Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A new gelatinous robot that crawls, powered by nothing more than temperature change and clever design, brings “a kind of intelligence” to the field of soft robotics. The inchworm-inspired work is detailed in Science Robotics ("Untethered unidirectionally crawling gels driven by asymmetry in contact forces")....
Using the power of symmetry for new quantum technologies
Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) “Nature likes symmetries and so do we. The foundation of our experiments is an innovative engineering trick where we control and make use of the available symmetries in a system which otherwise is very challenging to tame”, says Dr. Aamir Ali, researcher in quantum technology...
A message that resonates
Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have shown how adding a tiny resonator structure to an ultrafast electron pulse detector reduced the intensity of terahertz radiation required to characterize the pulse duration (ACS Photonics, "Streaking of a Picosecond Electron Pulse with a Weak Terahertz Pulse")....
New 3D-printing ink could make cultured meat more cost-effective
Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Cultured meat (also known as cell-based or lab-grown meat) is a promising, more environmentally friendly alternative to meat produced from traditional livestock farming. However, production costs are still high and need to be reduced before it can become widely available. Now, researchers from Singapore and...
Engineers develop new microscale 3D printer for multi-level anticounterfeiting labels
Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Counterfeiting threatens the global economy and security. According to the report issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2020, the value of global counterfeit and pirated products is estimated between US$ 1.7 and 4.5 trillion a year. Despite enormous efforts, conventional...
What microorganisms on Mars would need to survive
Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) No life has yet been found on Mars, but it is exciting to explore under what circumstances it might be possible. A team led by the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin) with the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) has studied...
A shield for 2D materials that adds vibrations to reduce vibration problems
Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Monash University researchers have demonstrated a new, counterintuitive way to protect atomically-thin electronics – adding vibrations, to reduce vibrations (Nano Letters, "Passivating graphene and supressing interfacial phonon scattering with mechanically transferred Ga2O3"). By ‘squeezing’ a thin droplet of liquid gallium, graphene devices are painted with a protective...
Researchers pioneer biocompatible all-water Aquabots
Dec 15, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Soft robots have phenomenally advanced in recent years. Microscale soft robots designated to navigate difficult paths and perform biological functions in the human body could have profound potential biomedical applications such as surgery, prosthetics, and pain relief. Currently, the intrinsic functionalisation of bio-inspired soft robots is...
New process boosts efficiency of bifacial CIGS thin film solar cell
Dec 14, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Bifacial thin film solar cells based on copper indium gallium diselenide or CIGS can collect solar energy from both their front and their rear side – and thus potentially yield more solar electricity than their conventional counterparts. So far, however, their fabrication has led to...
Color holographic video display based on code division multiplexing metasurface
Dec 14, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Directly reconstructing the physical wavefront of objects in target scene for watched naturally by human eyes, holographic display is considered as one of ultimate display technology. Spatial light modulators (SLMs) are core devices in display systems to manipulate the illuminating light. However, current commercial SLMs...