Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Controlling a material’s thermal conductivity can help insulate our homes, improve the performance of electronic devices, conserve power consumption in cars, and generate greater power efficiency. Now, a group of researchers has unveiled a novel mechanism that leads to further suppression of thermal conductivity in...
New grasshopper-like material can leap 200 times its own thickness
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Engineers at CU Boulder have designed a new, rubber-like film that can leap high into the air like a grasshopper – all on its own and without needing outside intervention. Just heat it up and watch it jump! The researchers describe their achievement in the...
Complex flows of cold gas are shedding light on stellar nurseries
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Flows of cold gas falling onto two of three protostars in a stellar nursery about 450 light years away have been spotted by RIKEN astronomers (Astronomy and Astrophysics, "A cold accretion flow onto one component of a multiple protostellar system"). This discovery provides valuable insights...
Billions of celestial objects revealed in gargantuan survey of the Milky Way
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The Milky Way Galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, glimmering star-forming regions, and towering dark clouds of dust and gas. Imaging and cataloging these objects for study is a herculean task, but a newly released astronomical dataset known as the second data release of...
Microelectronics give researchers a remote control for biological robots (w/video)
Jan 19, 2023 (Nanowerk News) First, they walked. Then, they saw the light. Now, miniature biological robots have gained a new trick: remote control. The hybrid “eBiobots” are the first to combine soft materials, living muscle and microelectronics, said researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and collaborating...
New method for designing nanoscale 3D materials could make fuel cells more efficient
Jan 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Scientists from UNSW Sydney have demonstrated a novel technique for creating tiny 3D materials that could eventually make fuel cells like hydrogen batteries cheaper and more sustainable. In the study published in Science Advances ("Synthesis of hierarchical metal nanostructures with high electrocatalytic surface areas"), researchers...
Blast chiller for the quantum world
Jan 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) The quantum nature of objects visible to the naked eye is currently a much-discussed research question. A team led by Innsbruck physicist Gerhard Kirchmair has now demonstrated a new method in the laboratory that could make the quantum properties of macroscopic objects more accessible than...
Light-based tech could inspire Moon navigation and next-gen farming
Jan 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Super-thin chips made from lithium niobate are set to overtake silicon chips in light-based technologies, according to scientists in the field, with potential applications ranging from remote ripening-fruit detection on Earth to navigation on the Moon. They say the artificial crystal offers the platform of...
Two technical breakthroughs make high-quality 2D materials possible
Jan 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers have been looking to replace silicon in electronics with materials that provide a higher performance and lower power consumption while also having scalability. An international team is addressing that need by developing a promising process to develop high-quality 2D materials that could power next-generation...
Engineers grow ‘perfect’ atom-thin materials on industrial silicon wafers
Jan 18, 2023 (Nanowerk News) True to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on a microchip has doubled every year since the 1960s. But this trajectory is predicted to soon plateau because silicon — the backbone of modern transistors — loses its electrical properties once devices made from this material...