The Center for Atomically Thin Multifunctional Coatings (ATOMIC), a center focused on the study and development of 2D materials that is part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) project, is preparing to move from Phase I to Phase II of the program.

A new method of bioprinting uses aspiration of tiny biologics such as spheroids, cells and tissue strands, to precisely place them in 3D patterns either on scaffolding or without to create artificial tissues with natural properties, according to Penn State researchers.

By Gabrielle Stewart

Computers can perform operations much faster than the human brain and store more information. Despite these disadvantages, the human brain is a more efficient computer than the most sophisticated supercomputers — by a factor of a million, according to Saptarshi Das, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State.

By  Walt Mills

As progress in traditional computing slows, new forms of computing are coming to the forefront. At Penn State, a team of engineers is attempting to pioneer a type of computing that mimics the efficiency of the brain’s neural networks while exploiting the brain’s analog nature.

Modern computing is digital, made up of two states, on-off or one and zero. An analog computer, like the brain, has many possible states. It is the difference between flipping a light switch on or off and turning a dimmer switch to varying amounts of lighting.

The eventual creation of replacement biological parts requires fully three-dimensional capabilities that two-dimensional and three-dimensional thin-film bioprinting cannot supply. Now, using a yield stress gel, Penn State engineers can place tiny aggregates of cells exactly where they want to build the complex shapes that will be necessary to replace bone, cartilage and other tissues.

The power of the sun, wind and sea may soon combine to produce clean-burning hydrogen fuel, according to a team of Penn State researchers. The team integrated water purification technology into a new proof-of-concept design for a sea water electrolyzer, which uses an electric current to split apart the hydrogen and oxygen in water molecules.

This new method for “sea water splitting” could make it easier to turn wind and solar energy into a storable and portable fuel, according to Bruce Logan, Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering and Evan Pugh University Professor.

By Walt Mills

The Center for Nanoscale Science, a National Science Foundation Materials Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), has again successfully renewed its NSF support in the highly competitive MRSEC program. The new iteration of the center encompasses two of NSF’s Big Ideas — "Quantum Leap" and "Harnessing the Data Revolution."

By Walt Mills

A new type of imaging that does not require a lens and uses reconfigurable particle-based masks to take multiple shots of an object is being developed by researchers at Penn State. The electric-field directed self-assembling mask technology is expected to have uses in lower-cost and faster disease diagnosis, the enhancement of optical microscopy and may even lead to thinner cell phone technology.

 How it works

By Walt Mills

In a sensing phenomenon common in the animal world but unusual in manmade sensors, Penn State researchers have added a small amount of background noise to enhance very weak signals, in this case a light source too dim to sense.

Plagues of locusts, containing millions of insects, fly across the sky to attack crops, but the individual insects do not collide with each other within these massive swarms. Now a team of engineers is creating a low-power collision detector that mimics the locust avoidance response and could help robots, drones and even self-driving cars avoid collisions.

By Walt Mills

A supersensitive dopamine detector can help in the early diagnosis of several disorders that result in too much or too little dopamine, according to a group led by Penn State and including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and universities in China and Japan.

Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter that can be used to diagnose disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

By Walt Mills

The goal of room temperature superconductivity took a small step forward with a recent discovery by a team of Penn State physicists and materials scientists.

By Walt Mills

Layered van der Waals materials are of high interest for electronic and photonic applications, according to researchers at Penn State and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, in California, who provide new insights into the interactions of layered materials with laser and electron beams.

Two-dimensional van der Waals materials are composed of strongly bonded layers of molecules with weak bonding between the layers.

A device to monitor health conditions in the body using a person’s sweat has been developed by researchers at Penn State and Xiangtan University, according to Huanyu (Larry) Cheng, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics, Penn State.

“We want to be able to analyze the sweat from daily exercise or from the heat of the sun because in sweat we have a lot of biomarkers, like pH and glucose that will be a really nice indicator for disease progression or diagnostics,” Cheng said.

Penn State’s Center for Nanoscale Science releases a new website full of family-friendly, at-home science experiments

With families stuck at home because of the coronavirus pandemic, the need for quality online resources to help fill the time has skyrocketed. But don’t fret — Penn State’s Center for Nanoscale Science has just launched Mission: Materials Science.

The next generation of solar cells, made from flexible, wearable material, may soon charge our devices on the go, or provide critical electricity when other power sources are not available, like during a natural disaster.

An international team of scientists from Penn State and the University of Queensland, Australia, are developing new technology to help make these next-generation solar devices a reality.

A new supercapacitor based on manganese oxide could combine the storage capacity of batteries with the high power and fast charging of other supercapacitors, according to researchers at Penn State and two universities in China.

“Manganese oxide is definitely a promising material,” said Huanyu (Larry) Cheng, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics and faculty member in the Materials Research Institute, Penn State. “By combining with cobalt manganese oxide, it forms a heterostructure in which we are able to tune the interfacial properties.”

A new method to deliver proteins for therapy inside the body has been developed by a team of researchers at Penn State. This platform, which packages proteins within an acoustically sensitive nanoparticle carrier, uses ultrasound to image and guide the encapsulated protein to the exact location required, and then disrupt the shell allowing the protein to enter the cell.

Penn State engineers say computational power is key to technology for smart bandages, health tattoos and artificial organs.

Bulky, buzzing and beeping hospital rooms demonstrate that monitoring a patient’s health status is an invasive and uncomfortable process, at best, and a dangerous process, at worst. Penn State researchers want to change that and make biosensors that could make health monitoring less bulky, more accurate — and much safer.

By Walt Mills

A lithium-ion battery that is safe, has high power and can last for 1 million miles has been developed by a team in Penn State’s Battery and Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Center.

By Walt Mills

A method to observe a new class of topological materials, called Weyl semimetals, was developed by researchers at Penn State, MIT, Tohoku University, Japan and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. The material’s unusual electronic properties could be useful in future electronics and in quantum physics.

Seamlessly correcting defects in the face, mouth and skull is highly challenging because it requires precise stacking of a variety of tissues including bone, muscle, fat and skin. Now, Penn State researchers are investigating methods to 3D bioprint and grow the appropriate tissues for craniomaxillofacial reconstruction.

By Walt Mills

Use of an AC rather than a DC electric field can improve the piezoelectric response of a crystal. Now, an international team of researchers say that cycles of AC fields also make the internal crystal domains in some materials bigger and the crystal transparent.

By Walt Mills

Lithium ion batteries often grow needle-like structures between electrodes that can short out the batteries and sometimes cause fires.  Now, an international team of researchers has found a way to grow and observe these structures to understand ways to stop or prevent their appearance.