Enlarge / A forest of false-colored silicon nanowires. Flexible electronics, which could be used to control flexible robots , depend on the ability to produce electrical circuits that can be repeatedly stretched and bent while remaining operational. Silicon is obviously one of the most important building blocks of modern electronics, but even when it’s shaped into wires, it isn’t very stretchy. Recently, theoretical calculations have indicated that it may be possible to stretch silicon nanowire by as much as 23 percent, depending on its structure and the stretch direction. This raises an obvious question: why haven’t we been able to do so? Recently, an international team of scientists and engineers have directly probed the elastic strain limit of single-crystalline Si nanowires. The team found that stretching the Si nanowires almost to their theoretical limit is possible. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Stretching the limit of silicon nanowires for next-generation electronics
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Digital Trends: Among the 100 new products the company founder James Dyson wants to invent by 2020, the greatest investment in people and money is to improve rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, as reported by Forbes (Warning: paywalled). And Dyson is not planning incremental improvements. His opinion is that current Li-ion batteries don’t last long enough and aren’t safe enough — the latter as evidenced by their propensity to spontaneously catch on fire, which is rare but does happen. Dyson believes the answer lies in using ceramics to create solid-state lithium-ion batteries. Dyson says he intended to spend $1.4 billion in research and development and in building a battery factory over the next five years. Last year Dyson bought Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Sakti3, which focuses on creating advanced solid-state batteries, for $90 million. The global lithium-ion battery market accounts for $40 billion in annual sales, according to research firm Lux as cited by Forbes. Dyson’s company (which is an accurate description since he has 100-percent ownership) currently employs 3, 000 engineers worldwide. He intends to hire another 3, 000 by 2020. Their average age is 26. Dyson values young engineers, saying, “The enthusiasm and lack of fear is important. Not taking notice of experts and plowing on because you believe in something is important. It’s much easier to do when you’re young.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
