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Archive for the ‘engineering’ category: Page 20

May 17, 2024

Rubber-like Stretchable Energy Storage Device Fabricated with Laser Precision

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy, engineering, wearables

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Scientists use laser ablation technology to develop a deformable micro-supercapacitor. Professor Jin Kon Kim and Dr. Keon-Woo Kim from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), in collaboration with Dr. Chanwoo Yang and Researcher Seong Ju Park from the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH), have achieved a significant breakthrough in developing a small-scale energy storage device capable of stretching, twisting, folding, and wrinkling. Their research has been published in the electronic engineering journal, npj Flexible Electronics.

The advent of wearable technology has brought with it a pressing need for energy storage solutions that can keep pace with the flexibility and stretchability of soft electronic devices.

Micro supercapacitors (MSCs) have emerged as a promising candidate for deformable energy storage, due to high-power density, rapid charging, and long cycle life.

May 15, 2024

Repurposed beer yeast encapsulated in hydrogels may offer a cost-effective way to remove lead from water

Posted by in categories: chemistry, engineering, particle physics

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Every year, beer breweries generate and discard thousands of tons of surplus yeast. Researchers from MIT and Georgia Tech have now come up with a way to repurpose that yeast to absorb lead from contaminated water.

Through a process called biosorption, yeast can quickly absorb even trace amounts of lead and other heavy metals from water. The researchers showed that they could package the yeast inside hydrogel capsules to create a filter that removes lead from water. Because the yeast cells are encapsulated, they can be easily removed from the water once it’s ready to drink.

“We have the hydrogel surrounding the free yeast that exists in the center, and this is porous enough to let water come in, interact with yeast as if they were freely moving in water, and then come out clean,” says Patricia Stathatou, a former postdoc at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, who is now a research scientist at Georgia Tech and an incoming assistant professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

May 11, 2024

Discovering optimal conditions for mass production of ultraviolet holograms

Posted by in categories: chemistry, engineering, holograms

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Professor Junsuk Rho from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering, Hyunjung Kang and Nara Jeon, PhD candidates, from Department of Mechanical Engineering and Dongkyo Oh, a PhD student, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) successfully conducted a thorough quantitative analysis. Their aim is to determine the ideal printing material for crafting ultraviolet metasurfaces.

Their findings featured in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering (“Tailoring high-refractive-index nanocomposites for manufacturing of ultraviolet metasurfaces”).

Diagram illustrating the composition of nanocomposites for ultraviolet metasurface fabrication. (Top) Diagram illustrating the ZrO 2 nanocomposite’s role in achieving high transfer fidelity ultraviolet metaholograms. (Bottom) Comparison of UV holograms under various solvent conditions. (Image: POSTECH)

May 8, 2024

‘Better than graphene’ material development may improve implantable technology

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering

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The team, led by Dipanjan Pan, Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Nanomedicine and professor of materials science and engineering and of , published their work —the first of its kind, they said—in ACS Nano.

“Borophene is a very interesting material, as it resembles carbon very closely including its atomic weight and electron structure but with more remarkable properties. Researchers are only starting to explore its applications,” Pan said.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to understand the biological interactions of borophene and the first report of imparting chirality on borophene structures.”

May 8, 2024

New high-throughput device to unlock the potential of advanced materials

Posted by in categories: chemistry, engineering, nanotechnology, sustainability

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A Birmingham researcher has developed a new high-throughput device that produces libraries of nanomaterials using sustainable mechanochemical approaches.

Dr. Jason Stafford from the University’s School of Engineering invented the platform to create highly controllable reaction conditions and reduce the substantial amount of time researchers spend generating materials in the laboratory.

The benchtop device is a fully automated unit that can be programmed for parallel synthesis to produce a series of novel materials made in subtly different ways, so creating a library of or product formulations for further testing and optimization.

May 8, 2024

“Better Than Graphene” Material May Improve Implantable Technology

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering

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Move over, graphene. There’s a new, improved two-dimensional material in the lab. Borophene, the atomically thin version of boron first synthesized in 2015, is more conductive, thinner, lighter, stronger and more flexible than graphene, the 2D version of carbon. Now, researchers at Penn State have made the material potentially more useful by imparting chirality — or handedness — on it, which could make for advanced sensors and implantable medical devices. The chirality, induced via a method never before used on borophene, enables the material to interact in unique ways with different biological units such as cells and protein precursors.

The team, led by Dipanjan Pan, Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Nanomedicine and professor of materials science and engineering and of nuclear engineering, published their work — the first of its kind, they said — in ACS Nano.

“Borophene is a very interesting material, as it resembles carbon very closely including its atomic weight and electron structure but with more remarkable properties. Researchers are only starting to explore its applications,” Pan said. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to understand the biological interactions of borophene and the first report of imparting chirality on borophene structures.”

May 7, 2024

Researchers ‘unzip’ 2D materials with lasers

Posted by in categories: engineering, nanotechnology

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In a new paper published on May 1 in the journal Science Advances, researchers at Columbia Engineering used commercially available tabletop lasers to create tiny, atomically sharp nanostructures, or nanopatterns, in samples of a layered 2D material called hexagonal boron nitride (hBN).

May 5, 2024

Engineering an Escherichia coli strain for production of long single-stranded DNA

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, nanotechnology

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Excellent paper wherein Shen et al.


Abstract. Long single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) is a versatile molecular reagent with applications including RNA-guided genome engineering and DNA nanotechnology, yet its production is typically resource-intensive. We introduce a novel method utilizing an engineered Escherichia coli ‘helper’ strain and phagemid system that simplifies long ssDNA generation to a straightforward transformation and purification procedure. Our method obviates the need for helper plasmids and their associated contamination by integrating M13mp18 genes directly into the E. coli chromosome. We achieved ssDNA lengths ranging from 504 to 20 724 nt with titers up to 250 μg/l following alkaline lysis purification. The efficacy of our system was confirmed through its application in primary T-cell genome modifications and DNA origami folding. The reliability, scalability and ease of our approach promise to unlock new experimental applications requiring large quantities of long ssDNA.

May 4, 2024

Geoengineering Test Quietly Launches Salt Crystals into Atmosphere

Posted by in categories: engineering, military, sustainability

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A solar geoengineering experiment in San Francisco could lead to brighter clouds that reflect sunlight. The risks are numerous.

By Corbin Hiar & E&E News

CLIMATEWIRE | The nation’s first outdoor test to limit global warming by increasing cloud cover launched Tuesday from the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the San Francisco Bay.

May 3, 2024

Tweaking isotopes sheds light on promising approach to engineer semiconductors

Posted by in categories: chemistry, engineering, particle physics

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Partly because of semiconductors, electronic devices and systems become more advanced and sophisticated every day. That’s why for decades researchers have studied ways to improve semiconductor compounds to influence how they carry electrical current. One approach is to use isotopes to change the physical, chemical and technological properties of materials.

Isotopes are members of a family of an element that all have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons and thus different masses. Isotope engineering has traditionally focused on enhancing so-called bulk materials that have uniform properties in three dimensions, or 3D.

But new research led by ORNL has advanced the frontier of isotope engineering where current is confined in two dimensions, or 2D, inside flat crystals and where a layer is only a few atoms thick. The 2D materials are promising because their ultrathin nature could allow for precise control over their .

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