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The titanium in iPhone Duo and the camera system in iPhone 18 Pro connect familiar product features to specialized American suppliers. Behind those parts are different kinds of manufacturing: processing metal, producing advanced films, forming protective glass and fabricating miniature lasers.
Apple’s October 20 supplier announcement identifies several of these connections. Read alongside the manufacturers’ own documentation, it provides a partial map of the work behind the devices, rather than a complete account of their global production.
Apple’s broader U.S. manufacturing program brings together businesses with very different specialties. Following individual components reveals how a metal producer, a materials company, a glassmaker and a semiconductor manufacturer contribute to devices sold under the same brand.
Apple identifies Perryman as a titanium supplier for iPhone Duo. The relationship concerns material production; it does not establish that Perryman builds the finished enclosure, hinge or assembled phone.
The geography requires care. Apple’s release groups melting, forging and rolling at Houston, Pennsylvania. Perryman’s facility directory describes a distributed network: melting and ingot breakdown at Coal Center, hot rolling and much finishing at Houston, and intermediate processing at Frackville.
Perryman’s operations therefore span several Pennsylvania locations. Apple has not published a facility-by-facility production route for its titanium orders, so the company’s broader manufacturing network provides context rather than a confirmed itinerary for each iPhone component.
Perryman lists electron-beam and vacuum-arc melting equipment, followed by processes that turn ingots into semifinished and finished material. It also documents laboratory and nondestructive testing capabilities.
In practical terms, the work converts raw inputs into controlled material forms that other manufacturing operations can use. Consistency in composition, dimensions and internal quality matters before a supplier further down the chain shapes a consumer product.
Qnity Electronics has a different role: Apple says it will produce advanced films essential to the iPhone 18 Pro’s variable-aperture camera system.
An aperture controls the opening through which light enters the camera. Changing that opening helps manage exposure and depth of field, meaning how much of a scene appears acceptably sharp.
The announcement links Qnity to materials supporting that system, rather than identifying it as the manufacturer of the entire camera. Apple does not disclose the films’ composition, their exact position within the assembly or the production process.
It also does not name the relevant factory. Delaware is Qnity’s headquarters location, not sufficient evidence of where these particular films are made.
Qnity’s role highlights a less visible side of camera development: the materials that support a mechanism can be as specialized as its optical and electronic components. Apple identifies the films’ connection to variable aperture, but leaves their precise engineering role undisclosed.
Corning’s Harrodsburg, Kentucky, operation supplies specialty glass for Apple, including Ceramic Shield. Apple’s October announcement sets an end-of-2026 target for all iPhone and Apple Watch cover glass, including iPhone Duo, to come from that facility.
Harrodsburg is already operating; the broader production transition remains a dated target. Corning’s account of the plant describes both current manufacturing and development work for future products.
Opened in 1952, Harrodsburg is Corning’s longest-running American plant. Its history includes the development of fusion-draw glassmaking, a process used to create large, thin sheets of glass. Corning describes the site as both a manufacturing operation and a place where teams develop materials for future products.
Protective cover glass is distinct from the panel that generates an image. Manufacturing a transparent protective surface involves different requirements from producing OLED pixels, electronics or the other layers in a display assembly.
The iPhone Duo connection therefore should not be expanded into a claim that Corning supplies its complete folding display. Apple’s statement identifies cover glass, with a specific production goal.
In an August 2025 supply announcement, Coherent identified its Sherman, Texas, facility as the production site for vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs, supplied to Apple under a multiyear agreement.
These semiconductor devices emit light from their surface. Coherent connects them to features including Face ID on iPhone and iPad; Apple’s latest announcement specifically associates its technology with iPhone 18 Pro.
Sherman has compound-semiconductor capabilities covering epitaxy, fabrication and device manufacturing. Epitaxy means growing controlled semiconductor layers; fabrication then creates the structures needed for individual devices. This is specialized chipmaking for optical functions, rather than assembly of a complete camera.
The connection described here concerns Face ID and supported Apple devices, with the October announcement specifically naming iPhone 18 Pro. It illustrates why the supplier map differs by model: a component associated with one phone should not automatically be assigned to another.
