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How long can tiny gears and other microscopic moving parts last before they wear out? What are the warning signs that these components are about to fail, which can happen in just a few tenths of a second? [R]esearchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a method for more quickly tracking microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) as they work and, just as importantly, as they stop working. [U]sing this method for microscopic failure analysis, researchers and manufacturers could improve the reliability of the MEMS components that they are developing, ranging from miniature robots and drones to tiny...

Sandia National Labs recasts solar industry with MEMS PORTLAND, Ore. — Sandia National Labs has harnessed silicon's natural tendency to grow into islands and used micro-electro-mechanical systems techniques to free those islands into the world's smallest solar cells. Sandia claims the micron-sized solar cells are as efficient as their wafer-sized big brothers, but consume only one hundredth the amount of semiconductor. Rather than force solar cells to grow across an entire wafer in a perfect crystalline lattice, and throw the whole wafer away if any imperfections develop, Sandia National Labs has found that smaller is better. Measuring just 100 microns...

Oct. 18, 2006 -- Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are mimicking one of Nature's best non-stick surfaces to help create more reliable electric transmission systems, photovoltaic arrays that retain their efficiency, MEMS structures unaffected by water and improved biocompatible surfaces able to prevent cells from adhering to implanted medical devices. Based on a collaboration of materials scientists and chemical engineers, the research aims to duplicate the self-cleaning surfaces of the lotus plant, which grows in waterways of Asia. Despite growing in muddy conditions, the leaves and flowers remain clean because their surfaces are composed of micron- and nano-scale...

SITTING in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was "printed", using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering. Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, described his "bioprinting" technique last week at the Experimental Biology 2006 meeting in San Francisco. It relies on droplets of "bioink", clumps of cells a few hundred micrometres in diameter, which Forgacs has found behave just like a liquid. This means that...

MIT researchers claim dramatic performance increasesResearchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are using viruses to create tiny batteries that can store up to three times as much energy as conventional power systems. The team, led by MIT professors Angela Belcher, Paula Hammond and Yet-Ming Chiang, genetically modified a virus so that it attracts cobalt oxide and gold, and assembled the metals into ultra-thin wires just six nanometres in diameter. The viruses can be cloned to assemble lithium batteries ranging in size from a grain of rice to a full-sized product. "Once we have altered the genes of the virus...

IBM, long known for its computers and microchips, has developed new kinds of machines for wireless phones: microscopic frequency tuners and other devices that fit on a chip. The company's researchers have developed a technique to graft these tiny machines onto chips. Within a few years these hybrid chips, which IBM calls "active components," could be used to increase the performance and battery life of wireless devices such as cellular phones. The microscopic machines, technically known as Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, or MEMS, do the work of current components such as radio frequency receivers. However, they are smaller and often more...