Electronic

Widespread wireless charging could one day keep our devices juiced up indefinitely. A new breakthrough has been made in that direction, as researchers in Japan have developed a system that can turn a whole room into a wireless charger.

By combining miniaturized electronics with some origami-inspired fabrication, scientists have developed what they say is the smallest microsupercapacitor in existence. It's smaller than a speck of a dust but boasts a similar voltage to a AAA battery.

Electronics and batteries are vulnerable to very high or low temperatures, but a new thermal switch could help deal with both. Made from graphene foam, it can dynamically trap heat when it’s cold out or allow heat to escape when it gets too warm.

Over the last year or so, Sam Battle has been gathering together interesting tech and gadgetry from the past and musical curiosities of his own design for a collection known as This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete, which is now open for business.

Researchers have discovered a material that can switch between an insulator and a conductor freely, even at room temperature. The material, a compound of manganese and sulfide (MnS2), starts off as an insulator but becomes conductive under pressure.

Engineers have found a way to make liquid metals switch between reflective surfaces or those that scatter light. The transition only requires a small zap of electricity and could be used to make mirrors that can be switched on or off.

Silicon is vital to all of the electronics that our modern world is built on. Now, research led by the Carnegie Institution for Science has developed a way to create a new form of silicon with a unique hexagonal structure.

Engineers at Columbia University have developed the smallest single-chip system ever created, which can be implanted with a hypodermic needle to measure temperature inside the body, and possibly much more.

Graphene just keeps getting weirder. Engineers at ETH Zurich have now managed to tweak the overachieving material so that some parts of a flake can be an electrical insulator while other areas act as a superconductor, just nanometers apart.

Scientists in the US have introduced a new player to the world of 2D materials in the form of an ultra-thin, ultra-strong material they've dubbed borophane, which they see one day finding use in advanced forms of electronics.

Graphene has a lot of useful properties, but magnetism isn’t usually one of them. Now, researchers have managed to induce an “artificial magnetic texture” in graphene, which could have major implications for the emerging field of spintronics.

Diamond is a famously hard material, but now scientists have managed to stretch it further than ever before. Why? Stretching nanoscale samples changes their electronic and optical properties, which could open up a new world of diamond devices.