combining two major research fields in photonics by creating a nanoobject with...
Blog: Nanotechnology
A new study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities is providing new insights into how next-generation electronics, including memory components in computers, breakdown or degrade over time.
INSIDER: Energy
When cars, planes, ships, or computers are built from a material that functions as both a battery and a load-bearing structure, the weight and energy consumption are...
Q&A: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Professor Saptarshi Das and his team at Penn State University learned that when it comes to mating, two things matter for Heliconius butterflies: the look and the smell of their potential partner. This led them to think about how multiple sensory inputs could enable more efficient use of AI.
INSIDER: Robotics, Automation & Control
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed microscopic robots, known as microrobots, capable of swimming through the lungs to deliver...
Briefs: Nanotechnology
Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and partners carried out steroid hormone adsorption experiments to study the interplay of forces in the small pores. They found that vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VaCNT) of specific pore geometry and pore surface structure are suited for use as highly selective membranes.
Briefs: Materials
Engineers are poised to clean things up with an oxygen-free chemical vapor deposition (OF-CVD) method that can create high-quality graphene samples at scale. Their work directly demonstrates how trace oxygen affects the growth rate of graphene and identifies the link between oxygen and graphene quality for the first time.
INSIDER: Sensors/Data Acquisition
When electronic devices like laptops or smartphones overheat, they are fundamentally suffering from a nanoscale heat transfer problem. Pinpointing the source of that problem...
INSIDER: Materials
Researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated miniature soft hydraulic actuators that can be used to control the deformation and motion of...
INSIDER: Nanotechnology
At first glance, Rabih O. Al-Kaysi’s molecular motors look like the microscopic worms you’d see in a drop of pond water. But these wriggling ribbons are not alive;...
INSIDER: Electronics & Computers
Researchers from NUS, together with industry partners Soitec and NXP Semiconductors, have demonstrated a new class of silicon systems that...
INSIDER: AR/AI
Health-monitoring apps can help people manage chronic diseases or stay on track with fitness goals, using nothing more than a smartphone. However, these apps...
INSIDER: Nanotechnology
Silicon semiconductors have become the ‘oil’ of the computer age, as was demonstrated recently by the chip shortage crisis. However, one of the disadvantages of...