Microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, are tiny machines fabricated using equipment and processes developed for the production of electronic chips and devices. They've found a wide variety of applications in today's consumer ...
The ability to stimulate neural circuits with very high precision light to control cells—optogenetics—is key to exciting advances in the study and mapping of the living brain. In the current state of the art, spatially ...
Gallium nitride (GaN) has emerged as one of the most important and widely used semiconducting materials. Its optoelectronic and mechanical properties make it ideal for a variety of applications, including light-emitting diodes ...
All around us, hiding just outside our range of vision, are miniscule machines. Tiny accelerometers in our cars sense a collision and tell the airbags to inflate. A Nintendo Wii controller's tiny gyroscopes translate your ...
From the printing press to the jet engine, mechanical machines with moving parts have been a mainstay of technology for centuries. As U.S. industry develops smaller mechanical systems, they face bigger challenges—microscopic ...
Piezoelectricity (aka the piezoelectric effect) occurs within certain materials – crystals (notably quartz), some ceramics, bone, DNA, and a number of proteins – when the application of mechanical stress or vibration ...
Researchers from North Carolina State University and the U.S. Army Research Office have developed a way to integrate novel functional materials onto a computer chip, allowing the creation of new smart devices and systems.
Many machines such as turbines, oil-drills, health monitors and nuclear reactors require internal sensors to monitor physical states such as temperature. To meet this challenge, researchers at A*STAR are developing compact ...
With vehicles communicating with embedded monitors alongside roadways to better route traffic, and home appliances connected to the smart grid to improve efficiency and reliability, the Internet of Things (IOT) may generate ...
Researchers are using a technology likened to "mini force fields" to independently control individual microrobots operating within groups, an advance aimed at using the tiny machines in areas including manufacturing and medicine.
