In the news

Imagine a future in which farmers manage crops with the touch of a tablet. “I have this vision of what it would look like,” says Nadia Shakoor, senior research scientist at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Drones fly over fields, sending alerts at the first sign of insect pests. Robots roll past crops, identifying disease. Soil sensors trigger water to spray only where crops are parched. The farmer, tablet in hand, remains at the helm—without being so tethered to the land. Maybe farmers sit on porches, says Shakoor, or “they are on a beach in Florida, and they are monitoring their farm.”

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — As smartwatches become more powerful, they will generate more heat. To prevent burns or rashes, what if a material touching the skin could feel as cool as metal, but also be flexible enough to be worn on the wrist? A team of Purdue University engineers has discovered that a type of fabric typically used for hiking gear has remarkable heat-conducting properties on par with stainless steel, potentially leading to wearable electronics that successfully cool both the device and the wearer’s skin. The material is made of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fibers, which are sold commercially under the brand name Dyneema. These polymer-based fabrics are marketed for their high strength, durability and abrasion resistance, and are often used to create body armor, specialty sports gear, ropes and nets.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Stone Age. The Bronze Age. The Iron Age. The Industrial Revolution. Eras tend to be defined by their technology, and humans may be headed for a new one: the Quantum Age.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Making fresh water out of seawater usually requires huge amounts of energy. The most widespread process for desalination is called reverse osmosis, which works by flowing seawater over a membrane at high pressure to remove the minerals. Now, Purdue University engineers have developed a variant of the process called “batch reverse osmosis,” which promises better energy efficiency, longer-lasting equipment and the ability to process water of much higher salinity. It could end up a difference-maker in water security around the world. Reverse osmosis is used in many countries; in arid places like the Middle East, more than half of the fresh drinking water supplies come from desalination facilities. But to maintain the high level of pressure required for the process – up to 70 times atmospheric pressure – a desalination plant must employ large numbers of pumps and other equipment. And that uses a lot of energy.

Purdue University has won 1st place in the Marine Energy Collegiate Competition, a contest sponsored by the US Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The design competition asked students to create a project that utilized marine energy technologies in a real-world setting.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — In an effort to curb global warming, Purdue University engineers have created the whitest paint yet. Coating buildings with this paint may one day cool them off enough to reduce the need for air conditioning, the researchers say. In October, the team created an ultra-white paint that pushed limits on how white paint can be. Now they’ve outdone that. The newer paint not only is whiter but also can keep surfaces cooler than the formulation that the researchers had previously demonstrated. “If you were to use this paint to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet, we estimate that you could get a cooling power of 10 kilowatts. That’s more powerful than the central air conditioners used by most houses,” said Xiulin Ruan, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering.

Purdue University has launched the Center for Secure Microelectronics Ecosystem (CSME) with support from industry partners and a U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)-funded workforce development program. CSME is a first-of-its-kind global partnership of academia, industry and government to advance research and workforce development in designing secure microelectronics. Its aim is to help ensure a secure supply of semiconductor chips and related products and tools, from the foundry to the packaged system, based on a zero-trust model. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), one of the world’s largest semiconductor contract manufacturers, is an industry partner.

Two Purdue researchers have been selected as Quantum Information Science and Engineering Network (QISE-NET) triplet awardees. The “triplets” – a group consisting of a university principal investigator, an industrial or national laboratory mentor, and a graduate student – come from a variety of disciplines relevant to advancing the development of quantum technologies such as materials science, chemistry, device engineering, physics, computer science and industrial research. Prospective candidates were required to submit a short and focused proposal that represents leading-edge research topics in quantum information science/engineering with potential for growth and follow-on work between the student, company or national laboratory and academic groups.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – New contact lens technology to help diagnose and monitor medical conditions may soon be ready for clinical trials. A team of researchers from Purdue University worked with biomedical, mechanical and chemical engineers, along with clinicians, to develop the novel technology. The team enabled commercial soft contact lenses to be a bioinstrumentation tool for unobtrusive monitoring of clinically important information associated with underlying ocular health conditions. The team’s work is published in Nature Communications. The Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization helped secure a patent for the technology, and it is available for licensing.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – If you want power, you lose battery life. If you want battery life, you lose power. That’s the situation facing users of most electronic devices – and it’s also the dilemma for electronics manufacturers. Purdue University innovators have come up with an invention to help. “Battery life technology, for the most part, has not been able to keep up with the other technology that requires the battery,” said Saeed Mohammadi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering in Purdue’s College of Engineering. “Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor [CMOS] is a battery-powered semiconductor chip inside computers and devices that stores information. CMOS requires a lot of power from the computer which, in turn, reduces the battery life.”