#Simple inexpensive fabrication procedure boosts light-capturing capabilities of tiny holes carved into silicon wafers Increasing the cost-effectiveness of photovoltaic devices is critical to making these renewable energy sources competitive with traditional fossil fuels.
Making graphene from plastic? Graphene is gaining heated attention dubbed a wonder material with great conductivity flexibility and durability.
However graphene is hard to come by due to the fact that its manufacturing process is complicated and mass production not possible.
Recently a domestic research team developed a carbon material without artificial defects commonly found during the production process of graphene
while maintaining its original characteristics. The newly developed material can be used as a substitute for graphene in solar cells and semiconductor chips.
Further the developed process is based on the continuous and mass-produced process of carbon fiber making it much easier for full-scale commercialization.
along with Dr. Seok-In Na at Chonbuk National University and Dr. Byoung Gak Kim at KRICT synthesized carbon nanosheets similar to graphene using polymer
To manufacture high quality graphene in large volume the CVD (chemical vapor deposition)* method is used widely.
and move the manufactured graphene to another board such as a solar cell substrate. In this process the quality quickly degrades as it is prone to wrinkles or cracks.
It is a method of manufacturing graphene on the board of metal film that serves as a catalyst.
and graphene has to be transported to another board. The research team developed carbon nanosheet in a two-step process which consists of coating the substrate with a plymer solution and heating.
Considering that the existing process consists of 8 steps to manufacture graphene the new method makes it much simpler.
since the new process bypasses the steps that are prone to formation of defects such as elimination of the metal substrate or transfer of graphene to another board.
The final product is as effective as graphene. Dr. Han Ik Joh at KIST said It is expected to be applied for commercialization of transparent and conductive 2d carbon materials without difficulty
and Graphene research Society of Japan. Single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT which can be considered as a seamlesscylinder formed by rolling a piece of graphene,
may be either metallic or semiconducting depending on the manner of rolling denoted as (n m)( or the'chirality').
and graphene for additional resources and detailed road mapping for ITRS as promising technologies targeting commercial demonstration in the next 10-15 year horizon.
#Lab unzips nanotubes into ribbons by shooting them at a target (Phys. org) Carbon nanotubes unzipped into graphene nanoribbons by a chemical process invented at Rice university are finding use in all kinds of projects
One-step chemical-free clean and high-quality graphene nanoribbons can be produced using our method. They're potential candidates for next-generation electronic materials he said.
However if it is parallel to the target upon impact the nanotube will unzip resulting in a 2d graphene nanoribbon.
Unzipping carbon nanotubes to create 2d graphene nanoribbons is very useful in nanoscience but until now it has typically been achieved with chemical contaminants that leave back contaminants.
By demonstrating for the first time that nanotubes can be unzipped quickly through mechanical means the new study offers a clean-cut a clean chemical-free way to produce high-quality graphene nanoribbons.
As the researchers explained graphene nanoribbons have certain advantages over both nanotubes and graphene that make them attractive for applications.
Graphene nanoribbons are good candidates for active materials in electronics being the channel of field-effect transistors coauthor Dr. Robert Vajtai at Rice university told Phys. org.
They are superior to carbon nanotubes as their bandgap is more predictable. Also they are superior to graphene itself as graphene has no bandgap
but making a nanometer scale narrow stripe of it opens the bandgap because of quantum confinement so it is a semiconductor.
Hybrid nanotube-graphene material promises to simplify manufacturing More information: Sehmus Ozden et al. Unzipping Carbon nanotubes at High Impact.
#Super-stretchable yarn is made of graphene A simple, scalable method of making strong, stretchable graphene oxide fibers that are scrolled easily into yarns
and have strengths approaching that of Kevlar is possible, according to Penn State and Shinshu University, Japan, researchers."
"We found this graphene oxide fiber was very strong, much better than other carbon fibers,"said Mauricio Terrones, professor of physics, chemistry and materials science and engineering, Penn State."
For instance, removing oxygen from the graphene oxide fiber results in a fiber with high electrical conductivity. Adding silver nanorods to the graphene film would increase the conductivity to the same as copper,
which could make it a much lighter weight replacement for copper transmission lines. The researchers believe that the material lends itself to many kinds of highly sensitive sensors.
The researchers made a thin film of graphene oxide by chemically exfoliating graphite into graphene flakes,
exploits the fact that X-ray light is weakened not only on its way through the sample studied, but also partially scattered.
