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Laser Folds Tiny Origami for US Army

A team of researchers figured out how to get 3 mm microstructures to fold in response to low-intensity laser light, but now their focus is even smaller. CREDIT: U.S. Army Research Laboratory

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Lasers could help fire weapons or set off explosive warheads for the U.S. Army in the near future. That possibility comes from a lab demonstration of how a simple, handheld laser can fold tiny metallic structures in a style that mimics Japanese origami.

The demonstration suggests that similar systems could produce tiny grippers and switches that would act as mechanical components in small devices. The components could be used to detonate explosive or propellant material, attach identification transponder tags to clothing, or even enable a new generation of extremely tiny robots or electronic devices.

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"We are enabling true microsystems, where all of the energy and functions are self-contained in a millimeter- or smaller-sized package," said Christopher Morris, a researcher focused on micro-materials and devices at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

Army researchers became interested in the concept after seeing work that Johns Hopkins University had done in making micro devices for performing surgery. But the Army took the method a step farther by creating millimeter-sized structures that could be triggered by low-power lasers or even LED lighting.

The tiny structures act as mechanical hinges capable of folding along certain "stress" lines built into the layered metal. When a laser shines onto the structure, its energy softens a polymer "trigger" that normally prevents the hinges from folding.

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A handheld laser operating on "eye-safe" levels could trigger the folding action from up to 3 feet away during testing detailed in the journal Applied Physics Letters and highlighted in the journal Nature Photonics.

Folding time ranged from 67 milliseconds to 21 seconds, depending on the wavelength and intensity of laser light, but larger structures required several minutes. The Army Research Laboratory takes about 20 hours to make a sheet of the millimeter-sized folding structures.

"Our hope is that new uses will spur from this basic scientific exploration of novel fabrication and self- assembly of materials, and will help future soldiers in ways they may not even see," Morris said.

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Create Your Own Bike Lane, on the Go

A mounted laser that projects bike lane lines onto the street at night joins the ranks of lit-up safety gear for cyclists. The question is: Does it actually work?

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The XFire bike lane safety light was created by a Los Angeles based company with the goal of helping bike commuters stay safe. The patent-pending light costs about $40, contains five bright red LEDs, and projects two visible red laser lines on either side of the bike. It reminded me a little of the BLAZE device, which projects a bright green shared lane symbol on the road ahead of a cyclist.

British blogger Trevor Ward recently took the XFire tail-light for a spin and described his experiences in the Guardian online. Although a dog walker was impressed by the lasers, a neighbor who followed Ward in her car said she didn't really notice the lines and didn't feel the need to give him more room.

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You might be wondering why I try the XFire out myself. The truth is I've already got some bright (and expensive) flashing bike lights, and they've made me realize that lights can only do so much.

Many Colorado drivers don't care that my bike is lit front and back, or that I'm in a bike lane with reflective painted lines, or even that the crosswalk just automatically lit up to signal that they should stop for me. There have been a bunch close calls, and I was carefully following the rules.

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Better city planning could make more of a difference. Recently several main streets in my Denver neighborhood, which hasn't historically been the most bike-friendly area, were painted with shared lane symbols. Two bike shops have also opened up. Lasers are fun, but I'm looking forward to the day when drivers expect to see bikers everywhere.

Photo: Still from a video showing the XFire laser system in action. Credit: Alex Choi

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Laser-Guided Gas Mask Points the Way Out

If you're like me, you own a fire extinguisher, but not a gas mask. But this gas mask, called the Arrow won a Red Dot Award for best design and it could be worth buying. It's still in the concept phase, but the idea is worthy.

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The mask is connected via a wireless signal to a building's network and to emergency personnel. The wearer pulls a string to turn on the mask's power and activate it's radio frequency technology. This wireless form of communication locates the nearest, safest exit sign and a built-in laser guides the wearer to the exit by shining an arrow on the floor. Since the laser cuts through the smoke there is no danger of getting lost in the low visibility. The mask also does what other masks do: it filters the toxic air, making it possible to breath.

Credit: Jeon Design Lab

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Laser Controls Worm's Brain

From the department of "I hope this never happens to me," scientists have used a laser to manipulate the behavior of a worm. First, a research team from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute genetically engineered a tiny, transparent worm called Caenorhabditis elegans to have neurons that give off fluorescent light. This allowed the neurons to be tracked during experiments. The scientists also engineered the neurons to be sensitive to light, which made it possible to activate them with pulses of laser light. Next, they built a movable table for the worm to crawl on, keeping it aligned beneath a camera and laser.

