Welcoming composite inks into the fold
A screen-printing approach to creating foldable circuits could make many functional devices easier and cheaper to mass produce.
Oct 13, 2021
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A screen-printing approach to creating foldable circuits could make many functional devices easier and cheaper to mass produce.
Oct 13, 2021
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35
Imagine flexible surgical instruments that can twist and turn in all directions like miniature octopus arms, or how about large and powerful robot tentacles that can work closely and safely with human workers on production ...
Jun 22, 2021
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Ever since the world's first ever microscope was invented in 1590 by Hans and Zacharias Janssen—a Dutch father and son—our curiosity for what goes on at the tiniest scales has led to development of increasingly powerful ...
Jun 8, 2021
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So far, silicon has been the primary material for the fabrication of integrated circuits (ICs) and other electronic components. Recently, however, researchers have been trying to identify new high-mobility semiconductors ...
In the ongoing process of miniaturization of logic and memory devices in electronic circuits, reducing the dimensions of interconnects—metal wires that link different components on a chip—is crucial to guarantee fast ...
Jun 25, 2020
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2-D semiconductors could have very useful applications, particularly as channel materials for low-power transistors. These materials display very high mobility at extreme thicknesses, which makes them particularly promising ...
The art of croissant making has inspired researchers from Queen Mary University of London to find a solution to a sustainable energy problem.
Oct 18, 2019
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Researchers at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and Technische Universität Dresden have recently designed a new type of inflatable robot for space navigation. These robots, presented in a paper published in SPIE Digital ...
A dielectric is an electrical insulator that can be polarized by an applied electric field. When a dielectric is placed in an electric field, electric charges do not flow through the material, as in a conductor, but only slightly shift from their average equilibrium positions causing dielectric polarization. Because of dielectric polarization, positive charges are displaced toward the field and negative charges shift in the opposite direction. This creates an internal electric field which reduces the overall field within the dielectric itself. If a dielectric is composed of weakly bonded molecules, those molecules not only become polarized, but also reorient so that their symmetry axis aligns to the field.
Although the term "insulator" implies low electrical conduction, "dielectric" is typically used to describe materials with a high polarizability. The latter is expressed by a number called the dielectric constant. A common, yet notable example of a dielectric is the electrically insulating material between the metallic plates of a capacitor. The polarization of the dielectric by the applied electric field increases the capacitor's surface charge.
The study of dielectric properties is concerned with the storage and dissipation of electric and magnetic energy in materials. It is important to explain various phenomena in electronics, optics, and solid-state physics.
The term "dielectric" was coined by William Whewell (from "dia-electric") in response to a request from Michael Faraday.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA