Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 31


X-ray nanotomography The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has developed a new method for improving the resolution of hard X-ray nanotomography. In general, tomography involves a system, which takes images or cross sections of a sample using X-rays or ultrasound. The images are then re-created in the form of a 3D model. One common form is called micro-comput... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 16


World’s fastest camera The Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Canada has developed what researchers say is the world’s fastest camera. The camera, called T-CUP, is capable of capturing ten trillion frames per second. It’s possible to nearly freeze time to see various phenomena in the system. In a system, the technology can be used to take high-speed images of sam... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 5


Water insulators North Carolina State University, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Texas A&M University have developed what could be considered as water insulators for energy storage applications. Basically, researchers sandwiched water between two materials, enabling higher power storage devices with more efficiency. More specifically, in the lab, researchers developed a compou... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 6


Molecular black holes A group of researchers have used an ultra-bright pulse of X-ray light to hit a tiny atom in a molecule, causing the structure to explode and create a “molecular black hole.” The molecular black hole is different than a black hole in space, however. A black hole is a region in space, which has a gravitational field so strong that no matter or light can escape it. ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 16


Monoxide chips Two-dimensional (2D) materials are gaining steam in the R&D labs. The 2D materials could enable a new class of field-effect transistors (FETs), but the technology isn’t expected to appear until sometime in the next decade. The 2D materials include graphene, boron nitride and the transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). One TMD, molybdenum diselenide (MoS2), is gaining inter... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 13


Exploring plasmas with lasers The Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has upgraded its high-power laser system to 200 terawatts of power, roughly 100 times the world’s total power consumption compressed into tens of femtoseconds. The peak power before the upgrade was 30 terawatts. The upgraded laser will be coupled with SLAC's X-ray laser, dubbed the Linac Cohere... » read more