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They used the laser to activate a single neuron at a time. By doing so, they were able to control a worm's behavior and its senses. In tests, which the researchers published in the journal Nature, the laser made the worm turn left or right and move through a loop. The laser also tricked the worm brain into thinking food was nearby. The worm, in turn, wiggled toward what it thought was a meal.

The research, which on the surface seems like a bit of a circus, actually is important because it shows scientists which neurons are responsible for what.

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"If we can understand simple nervous systems to the point of completely controlling them, then it may be a possibility that we can gain a comprehensive understanding of more complex systems," said Sharad Ramanathan, an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and of Applied Physics. "This gives us a framework to think about neural circuits, how to manipulate them, which circuit to manipulate and what activity patterns to produce in them."

via Medical Xpress

Credit: NIH

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Lasers Printed on Paper with Inkjet Tech

Lasers are everywhere -- in DVD players, fiber optic communications and even displays. They are so useful it would be great if they were flexible and easy to make, but that hasn't been the case, until now.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom have developed a way to print lasers on a variety of surfaces using a printer similar to an inkjet version. The technique could improve display technologies and also lead to better drugs that treat disease.

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The team, led by D. J. Gardiner of the Center for Molecular Materials for Photonics, started with an inkjet-like printer and "ink" made from a solution of fluorescent dye and liquid crystals like those used in liquid crystal displays, or LCDs. After putting the liquid crystal ink into the printer, the scientists printed tiny dots onto a wet polymer that covered a substrate. The polymer dried out and in the process caused spiral-shaped molecules in the liquid crystals to align in a particular way.

The alignment is important because the spiral acts like an optical cavity, confining the lightwaves and forcing them to move "in step," or coherently, the way laser beams move.

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Once the dots were dry, the scientists shone a different laser through the printed material. This "pumped" the liquid crystals and fluorescent dye, producing the extra energy needed to create a laser beam.

Gardiner told Discovery News that while it might seem odd to use a laser beam to create a laser beam, the method is efficient because they use a simpler laser to create smaller, more complicated lasers.

Liquid Silver Used To Print Electronic Circuits

Once the laser was shone onto the printed dots, the dots emitted laser light in either one or two directions. If the material printed on was opaque, the laser light went one way, and if it was transparent, the light got emitted both front and back.

A big benefit with this method is that by changing the color of the fluorescent dye and the spiral shape of the molecules, scientists can control the wavelength of laser light. There are some wavelengths for which lasers are expensive and difficult to build. And this makes it easier and cheaper.

This kind of technology could be used for displays, but Gardiner said he sees more immediate applications in sensing and diagnostics. Currently, several kinds of medical tests involve attaching flourescent dyes to a molecule of interest and then hitting it with a laser beam. Being able to print an array of hundreds of cheap laser test sites (each with its own combination of test substances) would speed up those processes tremendously. That could lead to improved drugs for treating illnesses.

The research was published in the Journal Soft Matter.

via University of Cambridge

Credit: University of Cambridge

Laser Beams Shoot from Printer

Lasers are everywhere -- in DVD players, fiber optic communications and even displays. They are so useful it would be great if they were flexible and easy to make, but that hasn't been the case, until now.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. have developed a way to print lasers on a variety of surfaces, using a printer not too far removed from the one on an average desktop.

The team, led by D.J. Gardiner of the Center for Molecular Materials for Photonics, used liquid crystals similar to those used in liquid crystal displays. With the right kind of stimulation, the molecules in liquid crystals emit laser light.

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The molecules are arranged in spiral patterns, which causes them to act as optical cavities. Optical cavities are one way to make laser light, because the cavity confines light in such a way that all the light waves are "in step," or coherent -- a laser beam. Because the liquid crystal molecules can change their arrangement, it's possible to change what wavelengths are reflected.

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Ordinarily a lasing material has to be "pumped" with some external source of energy. In this case it's pumped with laser light. To get that final bit of "gain" a fluorescent dye is added to the liquid crystals, and it's that gain which produces the extra energy for the laser.

Gardiner told Discovery News that while it might seem odd to produce laser light with another laser, that can be more efficient than other methods. The ability to control what wavelength of laser light comes out by controlling the size of the spiral and the color of the dye is also a big plus, because there are some wavelengths for which lasers are expensive or harder to build.

