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Category: materials – Page 8

How many robots does it take to screw in a lightbulb? The answer is more complicated than you might think. New research from Northeastern University upends the riddle by making a robot that is both flexible and sensitive enough to handle the lightbulb, and strong enough to apply the necessary torque.

“What we found is that by thinking about the bodies of robots and how we can make new materials for them, we can actually make a robot that has the benefits of both rigid and soft robots,” says Jeffrey Lipton, assistant professor of mechanical and at Northeastern.

“It’s flexible, extendable and compliant like an elephant trunk or octopus tentacle, but can also apply torques like a traditional industrial robot,” he adds.

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A new study presents a compelling new model for the formation of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes – planets that are 1 to 4 times the size of Earth and among the most common in our galaxy. Using advanced simulations, the researchers propose that these planets emerge from distinct rings of planetesimals, providing fresh insight into planetary evolution beyond our solar system.

A new study by Rice University researchers Sho Shibata and Andre Izidoro presents a compelling new model for the formation of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes — planets that are 1 to 4 times the size of Earth and among the most common in our galaxy. Using advanced simulations, the researchers propose that these planets emerge from distinct rings of planetesimals, providing fresh insight into planetary evolution beyond our solar system. The findings were recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

For decades, scientists have debated how super-Earths and mini-Neptunes form. Traditional models have suggested that planetesimals — the tiny building blocks of planets — formed across wide regions of a young star’s disk. But Shibata and Izidoro suggest a different theory: These materials likely come together in narrow rings at specific locations in the disk, making planet formation more organized than previously believed.

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Professor Ariando and Dr. Stephen Lin Er Chow from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Department of Physics have designed and synthesized a groundbreaking new material—a copper-free superconducting oxide—capable of superconducting at approximately 40 Kelvin (K), or about minus 233°C, under ambient pressure.

Nearly four decades after the discovery of copper oxide superconductivity, which earned the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics, the NUS researchers have now identified another high-temperature superconducting oxide that expands the understanding of unconventional superconductivity beyond copper oxides.

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Pioneering new research could help unlock exciting new potential to create ultrafast, laser-driven storage devices. The study, led by experts from the University of Exeter, could revolutionize the field of data storage through the development of laser-driven magnetic domain memories.

The new research is based on creating a pivotal new method for using heat to manipulate magnetism with unprecedented precision in two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals materials. It is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Typically, heat is an unwanted byproduct of power consumption in , especially in semiconductors. As devices become smaller and more compact, managing heat has become one of the major challenges in modern electronics.

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Is there a cleaner and more environmentally friendly way for scientists to create lithium-6, which is a primary component in creating nuclear fusion fuel? This is what a recent study published in Chem hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated safer methods for separating lithium-6 from lithium-7, which is a common procedure for creating nuclear fusion fuel. However, this procedure has long-required liquid mercury, whose exposure often results in sever neurodevelopmental disorders, including memory loss, along with lung, kidney, and nervous system damage.

For the study, the researchers discovered their novel method purely by accident while they were working with “produced water”, which is groundwater that is forced to the surface during drilling processes for gas and oil that needs cleaning before it’s pumped back underground, and this process repeats. To accomplish this cleaning process, a membrane is used to filter out unwanted components, during which the researchers found they were filtering lithium within this now-surface groundwater.

“We saw that we could extract lithium quite selectively given that there was a lot more salt than lithium present in the water,” said Dr. Sarbajit Banerjee, who is a professor of chemistry at ETH Zurich and a co-author on the study. “That led us to wonder whether this material might also have some selectivity for the 6-lithium isotope.”

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Imagine a robot that can walk, without electronics, and only with the addition of a cartridge of compressed gas, right off the 3D-printer. It can also be printed in one go, from one material.

That is exactly what roboticists have achieved in robots developed by the Bioinspired Robotics Laboratory at the University of California San Diego. They describe their work in an advanced online publication in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems.

To achieve this feat, researchers aimed to use the simplest technology available: a desktop 3D-printer and an off-the-shelf printing material. This design approach is not only robust, it is also cheap—each robot costs about $20 to manufacture.

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Two scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a new phase of matter while studying a model system of a magnetic material.

The phase is a never-before-seen pattern of electron spins—the tiny “up” and “down” magnetic moments carried by every electron. It consists of a combination of highly ordered “cold” spins and highly disordered “hot” spins, and it has thus been dubbed “half ice, half fire.” The researchers discovered the new phase while studying a one-dimensional model of a type of magnetic material called a ferrimagnet.

“Half ice, half fire” is notable not only because it has never been observed before, but also because it is able to drive extremely sharp switching between phases in the material at a reasonable, finite temperature. This phenomenon could one day result in applications in the energy and information technology industries.

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