These suppliers illustrate distinct stages of production. Metal processing prepares structural material; films support a camera mechanism; cover glass protects surfaces; semiconductor lasers contribute to optical sensing. Each requires its own equipment, expertise and quality checks.
Their contributions establish specific American manufacturing connections, not U.S. final assembly or an entirely domestic iPhone. Following the component and its documented production stage provides a more accurate picture than treating every supplier announcement as evidence that the whole device is made in one country.
The post Inside the U.S. Suppliers Behind iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro appeared first on AppleMagazine.
Apple’s HomeView hub may be a genius product despite its lack of an App Store. We explain why on this week’s Cult of Mac podcast.
(via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)
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Em mais um aceno ao governo dos Estados Unidos, a Apple anunciou hoje novas parcerias com empresas do seu país natal para o fornecimento de materiais para os iPhones 18 Pro/18 Pro Max e Duo.
Parte do American Manufacturing Program (AMP), essas parcerias incluem companhias como a Perryman Company, produtora de titânio do estado da Pensilvânia, e a Qnity Electronics, fabricante de tecnologias para câmeras do estado do Delaware.
Sabih Khan, COO 1Chief operating officer, ou diretor de operações. da Apple, comentou o anúncio:
Estamos muito felizes em expandir nossa parceria com empresas que produzem materiais e componentes avançados para nossa nova linha de iPhones aqui mesmo nos Estados Unidos. A engenhosidade americana é vital para todos os nossos produtos, desde o titânio usado no iPhone Duo até as inovações revolucionárias em câmeras do iPhone 18 Pro. Temos orgulho de trabalhar com a Perryman e a Qnity Electronics para continuar expandindo nosso Programa de Fabricação Americana e apoiar a geração de empregos nos EUA.
Ainda segundo a Maçã, a Perryman receberá um investimento de US$100 milhões ao longo dos próximos três anos, que garantirá o fornecimento, para o iPhone Duo, de titânio de grau 5 com pelo menos 80% de material reciclado.
Parte do AMP desde março, a Qnity Electronics vai produzir filmes avançados para o novo sistema de câmera com abertura variável dos iPhones 18 Pro/18 Pro Max.
A Apple também aproveitou a oportunidade para relembrar outros investimentos em fabricantes americanos (ou com fábricas nos EUA), incluindo a Broadcom, que fornece chips de radiofrequência para seus dispositivos; a Corning, responsável pelos vidros Ceramic Shield; a Coherent, que produz componentes para o Face ID; a TSMC, que fabrica chips para todos os principais produtos da empresa; e a Amkor Technology, empresa de empacotamento de semicondutores.
New US partners like Perryman and Qnity Electronics have helped to make iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro possible. https://t.co/12nNak07z6
— John Ternus (@johnternus) October 20, 2026
Anunciado em 2025, o AMP envolve um investimento de US$600 bilhões [1, 2] na economia dos EUA — e, segundo a Apple, já sustenta mais de 450 mil empregos. O programa, vale lembrar, surgiu em meio às ameaças tarifárias feitas pelo presidente Donald Trump a importações, com destaque para a China — principal polo de fabricação de iPhones.
Physicists have experimentally reconstructed the quantum probability distribution of an exciton for the first time using super-fast spectroscopy. By simultaneously capturing the spatial and momentum spreads of these short-lived quasiparticles, the work adds to our understanding of how excitons evolve in complex materials. According to members of the research team, this improved understanding could lead to advances in organic photovoltaic devices.
When light shines on materials such as insulators and semiconductors, the energy from these incident photons can sometimes promote electrons in the material to higher energy bands, leaving behind positively charged holes. The electron and hole can then bind together, forming a neutral excited quasiparticle known as an exciton.
Excitons play a key role in light harvesting in optoelectronics devices, but their quantum mechanical structure has proved notoriously difficult to study. Among other reasons, this is because the excited electrons decay back to their original states within just picoseconds (10-12 s), and standard spectroscopic techniques are not fast enough to simultaneously probe the spatial dimensions of the quasiparticles’ orbits and their momentum profiles within that time limit.