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This technology isn't unusual; such lasers are often laid down between sheets of glass. Gardiner and his team found a way to print the liquid crystal on any surface using an ink jet-type system. The liquid crystals are printed as tiny dots on a wet polymer that covers a substrate. The polymer dries out and in the process aligns the liquid crystal molecules. Since it can work on any surface, the lasers can be flexible rather than rigid as on glass displays. Once laser light is shined on the printed dots, they emit laser light in either one or two directions. If the material they are printed on is opaque the laser light only goes one way, and if it is transparent it is emitted both front and back.

This kind of technology can be used in the display industry, but Grdiner said he sees more immediate applications in sensing and diagnostics. Currently, everal kinds of medical tests involve using a bio-marker that attaches to the molecule one is interested in and hitting it with laser light. Being able to print an array of hundreds of cheap test sites (each with its own combintion of test substances) would speed those processes tremendously.

The research was published in the Journal Soft Matter.

via University of Cambridge

Credit: University of Cambridge

 

TechShop: Laser Cutters For The People

In lesser hands, the TechShop could be an incubator for industrial accidents.

This two-story industrial space near downtown San Francisco hosts dozens of powerful machine tools that can turn everyday materials into new and innovative objects, but which can also inflict serious damage on their operators. And anybody can sign up to spend their days here for $125 a month.

That makes it one of the most visible outgrowths of "maker" do-it-yourself culture. I stopped by TechShop SF -- other locations exist farther south in the Bay Area in Menlo Park and San Jose; the Detroit suburb of Allen Park; Raleigh, N.C.; and, coming over the next few months, Round Rock, Tex.; Pittsburgh and Arlington, Va. -- to get a sense of its possibilities.

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The first warning that this 17,000-square-foot facility isn't a typical operation is the waiver you must sign before stepping onto the shop floor. You can hear the need for that paperwork from the lobby: a raucous array of cutting, shaping and joining tools, many with names that evoke medieval torture instruments.

For instance, a mechanical "planishing hammer" pounds metal into various shapes, while an "English wheel" bends it into complex curves. A larger contraption, the Jaws IV Ironworker, "can put a hole into anything," summarized TechShop user Jesse Harrington Au (his day job is at the design-software firm Autodesk, a partner of TechShop) as he held a half-inch steel plate with a circle cleanly cut out.

Farther down the hall, a waterjet cutter mixes fine grit with a 15,000-psi stream of water to precisely carve metal and other immovable objects. Much of this apparatus consists of a bed of water to absorb that punishment and prevent the thing from destroying the floor underneath.

A computer-controlled router uses a series of fan-driven vacuums to hold large pieces of wood in place; they make more noise than the bit that smoothly begins carving an arc through a thick section of flooring.

(Chief experience officer Dan Woods said the shop hasn't had any "super serious accidents ever… no missing limbs or eyes or anything like that," although one user did lose a thumbnail last month.)

The upstairs is quieter and feels less industrial, with meeting rooms and smaller devices such as 3-D printers and laser cutters. The former build objects from extruded plastic--in some cases, based on patterns generated from photos of a real-world object using software like Autodesk's 123D Catch. (Take a moment to contemplate cloning physical items with some of the same computerized ease as songs or movies.) The latter, Harrington Au said, represent "the gateway drug of TechShop," carving and whittling cardboard, wood, glass and other material with astonishing delicacy.

TechShop members have employed all this hardware to craft decorations and trinkets (for example, the tiny cardboard model of the Millennium Falcon above) as well as larger, more serious things.

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One showed off a folding kayak, made out of corrugated polyethylene not too different from the plastic tubs in post offices. The Square payment-processing company prototyped its mobile credit-card reader here. OpenROV assembles small, remote-controlled submarines here out of laser-cut plastic parts, circuit boards and such outsourced parts as propellors.

And one member, after building his own 3D printer here, has since gone into business as Type A Machines to manufacture more of them. In its own weird way, this shop has begun to reproduce itself.

Updated to correct the order of TechShop openings and Harrington Au's relationship.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

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Could Laser Beams Induce Rain?

Charles Dudley Warner, a friend of Mark Twain, wrote, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." He'd have thought differently if he had laser beams.

A review in the Institute of Physics' Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, says that it might be possible to use high-powered laser beams to make it rain. This might be an alternative to seeding clouds, either with dry ice or silver iodide particles. While such seeding is common, it isn't always clear how effective it is and the results can vary a lot. It's also unclear what the consequences are to the atmosphere in those areas where seeding is done.