One the seamless connection between graphene covered copper foil and carbon nanotubes enhances the active material-current collector contact integrity
Ning's new hybrid n-and p-type material achieved solar power conversion efficiency up to eight per centmong the best results reported to date.
and painted or printed onto thin flexible surfaces such as roofing shingles dramatically lowering the cost and accessibility of solar power for millions of people.
Two electrodes are needed for the powerful energy storage. So they had to figure out a way to create a second electrode.
The solar cell produced by the team has now been added to the National Renewable energy Laboratories'listing of record-high efficiencies for each kind of solar-cell technology.
Proposed graphene cardboard has highly tunable properties More information: P. Koskinen I. Fampiou A. Ramasubramaniam Density-Functional Tight-Binding Simulations of Curvature-Controlled Layer Decoupling and Bandgap Tuning in Bilayer Mos2 Physical Review Letters
"Andrew has managed to make our dream of structural energy storage materials into a reality.""That is important because structural energy storage will change the way in
which a wide variety of technologies are developed in the future.""When you can integrate energy into the components used to build systems,
Furthermore, the mechanical robustness of the device doesn't compromise its energy storage capability.""In an unpackaged, structurally integrated state our supercapacitor can store more energy
"Battery performance metrics change when you're putting energy storage into heavy materials that are needed already for structural integrity,
and then coated with a protective ultrathin graphene-like layer of carbon. Sandwiched between the two electrodes is a polymer film that acts as a reservoir of charged ions, similar to the role of electrolyte paste in a battery.
The intensity of interest in"multifunctional"devices of this sort is reflected by the fact that the U s. Department of energy's Advanced Research Project Agency for Energy is investing $8. 7 million in research projects that focus specifically on incorporating energy storage into structural materials.
However Pint pointed out that there have not been any reports in the technical literature of tests performed on structural energy storage materials that show how they function under realistic mechanical loads l
Martin Joly, of the Laboratory of Solar energy and Building Physics, researched a novel process for the conversion of solar thermal energy.
One in Solar energy, on the black chromium-free components and their optical properties, won the best paper award from 2012013
and found they had over three times as much energy storage capacity as the carbon-based anodes currently being used.
Specifically, Sio2 nanotube anodes were cycled 100 times without any loss in energy storage capability and the authors are highly confident that they could be cycled hundreds more times.
since 3d printing allows user-specific or site-specific manufacturing of highly functional products Chen said.
Bio-inspired detoxification using 3d printed hydrogel nanocomposites www. nature. com/ncomms/2014/140full/ncomms4774. htm h
This one packs an interconnected network of graphene and carbon nanotubes so tightly that it stores energy comparable to some thin-film lithium batteriesn area where batteries have held traditionally a large advantage.
By mass supercapacitors might have comparable energy storage or energy density to batteries. But because they require large amounts of accessible surface area to store energy they have lagged always badly in energy density by volume.
A solution containing acid-oxidized single-wall nanotubes graphene oxide and ethylenediamine which promotes synthesis and dopes graphene with nitrogen is pumped through a flexible narrow reinforced tube called a capillary column and heated in an oven for six hours.
Sheets of graphene one to a few atoms thick and aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes self-assemble into an interconnected prorous network that run the length of the fiber.
The arrangement provides huge amounts of accessible surface area96 square meters per gram of hybrid fiberor the transport and storage of charges.
The team also tested the device for flexible energy storage. The device was subjected to constant mechanical stress
In addition The team is interested also in testing these fibers for multifunctional applications including batteries solar cells biofuel cells
High-performance low-cost ultracapacitors built with graphene and carbon nanotubes More information: Paper: Scalable synthesis of hierarchically structured carbon nanotuberaphene fibres for capacitive energy storage dx. doi. org/10.1038/nnano. 2014.9 n
#Graphene photonics breakthrough promises fast-speed low-cost communications Swinburne researchers have developed a high-quality continuous graphene oxide thin film that shows potential for ultrafast telecommunications.
Associate professor Baohua Jia led a team of researchers from Swinburne's Centre for Microphotonics to create a micrometre thin film with record-breaking optical nonlinearity suitable for high performance integrated photonic devices used in all-optical communications, biomedicine
Graphene is derived from carbon, the fourth most abundant element on earth. It has many useful properties,
To create the thin film the researchers spin coated graphene oxide solution to a glass surface.
Using a laser as a pen they created microstructures on the graphene oxide film to tune the nonlinearity of the material."