In the new work, physicists led by Peter Puschnig of the University of Graz, Austria, together with colleagues at Marburg University and Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, got around this problem thanks to a technique called time-resolved photoemission orbital tomography (trPOT). This technique combines pump-probe photoemission spectroscopy with momentum microscopy and offers resolution at the femtosecond (fs, 10-15 s) scale, making it well-suited to capturing the exciton wavefunction.
Puschnig and colleagues began by applying an ultrashort normal-incidence laser pulse with an energy of 2.35 eV to an organic semiconductor called alpha-sexithiophene, which is employed in optoelectronic applications such as solar cells. This pulse generated the excitons. The next step was to eject the electrons from these excitons using a second, linearly polarized laser pulse with a relatively high energy of 21.7 eV. This process is known as photoemission.
“If we then measure the energy and direction of the ejected electrons, theoretical models allow us to infer their quantum-mechanical state,” Puschnig explains. “And by varying the time between the first and second laser pulses, we are able to obtain snapshots of the exciton at different times after its creation.”
The team found that the exciton in the sexithiophene films initially extends over a distance of approximately 1.5 nm, or roughly three molecules. Within 400 fs of its creation, though, its size contracts by about 25%. “What makes this particularly exciting is that we are not just measuring an energy or lifetime but are also gaining access to the quantum-mechanical wave function of the exciton itself, including its spatial structure and phase,” Puschnig says.
Puschnig says the idea for the experiment grew out of the team’s earlier work on photoemission orbital tomography (POT), including a 2021 proof-of-principle study showing that it could be extended into the ultrafast regime. “The main challenge was coordinating demanding experiments and theory: producing well-defined molecular films; transporting them under ultra-high vacuum from Jülich to Marburg in a vacuum suitcase; performing ultrafast photoemission measurements; and carrying out computationally intensive ab-initio calculations in Graz to interpret the data,” he adds.
The work, which is detailed in Physical Review X, provides a new way to study excitons directly in real space and follow their quantum-mechanical evolution in time. According to the researchers, it could help us understand how excited states evolve into charge-separated states in the donor/acceptor systems that occur in organic photovoltaics, where the electron and hole can begin to separate after photoexcitation.
The researchers say their next goal is to move from the relatively simple exciton they studied to more complex systems. “We want to observe how charge-separation processes are controlled by the molecular and electronic structure of a material,” Puschnig tells Physics World. “Doing this will be particularly interesting because charge separation is the crucial step between absorbing a photon and generating a usable electrical current in an organic solar cell.”
The post Exciton wavefunctions come into view appeared first on Physics World.
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Apple has spent more than a year developing its own game controllers and is likely to sell them under the Beats name rather than its main brand, according to Bloomberg News‘ Mark Gurman.
The project is being led by Beats executives on both product conception and engineering, Gurman reported in his Power On newsletter. Apple sees dedicated controllers as a growing market and wants a piece of it, after years of selling third-party options such as Backbone and SteelSeries devices through its own channels.
The effort follows code references that surfaced earlier this month in a macOS beta, pointing to two unreleased first-party controllers identified as T6502 and T1057. Those listings described conventional gamepad hardware, including a D-pad, dual analog thumbsticks, face buttons, shoulder buttons, analog triggers, and haptic motors. One model appears wired; the other is described as adding Bluetooth, motion sensors, and richer haptic feedback.
Gurman said the Beats label is a strategic fit. Apple has already used the subsidiary — acquired in 2014 — for iPhone cases, USB-C cables, and other accessories that sit below the materials, finishes, and prices associated with the Apple brand. A controller aimed at a broad audience would need to stay relatively affordable, which argues against the premium approach typical of Apple-branded hardware. The culture around gaming accessories also aligns more naturally with Beats than with Apple’s core lineup, he wrote.
No pricing, design details, or launch window have been disclosed. Existing Made for iPhone controllers and console pads from PlayStation and Xbox already work with Apple devices; a first-party option could still tighten the company’s grip on mobile and Apple TV gaming as more demanding titles arrive on iOS and Mac.