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The paper, by Jérôme Kasparian, Philipp Rohwetter, Ludger Wost and Jean-Pierre Wolf, outlines methods of controlling how water condenses in the atmosphere and how it might be controlled with high-powered laser beams.

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They write that a powerful enough laser beam fired into the atmosphere would break up the atomic ozone and nitrous oxide, which ultimately form nitric acid. Particles of nitric acid are big enough to support droplets and that could lead to rain.

The beam itself doesn't last long, as the flash is measured in femtoseconds, or millionths of a billionth of a second. That's about how long it takes a beam of light to move 300 nanometers, or the length of a very fine dust particle.

Kasparian, of the University of Geneva, led a team that demonstrated using lasers to induce condensation in 2010, using femtosecond laser pulses at powers measured in terawatts. The laser caused water droplets to form in humid air. The droplets were too small to fall as rain but the experiment showed that the idea is feasible.

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There are still questions, though. Even though powerful lasers are a lot cheaper than they were even a decade ago it isn't clear this method would be cost-effective. The laser also has to be swept over a large volume of air very quickly. And it is still not known what power levels are needed to get a given volume of rainwater.

Photo: True-color image of laser-induced condensation in a cloud chamber, illuminated by a green auxiliary laser. Credit: Institute of Physics

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Weed-Killing Lasers Being Developed

Recently, I learned about a really effective way to get rid of weeds that peek out from sidewalk cracks: blowtorches. This is old news to most gardeners; using direct fire at the base of weeds has been an alternative to herbicides for decades. 

Looking for alternatives to herbicides is one reason that scientists at Leibniz University in Hanover, Germany, to come up with an even more badass method: lasers. Their method could reduce invasive weed species, while reducing the damage herbicides can do to soil and farmland.

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Using a greenhouse for their experiment, the scientist set up a contraption that has cameras and a laser set up on an overhead rail. The cameras image the plants and uses software to distinguish plants from weeds. Once the weeds are found, a CO2 laser hits them at their weakest point, which varies by species. Currently, the laser can treat an area of weed growth about a square meter in size. Larger versions of the green house will grow (forgive the pun) from this example.

As awesome as this seems, it does require a little finesse. The power of the lasers has to be just right. If it’s too weak, weeds can grow, rather than die out. Using the lasers on large parcels of land could require robots or airborne drones. But either way, gardening and farming is about to get a lot more technical.

via DVICE

Credit: Matt Johnston / Getty Images

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U.S. Navy Seeks First Shipboard Laser Weapon

The Office of Naval Research wants you -- to build a laser weapon.

On May 16, the Navy will be holding an "industry day," outlining to private companies what they want in a solid-state laser weapon. It's another step closer to actually building an off-the-shelf laser weapon that can be mounted a ship and used to fight against pirates, terrorists or other threats at sea.

The military has conducted proof-of-concept tests, so they know that laser weapons are possible, and they have a good idea of the technologies needed. Companies such as BAE Systems have built lasers to defend against pirates and in 2010 a laser shot down a drone at sea. Now it's a question of building one with all the specs that works in a real-world setting.

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The Navy wants a laser with tunable power, so that it can be turned down to be a non-lethal weapon, but able to generate enough that it can burn a hole in the hull of a small boat. It should also be able to survive being on a ship's deck and fire many times in a short period without overheating.

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Another thing the Navy is seeking is the ability to see whether a suspicious craft if friend or foe. That requires versatile -- rather like the scope on a sniper rifle.

"We want the system to be modular," said Peter Morrison, ONR's solid state laser program officer. "We want to be able to adjust the capabilities installed on it, and still have the ability to dial up the laser weapon's power to defeat threats."

All of these requirements point to a need for a solid state laser, which contains a solid material (hence the name) like a crystal or doped glass. An electrical current or light is directed at the crystal, exciting atoms inside it and releasing photons. Mirrors are used to direct those photons into a beam, producing the laser.

There are other types of lasers, such as those that use gas instead of a crystal to generate the beam. They tend to be more powerful than solid state laser, but they're also more bulky, which doesn't suit the deck of ship.

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Another advantage of solid-state lasers is that they can take the heat. Roger McGinnis, ONR's innovative naval prototype program executive, added that the power levels in solid-state lasers are easier to control than in other types.

Besides putting it on a ship, Morrison said one idea is to put it on an aircraft, though the details haven't been worked out yet.

Photo: A laser weapon of the type tested as part of the  Office of Naval Research-funded Maritime Laser Demonstration (MLD) in April 2011. Credit: U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams

via: Office of Naval Research

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