A team from Japanese#mobile carrier#NTT Docomo created augmented reality glasses that scan for text in Japanese translate the text through an online database
which can transmit to an open data platform: Smartcitizen. methese sensor enhanced hive designs are open
#Hook Me Up to This Impractical Virtual reality Suit Right Now The Oculus Rift is one of the most immersive gadgets we've ever seen--just strap the glasses onto your face
and you're transported to a virtual world. But if that's somehow not enough you can help fund Priovr a set of sensors that monitor your movements
This product goes with the Kickstarter project Omni by Virtuix which is a treadmill for virtual reality.
and while this looks amazing its real world applications are limited. calling it virtual reality is overzealousthe only application
Guys this articles is great news. Now we can combine this gadget with the virtual reality treadmill game controller by OMNI.
Our interface is like a 3d printer but we make steel space frames the size of city blocks.
because we felt it was better to focus our efforts on other less costly ways to get payloads to orbit says Dan Dumbacher NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development who spent two years working on the X-33.
and hold enough hydrogen fuel to carry itself and about 16.5 tons of payload about the same capacity as most operational rockets into orbit.
Imagine a fleet of these vehicles whisking payloads to LEO on a daily basis . If multiple countries operate their own fleets there will eventually be multiple payload deliveries per day.
We could finally start to build a true space presence...moon base lunar orbital base a lunar tether space manufacturing space recreation and ultimately deep space travel.
No one will fly astronauts/cosmonauts up to the ISS on an unmanned vehicle. Other than that good article.
Driverless cars will go to pick up your order from a cookless Mcdonald and drop your cloths off at the oporatorless drycleaning machine built into a 20ft shipping container.
The scientists think this breakthrough could lead to improvements in quantum computing; photons are an excellent carrier for quantum information
In typical cloud computing users connect to a powerful centralized data center. But Cappos's cloud is less of a dense thunderhead and more of a fog.
Schmale developed his unmanned aerial vehicles with a colleague at Virginia Tech as an alternative to costly manned research flights.
Well think if we improve our ability to send larger and larger payloads to the moon then we could use it for useful things.
Jonathan Viventi Builds Devices That Decode Thoughts Existing brain implants require individual electrodes to be wired to an external device for data processing.
#The Quest To Harness Wind energy At 2, 000 Feet To be more precise it's a stabilizing fin part of a tube-shaped robotic airship designed to tap the power of high-altitude winds.
While typical wind turbines of similar scale require a large crew and several days to install the BAT is ready to fly
--because renewable energy systems are not economically feasible. In the Arctic for example there isn't enough sunlight to justify solar power for months at a time
and a combination of permafrost and snowed-in roads complicates the installation of standard wind turbines.
Many sites in Alaska fit this description and so the Alaska Energy Authority awarded Altaeros a $740000 grant to demonstrate its technology.
We're not trying to replace wind turbines Rein says. We're trying to expand wind energy to places where it doesn't work today.
In 2010 when Rein and cofounder Ben Glass were fresh out of MIT and building their first balsa-wood prototype high-altitude wind energy was still largely unknown.
Altaeros has grown now to a 10-person operation and a half dozen or so competitors are racing to market with roughly a dozen more working on designs.
and the future of wind energy it would seem floats in our fingertips. Altaeros has a handful of competitors.
This animation shows the two data sets overlaid: Climate change is having other measurable impacts on the southern continent.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced that it is dropping all of its investments in fossil fuels-about $60. 2 million or 7 percent of the total $860 million endowment in favor of renewable energy.
#An All-Liquid Battery For Storing Solar And Wind energy You could call it a rainy-day fund.
Cheaper more efficient energy storage would be a big boost for alternative energy technologies. It would help solar panels
and wind turbines provide grids with steady electricity instead of surges during sunny or windy times so it's always there in case of high demand.
and wind energy given their unreliable natures. For example evenings can be a high-demand time for electricity
Additionally there can be an overproduction of solar energy during daylight hours meaning valuable electricity goes to waste frequently.
Research groups are working on a number of storage schemes to fix these issues from flywheels to liquid nitrogen and oxygen.
though energy use payload capacity and speed counted as well. The question to answer according to Jordy de Renet one of Stella s drivers was Do you want it in your daily life?
which made components cheap#is helping to lower the barrier to open source entry for hardware as are crowdsourcing platforms such as Kickstarter.#
How To Test A Self-driving car In May 2012 Google's self-driving car underwent a classic American teenage ritual.
and other virtual reality viewing systems may integrate with the ICE software--to further simplify the design process
#A Google glass App That Detects People's Emotions Sometimes people are hard to read. Why not leave all that work to a computer?
