Innovation continues apace in textile design and development. Much of these advancements – building on the pioneering polymer work of Stephanie Kwolek, who invented Kevlar while at DuPont in the 1960s – are geared toward military applications, including l
full story >>
The big push in graphene research for electronics has been overcoming its lack of an inherent band gap. But silicon has another leg up on graphene when it comes to electronics applications: it can comparatively easily be p- and n-doped (positive and nega
Continue reading >>One of the greatest challenges in semiconductor design is finding ways to move waste heat out of a structure and into whatever dissipation area is designed for it. This issue doesn’t get a lot of play — CPU and system cooling, when discussed, tends to foc
Continue reading >>Polymer film could be used in artificial muscle and to power micro- and nanoelectronic devices.MIT engineers have created a new polymer film that can generate electricity by drawing on a ubiquitous source: water vapor.The new material changes its shape af
Continue reading >>Squeeze something, it’s supposed to get smaller. But some odd substances grow in one direction when pressed on all sides.Andrew Cairns, a graduate student at the University of Oxford, has found one called zinc dicyanoaurate, a transparent material that ex
Continue reading >>AlFe2B2 is a layered alloy that displays the magnetocaloric effect near room temperature. Its structure consists of chains of boron atoms (blue) connected into a slab by iron atoms (red) separated by layers of aluminum atoms (grey).
Continue reading >>
