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Category: engineering

Silk made into strong plastic-like materials with 6G potential

Silk threads can be fused into transparent, plastic-like materials that twist terahertz frequencies of light, according to research led by Imperial College London, University of Michigan Engineering and Tufts University. The findings could enable components of 6G networks to be made from upcycled silk.

The new materials are also lightweight, yet stronger than many metal alloys and conventional plastics produced from fossil fuels. Their mechanical properties could make them useful in sports gear, shipping containers and certain kinds of packaging. In ballistics tests, the new materials were about as puncture-resistant as carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers, which are used in the bodies of airplanes and the chassis of automobiles. And, because the materials slowly degraded when implanted into mice, they could prove useful in temporary medical implants.

The researchers are particularly interested in the material’s ability to twist, or polarize, terahertz frequencies of light. The 6G band, which could transmit data up to hundreds of times faster than 5G networks and is particularly appealing for rural high-speed internet, extends into terahertz frequencies.

Prickly pear cacti show promise as the building materials of tomorrow

Researchers from the University of Bath’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have shown that agricultural waste from prickly pear cactus plants could be used as a low-cost, low-carbon reinforcement for construction materials, offering a more sustainable alternative to conventional composites. The research is published in the Journal of Natural Fibers.

Composite materials combine strong reinforcing fibers with a lightweight base material, known as a matrix. Widely used composites like carbon fiber, fiberglass or Kevlar rely on synthetic fibers and energy-intensive manufacturing processes. Their durability also makes them difficult to reuse or recycle at the end of their lifespan. Swapping synthetic fibers with natural alternatives offers a renewable and biodegradable solution.

Matt Hutchins, a researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and lead author of the study, said, “Inside the flat cactus pads is a naturally occurring fiber network. These fibers form a honeycomb-like structure that helps the plant support its own weight and resists bending in strong winds. We’re exploring how to extract these structures and keep them intact, borrowing their natural properties to reinforce bio-based composites.”

How temperature changes light: New model could guide smarter LEDs, sensors and photonic devices

Technion researchers have developed, for the first time, a comprehensive physical model explaining how the properties of a radiating material, including absorption, emission, and quantum efficiency, affect the fundamental characteristics of the light it emits as a function of temperature. In essence, the emitted light changes its color, intensity, and randomness according to the material’s properties and its temperature. The discovery was published in Optica and opens new possibilities for designing advanced light sources, optical sensors, and thermally based photonic systems.

The research was led by M.Sc. student Tomer Bar-Lev and Prof. Carmel Rotschild from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion. According to the researchers, the central phenomenon examined in this work is photoluminescence, a process in which a material emits light in response to incident illumination. In this phenomenon, light particles (photons) are absorbed by the material and re-emitted, forming the basis of many technologies, including LED lighting and optical sensors.

The Technion researchers demonstrated that the influence of fundamental physical laws formulated more than a century ago is far broader than previously thought.

Anion swap unlocks sevenfold CO₂ capture in polyionic liquids

A joint research team from Nitto Boseki Co., Ltd. (Nittobo) and Tohoku University has revealed that polyionic liquids (PILs) can achieve high carbon dioxide (CO₂) adsorption when their counter anions are exchanged. This discovery provides a critical new design guideline for the development of high-performance CO2 recovery devices and gas separation membranes.

The research was led by Associate Professor Kouki Oka of the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, Tohoku University, with the results published online in Reaction Chemistry & Engineering.

PILs are known for their strong ability to attract CO₂ and for their stability as solid materials. However, conventional anion exchange methods struggle to remove inorganic salts, which are by-products of the manufacturing process. These impurities make it difficult to accurately evaluate the materials’ true performance.

Engineered wood provides solar power even after the sun goes down

While sustainable solar energy can potentially meet our global power needs, it has one major flaw. When sunlight disappears, solar panels stop generating electricity. The problem is that while they do an excellent job of converting light into power, they are not so good at storing the energy they collect.

