Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 9


World’s strongest silver A group has developed what researchers say is the world’s strongest silver. The silver demonstrated a hardness of 3.05 GPa, which is 42% stronger than the previous world record. The University of Vermont, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the Ames Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and UCLA contributed to the work. Silver is an element with high electr... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 26


Polymer pen litho Using a polymer pen lithography technique, the Air Force Research Laboratory and Northwestern University have developed a quick way to discover new materials. Researchers have developed a combinatorial library of tiny nanoparticles on a substrate. A combinatorial library, sometimes referred to as a megalibrary, is a collection of different structures. Each structure is enc... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: March 7


Materials database Electronic materials and nanocrystals are used in a variety of applications. To integrate materials and crystals in devices, researchers must search in multiple places to discover new technologies and their various properties. On top of that, researchers may require long hours in the lab, and large computational resources, to enable new materials. Seeking to help res... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 3


Robotic plants In 2012, the European Commission launched the so-called Plantoid project. In the project, researchers hope to devise synthetic robotic plants. Inspired by plant roots, the robots could be used for soil monitoring and other applications. The group is devising so-called artifacts. These components resemble plants and plant roots. The new technologies expected to result from the... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 13


Pop-up 3D printing Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new “pop-up” printing technique to make 3D structures down to 100nm. The technique has advantages over today’s 3D printing, which is creating a lot of buzz, if not hype, in the market. Researchers from Northwestern and Illinois devised a printing technique that mimics the act... » read more