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Engineers from Iowa State University developed micro-tentacles that enable robots to handle delicate objects. “Most robots use two fingers. To pick things up, they have to squeeze,” said Jaeyoun (Jay) Kim, an Iowa State University associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and...

A “smart insulin patch” created by researchers at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University detects increases in blood sugar levels and secretes doses of insulin into the bloodstream whenever needed.

To produce electricity, thermoelectric materials capture waste heat from sources such as automobile exhausts or industrial processes. Improving the materials' efficiency will require further reduction of thermal conductivity. A new article from a Georgia Institute of Technology professor clarifies...

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered that yarn made of niobium nanowires enables more efficient supercapacitors. The new approach uses the yarns as the electrodes in tiny supercapacitors. Adding a coating of a conductive polymer to the yarn further increases the...

A mold developed by Cornell University researchers can shape liquid silicon out of organic polymer materials. The self-assembling organic polymers create a template dotted with precisely sized and shaped nanopores. The development could lead to exact single-crystal silicon nanostructures.

Researchers from Penn State University have worked with University of Texas at Dallas engineers to induce different two-dimensional materials to form directly on top of one another. The stacking approach achieves clean interfaces between layers — an important factor for novel nanoelectronic circuits.

The demand for electronics is growing exponentially. Advances in sensors, integrated circuits, and wireless communications have allowed the design of low-cost, miniature, lightweight, and intelligent devices that can sense, process, and communicate health information through wireless personal...