One solution is to use materials known to capture heat and release it later, such as phase change materials (PCMs). However, these can leak when they melt, struggle to conduct heat quickly, and catch fire easily. So researchers from China decided on a different approach, turning wood into a multifunctional solar-thermal energy storage material, as they detail in a paper published in Advanced Energy Materials.

Reengineering balsa wood The team redesigned the internal structure of balsa wood at multiple scales, from nano to micro, to create a material that absorbs sunlight and stores it as heat for later use. It can also generate electricity when that stored heat is released through a thermoelectric device.

Quantum metallurgy: Electron crystals deform and melt

In a process analogous to how solids melt into liquids, the electrons in many different metals form crystal-like patterns that can deform and melt, opening new pathways for neuromorphic computing and superconductors, University of Michigan Engineering researchers have found.

“Our work shows that these quantum structures, which are often thought to have a highly ordered structure, actually span a continuum of disorder that could be leveraged to engineer and control these materials,” said Robert Hovden, associate professor of materials science and engineering and corresponding author of the study published in Matter.

“Metallurgists often control defects, or disorder, in metals to produce specific properties,” Hovden said. “A similar approach might help us harness the potential of quantum materials in future devices. Quantum metallurgy could be the future.”

First Images From the Pandora Exoplanet Mission

A new mission promises to ‘open the box’ on exoplanet science. Scientists and engineers recently released the first engineering images from the Pandora exoplanet survey mission. The pictures represent the first ever images from a NASA Astrophysics Pioneers Program mission. Established in 2020, the program looks to test the feasibility of small low cost missions designed to address key questions in astronomy and astrophysics.

A persistent quantum computing error finally explained

Scientists have discovered the cause of a persistent glitch that continues to disrupt superconducting quantum computers, even when they have built-in defenses. For all their advanced hardware, superconducting quantum computers are vulnerable to errors caused by ionizing radiation from space or the environment. Radiation particles interfere with the chip substrate (the silicon base the processor is built on), which leads to the creation of rogue particles (quasiparticles) that disrupt the qubits, the basic units of quantum computers.

To protect against this, scientists developed a technique called gap engineering. This involves creating an energy barrier in the superconducting material of the qubits, making it harder for these particles to reach sensitive parts of the device.

However, it is not foolproof. Even with this defense, radiation can still cause sudden widespread errors affecting many qubits at once (error bursts). But it was not clear why.

Hourglass nanographenes unlock strong, robust multi-spin entanglement

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and collaborators have developed a predictive design strategy for creating graphene-like molecules with multiple interacting spins and enhanced resilience to magnetic perturbations, opening new avenues for molecular-scale quantum information technologies and next-generation spintronics.

The research team was led by Professor Lu Jiong from the NUS Department of Chemistry and the NUS Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials, together with Professor Wu Jishan from the NUS Department of Chemistry, and international collaborators, including key contributor Professor Pavel Jelínek from the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.

Magnetic nanographenes, which are molecules composed of fused benzene rings, are of growing interest for quantum technologies because they can host unpaired electrons, or spins, that may be used to store and process information. Unlike conventional magnetic materials based on metal atoms, these carbon-based systems offer chemical versatility and long spin coherence times. However, engineering a single molecule that contains multiple strongly coupled spins in a stable and controlled manner remains a major challenge.

Durable ionogel withstands 5,000 times its weight while staying soft on skin

The development of soft materials that can reliably function on the human body is important for the future of bioelectronics and wearable medical devices. These materials need to comfortably conform to the skin while being durable enough for everyday use. However, many existing soft materials are easily damaged, limiting their practical applications.

A research team led by Professor Lizhi Xu from the Department of Mechanical Engineering under the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has created a new type of ionogel that overcomes this challenge. The material is soft and flexible, yet strong enough to withstand significant mechanical stress, making it ideal for wearable and biomedical applications.

The research is published in the journal Science Advances, in an article titled “High-strength and fracture-resistant ionogels via solvent-tailored interphase cohesion in nanofibrous composite networks.”

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