ScienceDaily: Engineering and Construction News |
- Solar-cell efficiency improved with new polymer devices
- Fingertip sensor gives robot unprecedented dexterity
- Soft robotics 'toolkit' features everything a robot-maker needs
- Superabsorbing ring could make light work of snaps, be ultimate camera pixel
- Shrink-wrapping spacesuits: Spacesuits of the future may resemble a streamlined second skin
- Toward optical chips: Promising light source for optoelectronic chips can be tuned to different frequencies
| Solar-cell efficiency improved with new polymer devices Posted: 19 Sep 2014 11:28 AM PDT New light has been shed on solar power generation using devices made with polymers. Researchers identified a new polymer -- a type of large molecule that forms plastics and other familiar materials -- which improved the efficiency of solar cells. The group also determined the method by which the polymer improved the cells' efficiency. The polymer allowed electrical charges to move more easily throughout the cell, boosting the production of electricity -- a mechanism never before demonstrated in such devices. |
| Fingertip sensor gives robot unprecedented dexterity Posted: 19 Sep 2014 09:22 AM PDT Researchers have equipped a robot with a novel tactile sensor that lets it grasp a USB cable draped freely over a hook and insert it into a USB port. |
| Soft robotics 'toolkit' features everything a robot-maker needs Posted: 19 Sep 2014 09:21 AM PDT A new resource provides both experienced and aspiring researchers with the intellectual raw materials needed to design, build, and operate robots made from soft, flexible materials. With the advent of low-cost 3-D printing, laser cutters, and other advances in manufacturing technology, soft robotics is emerging as an increasingly important field. |
| Superabsorbing ring could make light work of snaps, be ultimate camera pixel Posted: 19 Sep 2014 07:08 AM PDT A quantum effect in which excited atoms team up to emit an enhanced pulse of light can be turned on its head to create 'superabsorbing' systems that could make the 'ultimate camera pixel'. |
| Shrink-wrapping spacesuits: Spacesuits of the future may resemble a streamlined second skin Posted: 19 Sep 2014 06:48 AM PDT For future astronauts, the process of suiting up may go something like this: Instead of climbing into a conventional, bulky, gas-pressurized suit, an astronaut may don a lightweight, stretchy garment, lined with tiny, musclelike coils. She would then plug in to a spacecraft's power supply, triggering the coils to contract and essentially shrink-wrap the garment around her body. |
| Posted: 19 Sep 2014 06:32 AM PDT Chips that use light, rather than electricity, to move data would consume much less power -- and energy efficiency is a growing concern as chips' transistor counts rise. Scientists have developed a new technique for building MoS2 light emitters tuned to different frequencies, an essential requirement for optoelectronic chips. Since thin films of material can also be patterned onto sheets of plastic, the same work could point toward thin, flexible, bright, color displays. |
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