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The post Apple working on first-party game controllers, likely under Beats brand appeared first on MacDailyNews.
For more than a decade, scientists have known that strange bacteria living in aquatic mud can conduct electricity along distances thousands of times longer than a single bacterial cell. Such long-range electrical conduction should be extraordinarily difficult for a living organism, and how they accomplish the feat has remained a biological mystery.
Now, researchers say they have found the wiring. Inside so-called cable bacteria, scientists have discovered an elaborate network of nickel-rich nanoribbons arranged into what amounts to a naturally grown electrical cable.
The structure is unlike the conventional machinery biology normally uses to move electrons and may represent the first known example of a metal-organic framework produced by a living organism.
What surprised lead study author Dr. Filip Meysman, a professor at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, most was not how alien the structure looked, but how familiar it was.
“It had a very familiar feeling: a braided wire consisting of thin individual wires surrounded by a protective shell layer,” Meysman told The Debrief. “This is very similar to the power cords that we use to charge our smartphones, only the cable bacterial version is 20,000 times smaller in size. Evolution came up with this design 600 million years earlier than electrical engineers.”
Meysman’s comparison is not simply rhetorical. Molecular-clock estimates suggest the cable bacteria lineage may have diverged roughly 560 million years ago, although when their unusual electrical capabilities evolved is still unknown.
Published in Nature Communications, the findings could eventually provide researchers with a biological blueprint for creating flexible, biodegradable electronics that organisms effectively manufacture themselves.
Cable bacteria first attracted scientific attention because of their outstanding ability to move electrons over centimeter-scale distances. The multicellular organisms live in sediments where different layers offer different chemical resources. Cells buried deeper can harvest electrons from sulfide, while cells closer to oxygen-rich water dispose of them.
The result is an organism that successfully separates parts of its metabolism across space, with electrical current passing along the filament connecting them.
Scientists eventually identified dozens of parallel fibers running through the bacteria’s outer layers as the likely electrical pathways. Measurements later showed conductivity reaching levels unusual for any biological material and, in some experiments, comparable to materials used in electronic inks. The new study notes previously reported conductivity values reaching up to 500 siemens per centimeter.
But knowing where the current traveled was not the same as knowing how it traveled.
Most biological electron conduction relies on proteins containing metal-bearing cofactors, commonly iron-containing structures such as hemes or iron-sulfur clusters. Electrons typically move between those sites in a sequence of molecular transfers often described as “hopping.”
Previous research showed that cable bacteria did not fit neatly into that model. Their conducting fibers were associated with sulfur-bound nickel rather than the usual iron cofactors. At the same time, theoretical work suggested electron movement was too fast to be explained by conventional non-adiabatic hopping alone.
The mystery deepened in 2024, when some of the same researchers examined cable bacteria at temperatures approaching that of liquid helium and found that their electrical behavior matched an unusually efficient multistep hopping mechanism. But even then, the extraordinary conductivity challenged standard models of electrons simply hopping between isolated molecular sites.
The new structural work may help explain why.
Rather than a series of small, separated metal cofactors, the researchers have now found an extended nickel-organic structure running through the conductive fibers.
Using electron microscopy, X-ray fluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, electron paramagnetic resonance, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, and computer modeling, the team found that each conductive fiber contains roughly 11 extraordinarily thin nanoribbons, about 1.4 nanometers across.
Those ribbons pass through the center of the fiber and are built from repeating nickel bis-dithiolene complexes, which the researchers call NiBiD. Nickel atoms are linked through sulfur-containing organic molecules, creating planar units that appear to stack into an extended, highly ordered electrical pathway.
That arrangement may explain the extraordinary conductivity. Rather than electrons simply jumping between isolated metal centers, the stacked structure creates extensive electronic interaction and delocalization, allowing charge to spread across overlapping molecular networks. In that sense, the bacterial wire begins to resemble an organic electronic material more than a conventional biological electron-transfer chain.
The arrangement also appears mechanically well-suited to the bacteria’s lifestyle.
