NanoComputer

Researchers at TU/e -Technische Universiteit in Eindhoven (Nederland) – have for the first time developed a coating with a surface that repairs itself after damage. This new coating has numerous potential applications – for example mobile phones that will remain clean from fingerprints, cars that never need to be washed, and aircraft that need less frequent repainting. The results were published in the 17 July edition of the journal Advanced Materials.

Functional coatings, for example with highly water-resistant or antibacterial properties, have at their surface nano-sized molecular groups that provide these specific properties. But up to now, these molecular groups are easily and irreversibly damaged by minor contact with their surface (such as by scratching), quickly causing their properties to be lost. This has been a big limitation to the possible applications of these coatings. Researcher Catarina Esteves of the department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at TU/e and her colleagues have now found a solution to this problem. 

Source: http://www.tue.nl/en/university/news-and-press/news/you-may-never-need-to-wash-your-car-again-thanks-to-new-coating-technology/

Printing three dimensional objects with incredibly fine details is now possible using “two-photon lithography”. With this technology, tiny structures on a nanometer scale can be fabricated. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have now made a major breakthrough in speeding up this printing technique: The high-precision-3D-printer  is orders of magnitude faster than similar devices (see video). This opens up completely new areas of application, such as in medicine.

The video shows the 3d-printing process in real time. Due to the very fast guiding of the laser beam, 100 layers, consisting of approximately 200 single lines each, are produced in four minutes.
CLICK HERE TO ENJOY THE VIDEO DEMONSTRATION

This amazing progress was made possible by combining several new ideas. “It was crucial to improve the control mechanism of the mirrors”, says Jan Torgersen (TU Vienna). The mirrors are continuously in motion during the printing process. The acceleration and deceleration-periods have to be tuned very precisely to achieve high-resolution results at a record-breaking speed.

Source: http://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/article/7444/

Among various electrochemical energy storage systems explored to date, the lithium-air (Li-air) battery is one of the most promising technologies, with a theoretical energy density nearly ten times that of conventional lithium-ion batteries. This is because lithium metal as an anode has a capacity ten times higher than that of conventional graphite anodes, and oxygen as the cathode of a Li-air battery can be absorbed freely from the environment leading to a significant reduction in the weight and the cost of the battery.

Dr. Ji-Guang Zhang, a researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's – PNNL -Transformational Materials Science Initiative, and his team, demonstrate  in a recent post, that a novel air electrode consisting of an unusual hierarchical arrangement of functionalized graphene sheets (with no catalyst) delivers an exceptionally high capacity batteries – which is the highest value ever.
The performance of Li-air batteries is affected by many factors such as electrolyte composition, the macrostructure of the air electrode, and the micro- to nanostructure of carbonaceous materials.  This recent work by the PNNL team minimizes air-electrode-blocking problem and leads to significantly increased capacities.
Source: Nano Letters ("Hierarchically Porous Graphene as a Lithium-Air Battery Electrode")