Using two types of "designer" quantum dots, researchers are creating double-pane solar windows that generate electricity with greater efficiency and create shading and insulation for good measure. It's all made possible by a new window architecture which utilizes two...
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated that quantum physics might enable communications and mapping in locations where GPS and ordinary cellphones and radios don't work reliably or even at all, such as indoors,...
Metalenses—flat surfaces that use nanostructures to focus light—promise to revolutionize optics by replacing the bulky, curved lenses currently used in optical devices with a simple, flat surface. But, these metalenses have remained limited in the spectrum of light they...
Researchers have observed a novel phenomenon in sheets of tantalum arsenide that mimics the behavior of theorized (but never observed) particles called Weyl fermions.
Credit: Courtesy of the researchers
Mid-infrared wavelengths of light are invisible to the eye but can be...
Timothy J. Singler, professor and graduate director of Mechanical Engineering at the Watson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and graduate student Liang Liu, photographed at his lab in the Engineering and Science Building at the Innovative Technologies Complex,...
This is an illustration of the working principle of inkjet printing.
Credit: HZB
The drop-on-demand inkjet printing is a promising approach allowing patterning of materials with negligible materials waste; hence, significant reduction of raw materials cost can be achieved. Furthermore, inkjet...
Droplets about to 'launch themselves' off a thin wire.
Credit: Image courtesy of Duke University
We've all seen dewdrops form on spider webs. But what if they flung themselves off of the strands instead?
Researchers at Duke University and...
Dew drops on a spider web.
Credit: © butterfly-photos.org / Fotolia
If you go out after a rain, you may notice spider webs glistening with water droplets. The soggy webs resemble human-made meshes for fog collection: They both have thin fibers...
A 2-mm diameter acetone droplet in the Leidenfrost state on a 70 C water bath.
Credit: Stoffel D. Janssens
In doing his due diligence, cleaning his lab equipment, fluid physicist Stoffel Janssens from the Mathematical Soft Matter Unit in the Okinawa...
Water droplet patterns were captured by a high-speed camera at Cornell University.
Credit: Cornell University
The splash from rain hitting a windowpane or printer ink hitting paper all comes down to tiny droplets hitting a surface, and what each of those...
(Left) Photo of the stand-alone PV-electrolyzer prototype floating in a liquid reservoir of sulfuric acid. Photovoltaic cells positioned on top of the "mini rig" convert light into electricity that is used to power the membraneless electrolyzer submerged below. The...
