A reconfigurable soft actuator

Transforming flat elastomers into 3D shapes

06-Feb-2019 - Mechanical systems, such as engines and motors, rely on two principal types of motions of stiff components: linear motion, which involves an object moving from one point to another in a straight line; and rotational motion, which involves an object rotating on an axis. Nature has developed far ...

New laser makes silicon 'sing'

11-Jun-2018 - Yale scientists have created a new type of silicon laser that uses sounds waves to amplify light. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in translating optical technologies -- such as fiber optics and free-space lasers -- into tiny optical or "photonic" integrated circuits. Using ...

A faster and more efficient way to process information

15-May-2018 - University of Waterloo chemists have found a much faster and more efficient way to store and process information by expanding the limitations of how the flow of electricity can be used and managed. In a recently released study, the chemists discovered that light can induce magnetization in ...

Diamond-based circuits can take the heat for advanced applications

13-Apr-2018 - When power generators like windmills and solar panels transfer electricity to homes, businesses and the power grid, they lose almost 10 percent of the generated power. To address this problem, scientists are researching new diamond semiconductor circuits to make power conversion systems more ...

Material for high-speed quantum internet

23-Mar-2018 - The race for quantum computing is on: Industry giants, such as Google, IBM, and Microsoft, and leading international research centers and universities are involved in the global effort to build a quantum computer. It is not known yet when this new technology can become a reality, but the world is ...

Printing of flexible, stretchable silver nanowire circuits

28-Feb-2018 - Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that allows them to print circuits on flexible, stretchable substrates using silver nanowires. The advance makes it possible to integrate the material into a wide array of electronic devices. Silver nanowires have drawn ...

Combining metalens with an artificial muscle

27-Feb-2018 - Inspired by the human eye, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed an adaptive metalens, that is essentially a flat, electronically controlled artificial eye. The adaptive metalens simultaneously controls for three of the major ...

Graphene and quantum dots put in motion a CMOS-integrated camera that can see the invisible

31-May-2017 - Over the past 40 years, microelectronics have advanced by leaps and bounds thanks to silicon and CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide semiconductors) technology, making possible computing, smartphones, compact and low-cost digital cameras, as well as most of the electronic gadgets we rely on ...

New material could lead to erasable and rewritable optical chips

08-Dec-2016 - A military drone flying on a reconnaissance mission is captured behind enemy lines, setting into motion a team of engineers who need to remotely delete sensitive information carried on the drone's chips. Because the chips are optical and not electronic, the engineers can now simply flash a beam ...

We gather here today to join lasers and anti-lasers

Marriage opens door to development of single device with exceptional range of optical capabilities

11-Nov-2016 - Bringing opposing forces together in one place is as challenging as you would imagine it to be, but researchers in the field of optical science have done just that. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have for the first time created a ...