Category: new technology

Researchers have developed a way to use “flashes” of electricity to convert carbon into different forms such as graphene or nanodiamonds

By Michael Irving

Researchers at Rice University have developed a way to turn carbon from a variety of sources straight into useful forms such as graphene or diamond. The technique uses a “flash” of electricity to heat the carbon, converting it into a final form that’s determined by the length of the flash.

The technique is known as flash joule heating (FJH), and the team first described it in January 2020. An electrical current is passed through carbon-containing materials, heating them to about 2,727 °C (4,940 °F), which converts the carbon into pristine, turbostratic graphene flakes.

Now the researchers have refined the process to create other materials. The original flashes lasted 10 milliseconds, but the team found that by changing the duration between 10 and 500 milliseconds they could also guide the carbon to convert into other forms, too. That includes nanodiamond, and “concentric carbon” where carbon atoms form a shell around a nanodiamond core.

Continue reading… “New method converts carbon into graphene or diamond in a flash”

This illustration captures the essence of the newly developed electronic microsystem. Credit: UMass Amherst

by Mary Dettloff , University of Massachusetts Amherst

A research team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst has created an electronic microsystem that can intelligently respond to information inputs without any external energy input, much like a self-autonomous living organism. The microsystem is constructed from a novel type of electronics that can process ultralow electronic signals and incorporates a device that can generate electricity “out of thin air” from the ambient environment.

The groundbreaking research was published June 7 in the journal Nature Communications.

Jun Yao, an assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) and an adjunct professor in biomedical engineering, led the research with his longtime collaborator, Derek R. Lovley, a Distinguished Professor in microbiology.

Both of the key components of the microsystem are made from protein nanowires, a “green” electronic material that is renewably produced from microbes without producing “e-waste.” The research heralds the potential of future green electronics made from sustainable biomaterials that are more amenable to interacting with the human body and diverse environments.

This breakthrough project is producing a “self-sustained intelligent microsystem,” according to the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory, which is funding the research.

Continue reading… “Researchers create self-sustaining, intelligent, electronic microsystems from green material”

Graphene can be used for ultra-high density hard disk drives (HDD), with up to a tenfold jump compared to current technologies, researchers at the Cambridge Graphene Center have shown.

by University of Cambridge

The study, published in Nature Communications, was carried out in collaboration with teams at the University of Exeter, India, Switzerland, Singapore, and the US.

HDDs first appeared in the 1950s, but their use as storage devices in personal computers only took off from the mid-1980s. They have become ever smaller in size, and denser in terms of the number of stored bytes. While solid state drives are popular for mobile devices, HDDs continue to be used to store files in desktop computers, largely due to their favorable cost to produce and purchase.

HDDs contain two major components: platters and a head. Data are written on the platters using a magnetic head, which moves rapidly above them as they spin. The space between head and platter is continually decreasing to enable higher densities.

Currently, carbon-based overcoats (COCs) – layers used to protect platters from mechanical damages and corrosion—occupy a significant part of this spacing. The data density of HDDs has quadrupled since 1990, and the COC thickness has reduced from 12.5nm to around 3nm, which corresponds to one terabyte per square inch. Now, graphene has enabled researchers to multiply this by ten.

Continue reading… “Ultra-high-density hard drives made with graphene store ten times more data”

By Becky Ham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

MIT researchers have created the first fabric-fiber to have digital capabilities, ready to collect, store and analyze data using a neural network.

In a first, the digital fiber contains memory, temperature sensors, and a trained neural network program for inferring physical activity.

MIT researchers have created the first fiber with digital capabilities, able to sense, store, analyze, and infer activity after being sewn into a shirt.

Yoel Fink, who is a professor of material sciences and electrical engineering, a Research Laboratory of Electronics principal investigator, and the senior author on the study, says digital fibers expand the possibilities for fabrics to uncover the context of hidden patterns in the human body that could be used for physical performance monitoring, medical inference, and early disease detection.

Or, you might someday store your wedding music in the gown you wore on the big day — more on that later.

Continue reading… “MIT Engineers Create a Programmable Digital Fiber – With Memory, Sensors, and AI”

By Chris Davies 

Acer wants to bring stereoscopic 3D to laptops, with a new SpatialLabs display that promises to float graphics right out of a laptop’s screen without demanding you wear special glasses to see them. The system instead combines a switchable lenticular lens screen with an eye-tracking camera, all fitted into a prototype ConceptD notebook.

3D certainly isn’t new, and neither are attempts to bring it to graphics pros in a usable way. The reality, though, is that clunky glasses and mediocre visual quality has generally undermined such efforts. 

Continue reading… “Acer’s SpatialLabs is glasses-free 3D in a prototype laptop”

By Shaikh, Virtana

Despite predictions of a cloud shift accelerated by the pandemic and Gartner projecting a $651 billion public cloud market in 2024, organizations have barely scratched the surface of public cloud adoption. So it might seem odd at this stage to ask, “What’s the next big thing in public clouds?”

The war between traditional on-premises data center infrastructure providers such as Dell, HPE, and Cisco and the public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud is far from over. However, one opportunity worth examining is industry clouds.

Industry clouds are collections of cloud services, tools, and applications optimized for the most important use cases in a specific industry. APIs, common data models and workflows, and other components are available to customize capabilities. Industry cloud solutions from major public cloud providers also typically offer a variety of software and services, including industry-specific applications, from partners. For example, Microsoft and SAP partner to deliver SAP supply chain solutions through Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing.

Continue reading… “Industry clouds could be the next big thing”

EMPA’s robotic arm laying a string layer

By  Chris Young

The new method sees stacked layers of string and asphalt create more sustainable roads.

A team of researchers in Switzerland has demonstrated how a robotic arm can lay patterns of string to bind asphalt together for a more sustainable roadbuilding process, a New Atlas report explains.

The method would remove the need for environmentally damaging bitumen, and would also make it easier to recycle road materials.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) got the idea from an art and science project that created pillars using a mix of gravel and string, an EMPA press release explains.

The pillars were made by interlocking gravel with a thread that held the structures together. They reached heights of 80 cm (2.6 ft), and in pressure testing, they were shown to withstand loads equal to 20 tonnes (22 tons).

The scientists used this project as a starting point. For their research, however, they used string to reinforce layers of road asphalt. If they find a way to scale the method, it could provide a great environmental advantage over the use use of bitumen, which is extracted from crude oil.

Continue reading… “Robotic Arms Build Roads by Binding Asphalt with Strings”