Cable bacteria move through sediment and can bend sharply while maintaining electrical contact between cells. A single rigid conducting strand could be vulnerable to damage. Multiple intertwined nanoribbons, however, offer something closer to braided copper wire: strength, flexibility, and redundancy at the same time.
The discovery also appears to broaden scientists’ understanding of what biology can manufacture.
Metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, are structures in which organic molecules link together metal centers into larger networks. Chemists have spent years designing them for uses ranging from gas storage and chemical separation to catalysis and electronics.
Until now, the researchers say, no one had observed a metal-organic framework configuration naturally constructed inside a living organism.
Cable bacteria appear to have arrived at the idea on their own, and this natural version appears to conduct electricity exceptionally well.
Previous electrical conductivity measurements of cable bacteria used the entire cross-section of their conductive fibers. But the new structural work indicates that the current is concentrated within a much smaller network of nanoribbons.
Recalculating conductivity based on the estimated dimensions of those conducting channels, the researchers found that an individual nanoribbon could have a conductivity of roughly 150 to 15,000 siemens per centimeter.
That range, the researchers say, ranks among the highest reported for any metal-organic structure. The upper figure remains an estimate, however, instead of a direct measurement of a single nanoribbon.
“We need to be able to isolate the individual nanoribbons from the cable bacteria and connect them electrically with electrodes,” Dr. Meysman explained. “This would provide the direct proof of the high conductivity. We are currently working on such nanoscale electrical measurements.”
Doing so would let researchers determine whether the extraordinary conductivity predicted for an individual nanoribbon holds up experimentally.
If it does, the technological implications could extend well beyond understanding an unusual microbe.
Researchers have long been interested in bio-based electronics because living systems can manufacture sophisticated materials through self-assembly while operating under relatively mild conditions. Biological materials can also be flexible and potentially biodegradable.
Their weakness has usually been electrical performance. Cable bacteria suggest nature may have found a way around that tradeoff.
Scientists still do not know exactly how cable bacteria biosynthesize the nickel-organic framework, and parts of the nanoribbon architecture remain unresolved.
But evolution has already solved one problem materials scientists would like to reproduce: how to build a highly conductive, flexible electrical pathway largely from organic components under biological conditions.
Dr. Meysman says one especially promising possibility is flexible printed electronics, where conductive inks are deposited onto surfaces to create circuits, sensors, and other electronic components.
“The material produced by the bacteria provides a flexible and conductive material, and so flexible printed electronics—conductive inks—emerges as a promising application domain,” Dr. Meysman said.
“The challenge is to demonstrate that the biomaterial can be made in a cost-effective fashion,” Meysman added, “and that it has the same—or even better—properties than the electronic ink materials currently in use.”
Ultimately, for hundreds of millions of years, bacteria buried in mud may have been growing microscopic power cables.
Scientists are only now beginning to understand how they work.
The study, “Highly efficient long-range conduction through a biosynthetic nickel-organic framework,” appeared in Nature Communications.
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com
Leading chipmakers Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced plans to adopt ASML’s latest chipmaking machines in the next several years—and they also joined Intel in agreeing to a crucial technology change that could boost chip production on the new machines by 40 percent.
This signifies the semiconductor industry’s broader embrace of high NA EUV photolithography technology that can cost up to $400 million per machine and is only provided by the Dutch technology company ASML, Bloomberg reports. The technology would allow chip designers to implement even smaller features in potentially more powerful and efficient next-generation chips produced for AI data centers and consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
ASML’s EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machines enable chipmakers to use powerful laser light to imprint patterns in silicon wafers, layer by layer, and gradually form the computer circuitry that makes silicon chips work. Compared to older deep ultraviolet lithography, EUV technology harnesses a more powerful source of light with a shorter wavelength to create even smaller features on silicon wafers.
© Michel de Heer | ASML
Leading chipmakers Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced plans to adopt ASML’s latest chipmaking machines in the next several years—and they also joined Intel in agreeing to a crucial technology change that could boost chip production on the new machines by 40 percent.