Perhaps you could use this experimental app that works in Google glass. Aim Glass's camera at a person's face
The app is supposed to work entirely on Google glass'CPU so it doesn't need to send the images Glass records to the cloud.
in addition to needing the software potential buyers have to be able to afford Google glass but perhaps
what's especially useful here is knowing that this kind of computing can be miniaturized to something as small and light as Google glass.
Google s driverless car program is an obvious touchstone for this project but it s a limited one.
Michael Toscano CEO of#the Association for Unmanned vehicle Systems International said thatit s worth noting that Google tested this technology in Australia first.
The robot would suspend its payload of scientific instruments in the middle of its body and lower them to the ground to analyze surfaces and collect samples when necessary.
That might strain the ship s components. 2011 Developers begin building Star Citizen in secret revealing just enough details to entice investors. 10/10/12 Crowdfunding campaign begins
The artificial bones were made with a titanium powder which is used also in many other orthopedic implants.
#Turning Old Lead Batteries Into New Solar energy Used car batteries can leech chemicals and create lead pollution
when used in solar cells made with organolead halide perovskite film a compound that is fast becoming competitive with silicon in solar power technology.
The group's work demonstrates that the perovskite created from the lead in just one old car battery could provide materials for 30 households-worth of solar energy cells.
It's#similar#to#the#challenge#of#making sure#driverless cars can safely avoid cars with human drivers
A new technology creates steam by harnessing solar energy, using a relatively cheap sponge-like material,
This sponge converts 85 percent of the solar energy in sunlight it absorbs into heat, the authors wrote in the study,
#U k. Supermarket To Run on Electricity Made From Its Own Rotting Food One U k. grocery store plans to power itself using biogas harvested from its own unsold, rotting produce.
#Better micro-actuators to transport materials in liquids Researchers have developed improved forms of tiny magnetic actuators thanks to new materials and a microscopic 3d printing technology.
This technique is similar to a microscopic 3d printer: a laser beam is moved in a computer-controlled three-dimensional manner within the epoxy resin layer
The three-section waterproofed boxes are empty providing 450+sq. inches of free space for electronics along with open deck space for mounting payloads.
since 2009 and has worked on self-driving cars a Google spokesman said. Regarding James Kuffner who replaces Rubinâ The Wall street journal saidandy Rubin former leader of Google#s Android mobile businessâ oversaw a series of robotics acquisitions last year
Additional focus mayâ includeâ virtual reality 3d imaging and augmented reality systems. Imagine that you were driving in China
With augmented reality systems in your car signs you see could be translated automatically so that what you percieveâ is the sign in your language without distraction.
and software that surpasses existing virtual and augmented reality solutions. Â Other participants in the B fundingâ included Qualcommâ KPCB Andreessen Horowitz Obvious Ventures and Legendary Entertainment m
(along with Spacex) under contract from NASA for supplying the International Space station with cargo supplies and secondary experimental and commercial ISS payload.
and payload to spare so they're used extensively for transporting experiments. The Cygnus cargo vehicle destroyed on this accident was carrying a lot of small satellites owned by schools universities and startups.
Orbital stated that the payload is insured although the extent of the coverage and the details are different for each client and contract.
Any correlation between payload and this accident is practically impossible so the rules and requirements should not change for the next missions.
and the delay or additional modifications may raise the payload cost. It could also indirectly raise the payload cost for other operators simply by reducing supply.
Insurance prices could also increase and the total cost for a school research team or startup may be bigger for future missions.
#Opensource 3d printed oppyhumanoid enables experimentation in robot design Funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Â Poppy is a 3d printed open source humanoid designed by the Inria Flowers lab a French research facility
but before 3d printing one could only study the ontrolbecause changingâ the haperequired a machine shop. Â With 3d printing changing the body shape is easier. nother platform that is similar to Poppy in that it is both open source and 3d printed isâ Jimmy the Robot.
When asked about Poppy possible limitations Sandini says ne has to consider that robots like Poppy are rather simple in terms of mobility andâ sensing
the 3d printing and open source aspects of the project are part of that vision. To facilitate collaboration
The advances offered by 3d printing have already revolutionised design and industry. However only very little has been done to explore the benefits of 3d printing and its interaction with computer science in classrooms.
With our Poppy platform we are now offering schools and teachers an adequate tool to cultivate the creativity of students studying in fields such as mechanics computer sciences electronics and 3d printing.
Both hardware and software are open source. There is not one single Poppy humanoid robot but as many as there are users.
