Challenge any modern human to go a day without a phone or computer, and you’d be hard pressed to get any takers. Our collective obsession with all things electronic is driving a dramatic daily drain on the world’s power. In fact, according to studies from the Semiconductor Research Corporation, if we continue on pace with our […]
New World Standard In Nano Generators
A team of University of Alberta engineers developed a new way to produce electrical power that can charge handheld devices or sensors that monitor anything from pipelines to medical implants. The discovery sets a new world standard in devices called triboelectric nanogenerators by producing a high-density DC current — a vast improvement over low-quality AC […]
When It Comes To Atomic-Scale Manufacturing, Less Really Is More
Robert Wolkow is no stranger to mastering the ultra-small and the ultra-fast. A pioneer in atomic-scale science with a Guinness World Record to boot (for a needle with a single atom at the point), Wolkow’s team, together with collaborators at the Max Plank Institute in Hamburg, have just released findings that detail how to create […]
New Thin Film Transistor May Lead To Flexible Devices
An engineering research team at the University of Alberta has invented a new transistor that could revolutionize thin-film electronic devices. Their findings, published in the prestigious science journal Nature Communications, could open the door to the development of flexible electronic devices with applications as wide-ranging as display technology to medical imaging and renewable energy production. The […]
Solar Energy Could Revolutionize Oil Sands
Cleaning up oil sands tailings has just gotten a lot greener thanks to a novel technique developed by University of Alberta civil engineering professors that uses solar energy to accelerate tailings pond reclamation efforts by industry. Instead of using UV lamps as a light source to treat oil sands process affected water (OSPW) retained in […]
Explosive Breakthrough in Research on Molecular Recognition
Ever wonder how sometimes people still get through security with explosives on their person? Research done in the University of Alberta’s Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering has revealed a new way to better detect these molecules associated with explosive mixtures. A team of researchers including post-doctoral fellows Seonghwan Kim, Dongkyu Lee and Xuchen Liu, […]