Scientists have revealed the precise molecular mechanisms that cause drops of liquid to combine, in a discovery that could have a range of applications.
Insights into how droplets merge could help make 3D printing technologies more accurate and may help improve the forecasting of thunderstorms and other weather events, the study suggests.
A startup with alumni from MIT and Yale says it’s made a breakthrough in creating a next-generation material that should make it possible to 3D print literally anything out of thin air.
New York-based Mattershift has managed to create large-scale carbon nanotube (CNT) membranes that are able to combine and separate individual molecules.
“This technology gives us a level of control over the material world that we’ve never had before,” said Mattershift Founder and CEO Dr. Rob McGinnis in a release. “For example, right now we’re working to remove CO2 from the air and turn it into fuels. This has already been done using conventional technology, but it’s been too expensive to be practical. Using our tech, I think we’ll be able to produce carbon-zero gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels that are cheaper than fossil fuels.”
Four-dimensional (4D) printing can create complex 3D geometries that react to environmental stimuli, opening new design opportunities in materials science. A vast majority of 4D printing approaches use polymer materials, which limit the operational temperature during the process of engineering. In a recent study, Xiaolong Chen and co- workers at the Dyson School of Design and Engineering, Department of Earth Science and Engineering and Department of Materials at the Imperial College of London, U.K., developed a new multi-metal electrochemical 3D printer. The device was able to construct bimetallic geometries by selectively depositing different metals with temperature-responsive behavior programmed into the printed structure. In the study, they demonstrated a meniscus confined electrochemical 3D printing approach using a multi-print head design and nickel and copper materials as examples, the ability can be transferred to other deposition solutions. The results are now published in Scientific Reports.
(3D-printed heart scaffold)
As the head of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s innovative Cancer Center, Bhargava has been plugging away at injecting more advanced engineering solutions into medical problems. The freeform 3D printer is one of the first futuristic achievements of that effort.
But Bhargava’s project is just one of a wave of technologies that stand to transform medicine and healthcare as we know it; to make them faster, more accurate, and hopefully, drastically more affordable. Microneedle patches, handheld diagnostic machines, and better sensing capabilities, as well as 3D bioprinting, are just a few of the technologies coming to a doctor’s office near you—or maybe even into your home—in the next decade.
Korean researchers have been experimenting further in the bioprinting of tracheal implants, publishing recent results in ‘Trachea with Autologous Epithelial Cells and Chondrocytes.’ The team of scientists details their use of polycaprolactone and hydrogel mixed with nasal epithelial and auricular cartilage cells.
After bioprinting an artificial trachea with these materials and tissue, they transplanted them into 15 rabbits, six of which were a control group. The goal was to find a way to overcome tracheal problems due to tumors, the most common of which are adenoid cystic carcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas. Previously there have been substantial challenges in creating viable tracheas that are anatomically correct and can produce a ciliated epithelium. Issues have arisen with infection, implants that become dislodged, have migrated, or experienced obstruction.
This 3D-printed concept wheel by tyre manufacturer Goodyear uses living moss to absorb moisture from the road, before converting it into oxygen through photosynthesis.
The Oxygene tyre was revealed at this year’s Geneva Motor Show that officially kicked off yesterday, 8 March 2018.
The concept is a response to research conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that revealed more than 80 per cent of people who live in urban areas are exposed to air quality levels deemed to be unsafe.
Space architecture startup AI SpaceFactory achieved second place in the latest phase of a NASA-led competition, pitting several groups against each other in pursuit of designing a 3D-printed Mars habitat and physically demonstrating some of the technologies needed to build them.
With a focus on ease of scalable 3D-printing and inhabitants’ quality of life, as well as the use of modular imported goods like windows and airlocks, MARSHA lends itself impeccably well to SpaceX’s goal of developing a sustainable human presence on Mars as quickly, safely, and affordably as possible with the support of its Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle.
Researchers are using 3D printing to develop electrodes with the highest electric charge store per unit of surface area ever reported for a supercapacitor.
A research collaboration from the University of California Santa Cruz and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have 3D printed a graphene aerogel that enabled them to develop a porous three-dimensional scaffold loaded with manganese oxide that yields better supercapacitor electrodes. The recently published their findings in Joule. Yat Li, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz, explained the breakthrough in an interview with R&D Magazine.
“So what we’re trying to address in this paper is really the loading of the materials and the amount of energy we can store,” Li said. “What we are trying to do is use a printing method to print where we can control the thickness and volume.
After what has seemed a bit of a lapse in the timeline of their development, graphene-enabled supercapacitors may be poised to make a significant advance. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLNL) have developed an electrode for supercapacitors made from a graphene-based aerogel. The new supercapacitor component has the highest areal capacitance (electric charge stored per unit of surface area) ever reported for a supercapacitor.
The 3D-printing technique they leveraged to make the graphene electrode may have finally addressed the trade-offs between the gravimetric (weight), areal (surface area), and volumetric (total volume) capacitance of supercapacitor electrodes that were previously thought to be unavoidable.
In previous uses of pure graphene aerogel electrodes with high surface area, volumetric capacitance always suffered. This issue has typically been exacerbated with 3D-printed graphene aerogel electrodes; volumetric capacitance was reduced even further because of the periodic large pores between the printed filaments.