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A team of researchers from China, Spain, Russia and Portugal has developed a way to use Moiré lattices to optically induce and highlight the formation of optical solitons under different geometrical conditions. In their paper published in the journal Nature Photonics, the group describes their work, which involved using photorefractive nonlinear media as a means of localizing laser light into tight spots.

Solitons are quasiparticles propagated by a traveling wave. Unlike waves such as those produced in water, solitons are neither followed nor preceded by other such waves—they also hold their shape as they move. They are important because they are able to prevent diffraction from occurring, which is why they play such an important role in telecommunications and other information carrier systems. Moiré lattices are patterns that sometimes emerge in printed or scanned images when two patterns overlap one another in an offset fashion. They have been used in graphene-based research efforts and work that involves manipulating very cold atoms. They have also been found to play a roll in the development of colloidal clusters.

In this new work, the researchers were investigating the ways that light could be stopped from spreading—more specifically, ways that laser light could be trapped in a tight spot. To that end, they used a laser beam to stencil a special a type of crystal: a photorefractive strontium barium niobite crystal with nonlinear holographic properties. The stencil forced a beam of laser light to form into a twisted Moiré lattice. As the light moved through the lattice, the researchers found that solitons formed. They also found that they could adjust the threshold of the laser power by fine-tuning the angles of the twists in the lattice. Additionally, the formation of solitons in the lattices occurred with smooth transitions, from fully periodic geometries to aperiodic ones. The researchers also noted that such thresholds in their setup were quite low.

Nylon might seem the obvious go-to material for electronic textiles—not only is there an established textiles industry based on nylon, but it conveniently has a crystalline phase that is piezoelectric—tap it and you get a build-up of charge perfect for pressure sensing and harvesting energy from ambient motion.

Unfortunately, forming nylon into fibers while getting it to take on the crystal structure that has a piezoelectric response is not straightforward. “This has been a challenge for almost half a century,” explains Kamal Asadi, a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany, and professor at the University of Bath, U.K. In a recent Advanced Functional Materials report, he and his collaborators describe how they have now finally overcome this.

The piezoelectric phase of nylon holds appeal not just for electronic textiles but all kinds of electronic devices, particularly where there is demand for something less brittle than the conventional piezoelectric ceramics. However, for decades, the only way to produce nylon with the crystalline phase that has a strong piezoelectric response has been to melt it, rapidly cool it and then stretch it so that it sets into a smectic δ’ phase. This produces slabs typically tens of micrometers thick—far too thick for applications in electronic devices or electronic textiles.

Zeppelins are usually equated with the Hindenburg disaster, but today’s airships use modern materials and some aspire to be as luxurious as superyachts.

If a 3D printer leaves gaps in the plastic that it deposits, it’s usually thought of as an unwanted flaw. Now, however, the process has been harnessed to quickly and cheaply produce pliable polymer textiles.

Ordinarily, commonly used fused deposition modelling (FDM)-type printers create items by extruding successive layers of molten plastic. Once the layers of deposited plastic have cooled and fused together, they form a hardened solid object.

Sometimes, though – due to a flaw in the printer or the programming – not enough plastic is extruded. This is known as under-extrusion, and it results in the finished product being full of small gaps.

The equivalent of as many as 1,300 plastic grocery bags per person is landing in places such as oceans and roadways, according to a new study of U.S. plastic trash.

Circa 2015.

LEDs have come a long ways. From the early 70s when a bulky LED watch cost thousands of dollars to LG’s announcement last month that it had created an OLED TV as thin as a magazine, these glowing little bits of magic have become wonderfully cheap and impossibly small. But guess what: they’re about to get much smaller.

A team scientists from the University of Washington just built the world’s thinnest possible LED for use as a light source in electronics. It’s just three atoms thick. No, not three millimeters. Not three nanometers. Three atoms.

Continue reading “The world’s smallest LED will be 3 atoms thick!” »

Circa 2018

The world’s first-ever hiking boots to use graphene have been unveiled by The University of Manchester and British brand inov-8.

Building on the international success of their pioneering use of graphene in trail running and fitness shoes last summer, the brand is now bringing the revolutionary technology to a market recently starved of innovation.

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Swiss researchers are getting excited about a polymer that could allow them to incorporate a “flexible solar concentrator” in textile fibres, making it possible to charge personal electronic devices from the clothes their owners wear.

Boston Dynamics announced that it has developed a robot arm for its “Spot” robot and also a charging station. Both will be available for purchase this spring.

The robot Spot made quite a splash on the internet last year, thanks to its YouTube videos. The four-legged yellow-bodied robot was shown marching its way autonomously and untethered through a wide variety of terrain in ways reminiscent of a dog; hence its name. The robot dog is available for sale. Those interested can purchase one directly from Boston Dynamics for $75,000. CEO Rob Playter told members of the press recently that the company has sold 260 of the robots as of last June. Those robots are currently being tested (and in some cases, used) in mining, healthcare, construction and other sectors—mostly in situations that are dangerous for people. The company has also created a host of add-ons for the robot to assist in a wide variety of applications. The company is now adding to that list by making available both a robot arm and a charging station.

Continue reading “Boston Dynamics to give Spot a robot arm and charging station” »