This signifies the semiconductor industry’s broader embrace of high NA EUV photolithography technology that can cost up to $400 million per machine and is only provided by the Dutch technology company ASML, Bloomberg reports. The technology would allow chip designers to implement even smaller features in potentially more powerful and efficient next-generation chips produced for AI data centers and consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
ASML’s EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machines enable chipmakers to use powerful laser light to imprint patterns in silicon wafers, layer by layer, and gradually form the computer circuitry that makes silicon chips work. Compared to older deep ultraviolet lithography, EUV technology harnesses a more powerful source of light with a shorter wavelength to create even smaller features on silicon wafers.
© Michel de Heer | ASML
© DARPA
Most people can perceive different colours in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum – at wavelengths between about 400 and 700 nm. However, our eyes cannot see infrared radiation, let alone perceive infrared “colours”. But now a team at China’s Beijing Institute of Technology has created colloidal quantum dot-based light upconverters that convert the infrared to the visible while preserving the spectral notion of colour. These nanostructures can be incorporated into wearable eyeglasses and, more ambitiously, could someday be implanted directly into the retina.
Photoreceptors in mammalian eyes contain light-absorbing pigments consisting of opsins and their covalently linked retinals. Infrared light at wavelengths greater than 700 nm cannot be absorbed by these photoreceptors, so when such light reaches the retina no corresponding electric signal is sent to the brain. Seeing infrared radiation could reveal otherwise invisible features and improve night vision, which relies on infrared light.
In recent years, researchers have made great strides in developing materials that capture photons with lower energies (in the infrared, for example) and re-emit them as photons with higher energies (typically visible or ultraviolet light). This process is known as upconversion, and the emitted light is said to be anti-Stokes shifted. This has led to the development of photoreceptor-binding upconversion nanoparticles that convert infrared light into visible emissions. These have been injected into mouse eyes and have been used to create wearable lenses for humans – with nonlinear upconversion projecting infrared-transformed visible light onto the cornea. While effective, these applications are limited to the narrow near-infrared (NIR) spectral range.
Now, a team led by Ge Mu and Xin Tang studied a structure made up of semiconducting mercury telluride (HgTe) colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) atop an organic light-emitting diode (OLED). The OLED contains two light-emitting layers, one red-light-emitting and one cyan-light-emitting. Because of the small size of the CQDs, the electrons in them are confined in all three directions. This means that the electrons are restricted to discrete and separate atomic-like energy subbands rather than having access to a continuous band of allowed energies as they would in a bulk material.
When the CQDs absorb photons with infrared wavelengths, spanning the NIR to short-wave infrared regions, they produce excited carriers (electrons and holes) that then travel from their different energy levels into the OLED. This is a seamless process because the OLED is designed so that its electronic bands align with the sub-bands of the HgTe. When either the light intensity or the wavelength of the incident infrared light changes, explains Tang, the excited photocarriers are transported and recombined in the different emissive layers of the OLED thanks to the hole-trapping barriers that were engineered in these layers. The result is infrared-to-visible-light (red and cyan) upconversion.
As a proof-of-concept, the researchers integrated their upconverter into lightweight, semi-transparent wearable eyeglasses and found that they can project multispectral infrared light onto the retina without affecting normal vision, so allowing the wearer to see infrared light as well as visible light. Indeed, a wearer can detect infrared light at wavelengths greater than 2 μm with a luminance of over 700 cd m−2.
Looking ahead, Tang says that the upconverter could be bound to light-sensitive proteins in the retina and so serve as an implantable next-generation retinal bionic photoreceptor. This structure would transform infrared light into visible light emissions that stimulate light-sensitive proteins on retinal neurons to bypass damaged photoreceptor cells and potentially restore visual function across both the visible and infrared.
This full colour upconverter has been a long-term project in my group, Tang tells Physics World. “Starting from an efficient single-colour upconverter, we then successfully demonstrated colour-tuneable OLEDs and Si-/Ge-/CMOS-integrated upconverters. And with our recent progress on the understanding of interfacial carrier transport between quantum dots and colour-tuneable OLEDs, we have now demonstrated this new full-colour upconverter.”