Back Sproutel#sâ crowdfunding campaignâ to help get robotic healthcare coach Jerry the Bear into the hands of kids with type 1 diabetes.
Now wee launching a crowdfunding campaign to get Jerry into the hands of each one of the 12000 children that will be diagnosed in the coming year.
Instead of requiring expensive custom onboard computing robots are now able to leverage hardware smartphones and cloud computing for processing and storage.
Small Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS) can be both safe and maneuverable but their small size means they can carry much payload
and their battery life only allows for short flights. To increase the range of a small UAV one idea is to pair it with an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that can carry it to a site of operation and transport heavier cargo.
Having both ground and aerial perspectives can also be useful during a mission. One challenge is to make sure the vehicles have the ability to rendezvous
The video above demonstrates the use of a coordinated control strategy for autonomous docking of a Aeryon Scout UAV onto a skid-steer UGV (Unmanned ground vehicle) from Clearpath Robotics.
#the big data revolution and energy-efficient computing;##satellites and commercial applications of space;##robotics and autonomous systems;#
#life sciences genomics and synthetic biology;##regenerative medicine;##agri-science;##advanced materials and nanotechnology;##energy and its storage.
Most of the patents in the UK dataset are in the field of autonomous vehicles includingâ road vehicles unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles.
and contralateral arrangements and using virtual reality and an avatar to allow the user to see real time limb positioning.
what wearable technologies can do along with giving those with disabilities a hope for the future. To keep up to date with NCCR Robotics please sign up to ourâ monthly infoletter
Autonomous cars and drones are other examples of robots. The project is launched at theâ AUTOMATICA 2014â conference in Munich.
and use cheap vibration motors and a 3d printed shell. The Droplets (Figure 1) have the following unique capabilities:
Google new purpose-built self driving car Google completed a major step in its long and extensive self-driving cars project by presenting its first purpose-built autonomous car
Thanks to Google previous experience with self-driving cars one can expect very good performance in real environments;
other Google self-driving cars have completed hundreds of thousands miles with no major incidents. The car itself may look like a toy
or control a self-driving car. If you completely eliminate any kind of input from the occupants (apart from the destination selection) then anyone on board is defined strictly as a passenger
and a question like#should we allow a child to rivean autonomous caris transformed into#should we allow a child to be transported by an autonomous car##Â a question that is still probably not very easy to answer
Robotic telepresence for the public good have wanted you ever to attend a conference that was too far away expensive or sold out?
and Nathan Mathias from MIT Center for Civic Media that uses telepresence robots for the public good. ur telepresent bots broaden inclusion at events
but like many people can afford to attend it looks like you can still bid for a much cheaper telepresence opportunity on ebay.
& Google glass exhibit at CHI (proceeds go to the CHI student travel grants). Rumor has it The People Bot is currently wandering around the Theorizing the Web conference in New york city.
While not everyone here at Robohub agrees that a telepresence device is technically a robot this is a pretty cool project.
Bacher believes that technologies like Google glass Leap Motion Kinect and voice-control will continue to be refined
For more complicated procedures an earth-based physician could control the robot via telepresence. After its training is complete the $2. 5 million Robonaut 2 designed to assist astronauts with their duties both inside
This particular brain-computer interface exploits one of these; the occulomotor nerve which is responsible for the eyeâ#movements.
and IP instead in the same way that Wolfram is talking about owning the database of the internet of things.
After the workflow has been designed customer-specific hardware components would be installed 3d printed and on the standardized robot grippers.
In addition we use augmented reality technology to make these results visible. y databasing measurement data collected during training the Tsuji Lab is constructing a rehabilitation cloud system
and the self-driving cars have met most of the technical hurdles in less than a decade and now primarily face regulatory issues.
and note that Dndrea is the tech wizard behind Kiva robotic warehouse##the video shows a novel fail safe algorithm that allows an unmanned aerial vehicle to recover
Today Play-i launched a $1/4 million crowdfunding campaign already half subscribed for their cute robot toys Bo and Yana.
#Honda automatic driverless valet parking system Honda has developed a low-cost automatic valet parking system that uses parking lot surveillance cameras to help park cars automatically.
and steel cables instead of tendons. 3d printed plastic parts work like bones and a rubber coating acts as the skin.
Using 3d printing offers vast benefits to the project because the user can select any colour it easy to switch from a right hand to a left hand
This is why I using crowdfunding to raise the money to support the project and have launched a campaign onâ indiegogo.
 If the crowdfunding campaign is successful the money will go towards funding the project for an entire year.
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