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Purdue University material engineers have created a patent-pending process to develop ultrahigh-strength aluminum alloys that are suitable for additive manufacturing because of their plastic deformability.

Haiyan Wang and Xinghang Zhang lead a team that has introduced transition metals cobalt, iron, nickel and titanium into aluminum via nanoscale, laminated, deformable intermetallics. Wang is the Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering and Zhang is a professor in Purdue’s School of Materials Engineering. Anyu Shang, a materials engineering graduate student, completes the team.

“Our work shows that the proper introduction of heterogenous microstructures and nanoscale medium-entropy intermetallics offers an alternative solution to design ultrastrong, deformable aluminum alloys via additive manufacturing,” Zhang said. “These alloys improve upon traditional ones that are either ultrastrong or highly deformable, but not both.”

Researchers have created tiny, vehiclelike structures which can be maneuvered by microscopic algae. The algae are caught in baskets attached to the micromachines, which have been carefully designed to allow them enough room to continue swimming. Two types of vehicles were created: the “rotator,” which spins like a wheel, and the “scooter,” which was intended to move in a forward direction but in tests moved more surprisingly.

The research has been published in Small (“Harnessing the Propulsive Force of Microalgae with Microtrap to Drive Micromachines”).

The team is planning to try different and more complex designs for their next vehicles. In the future, these mini algae teams could be applied to assist with micro-level environmental engineering and research.

Quantum computers offer powerful ways to improve cybersecurity, communications, and data processing, among other fields. To realize these full benefits, however, multiple quantum computers must be connected to build quantum networks or a quantum internet. Scientists have struggled to come up with practical methods of building such networks, which must transmit quantum information over long distances.

Now, researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have proposed a new approach—building long quantum channels using vacuum sealed tubes with an array of spaced-out lenses. These vacuum beam guides, about 20 centimeters in diameter, would have ranges of thousands of kilometers and capacities of more than 1,013 qubits per second, better than any existing quantum communication approach. Photons of light encoding quantum data would move through the vacuum tubes and remain focused thanks to the lenses.

“We believe this kind of network is feasible and has a lot of potential,” said Liang Jiang, professor of molecular engineering and senior author of the new work. “It could not only be used for secure communication, but also for building distributed quantum computing networks, distributed quantum sensing technologies, new kinds of telescopes, and synchronized clocks.”

In an application of terahertz phonon engineering, terahertz phonons were generated, detected and manipulated through precise integration of atomically thin layers in van der Waals heterostructures.

Eexxeccellent.

Human brains outperform computers in many forms of processing and are far more energy efficient. What if we could harness their power in a new form of biological computing?

Continue reading “Thomas Hartung and colleagues | The future of organoid intelligence | Frontiers Forum Deep Dive 2023” »

According to a new study of rivers and lakes in Wisconsin, natural foams from these bodies of water contain much higher concentrations of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) than the water below them.

Thirty-six different kinds of PFAS compounds were analyzed in samples of both the foams and water surface microlayers of 43 Wisconsin rivers and lakes. The study, which is published in Environmental Science & Technology, also revealed that foams, generally off-white and found along shorelines, are not necessarily an indicator of elevated contamination levels in the entire water body.

“We studied many different lakes and found PFAS in all of them. The PFAS concentrations were high in the foams even if the concentrations in the water were relatively low,” said Christy Remucal, a professor with the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and interim director of the University of Wisconsin Aquatic Sciences Center.

A new way to store carbon captured from the atmosphere, developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, works much faster than current methods without the harmful chemical accelerants they require.

In new research published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, the team developed a technique for ultrafast formation of carbon dioxide hydrates. These unique ice-like materials can bury carbon dioxide in the ocean, preventing it from being released into the atmosphere.

“We’re staring at a huge challenge—finding a way to safely remove gigatons of carbon from our atmosphere—and hydrates offer a universal solution for carbon storage. For them to be a major piece of the carbon storage pie, we need the technology to grow them rapidly and at scale,” said Vaibhav Bahadur, a professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering who led the research. “We’ve shown that we can quickly grow hydrates without using any chemicals that offset the environmental benefits of carbon capture.”

Researchers have created tiny, vehiclelike structures which can be maneuvered by microscopic algae. The algae are caught in baskets attached to the micromachines, which have been carefully designed to allow them enough room to continue swimming. Two types of vehicles were created: the “rotator,” which spins like a wheel, and the “scooter,” which was intended to move in a forward direction but in tests moved more surprisingly. The team is planning to try different and more complex designs for their next vehicles. In the future, these mini algae teams could be applied to assist with micro-level environmental engineering and research.

You’ve likely heard of horsepower, but how about algae power? Like a sled drawn by a team of dogs or a plough pulled by oxen, researchers have created microscopic machines which can be moved by lively, tiny, single-celled green algae.

“We were inspired to try and harness Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a very common algae found all over the world, after being impressed by its swift and unrestricted swimming capabilities,” said Naoto Shimizu, a student from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo (at the time of the study), who initiated the project. “We’ve now shown that these algae can be trapped without impairing their mobility, offering a new option for propelling micromachines which could be used for engineering or research purposes.”

UChicago Pritzker Molecular Engineering Prof. Y. Shirley Meng’s Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion has created the world’s first anode-free sodium solid-state battery.

With this research, the LESC – a collaboration between the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the University of California San Diego’s Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering – has brought the reality of inexpensive, fast-charging, high-capacity batteries for electric vehicles and grid storage closer than ever.

“Although there have been previous sodium, solid-state, and anode-free batteries, no one has been able to successfully combine these three ideas until now,” said UC San Diego PhD candidate Grayson Deysher, first author of a new paper outlining the team’s work.