The latest work is detailed in Science Advances.
The post Upconverting colloidal quantum dots bring ‘colour vision’ to the infrared appeared first on Physics World.
Researchers at Kyushu University in Japan have developed a flexible electronic circuit that can connect itself to another electronic circuit and then disconnect from it. The prototype structure is an important step towards electronic devices that can reconfigure and even repair themselves, and it could have applications in wearable sensors, soft robotics and medical devices.
Most of today’s electronic devices are fixed, or “non-modular”, explains study leader Fumihiro Sassa of Kyushu University’s Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Typically designed for specific tasks or environments, they are not readily adaptable to new ones, and they often cease to function if even a single component in their electronic circuitry fails. This leaves them dependent on human operators or external robotic systems if it becomes necessary to expand their functionality or repair damage.
“This can be a serious limitation inside very small machines, in space equipment, in devices requiring specialized handling, such as wearable chemical sensors, or in systems containing very large numbers of wires and electronic elements,” Sassa explains. “In such cases, in-situ repair can be difficult. The whole system may need to be replaced.”
To overcome this problem, the Kyushu University researchers have been developing what they term “kinetic electronics” modules. These consist of electronic circuits and actuators that deform when an electrical current is applied to them so that they can mechanically and electrically connect to other modules. Before this connection takes place, different modules are separate, but after connection or “docking” takes place, one module can independently deform another when power is supplied through the point that connects them.
In this way, explains Sassa, the circuits can rearrange their own hardware structure. “Such functions have traditionally been used in mechanical systems, such as spacecraft, trains and modular robots, but we have now applied them to an electronic device.”
Sassa and colleagues fabricated their electrothermal bimorph actuators from polypropylene and polyimide films with heater electrodes and electrical circuits formed on them through a two-dimensional top-down process. Because the two polymers expand differently, Sassa explains that Joule heating causes selected actuator sections to bend. “Prescribed sequences of these motions produce docking and undocking and once docked, passive mechanical engagement maintains the connection without continuous power being supplied,” he says. “Undocking requires a separate actuation sequence.”
The researchers say they are working on miniaturizing their system and looking how to control it more intelligently. In the present study, which is detailed in npj Flexible Electronics, they demonstrated the docking mechanism using a small number of millimetre-scale independent sensors and actuators formed together on the circuit, with motion being controlled in sequence by an external microcontroller. They are now developing photolithographic processes to further decrease the size of these components and have already fabricated actuators smaller than 100 μm using these techniques.
“In a similar way to large-scale integration in conventional electronics, doing this will allow us to integrate very large numbers of these sensing and actuation elements, allowing the electronic circuit to form and change much more complex mechanical structures and functions,” says Sassa.
“We are also interested in so-called distributed control, in which the central controller does not need to specify every movement,” he adds. “Instead, many elements would follow relatively simple local control rules, from which advanced self-reconfiguration and self-organization could emerge.”
The post ‘Kinetic electronics’ make self-connecting circuits appeared first on Physics World.
Anyone who has struggled with an arcade claw machine knows that controlling a mechanical arm is not as easy as it looks. Excavator operators face a much harder version of the same problem. They must coordinate several joystick movements to control the machine’s boom, arm, bucket and cab at the same time. Learning those controls […]
The post MIT’s New Excavator Controller Could Help Beginners Dig Like Experts appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.
SIM cards are normally trusted parts of our phones and other connected devices. But new research shows that if a SIM card is malicious or compromised, it could become a surprisingly powerful tool for attacking the device that contains it. Researchers from the University of Birmingham, working with cybersecurity company Fuzzware, investigated how hostile SIM […]
The post Your SIM Card Could Become a Hidden Door into Your Phone, Car or EV Charger appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.
Researchers observed a hidden state triggered by light forming within 30 femtoseconds. A pulse of light sent a metal-organic framework into a hidden electronic state in just 30 femtoseconds. By watching the transformation almost as it happened, researchers uncovered a fleeting intermediate stage that appears to guide the material into its new state. The work [...] 
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