Liam Critchley

Sutton Coldfield

Freelance Science Writer and Editor at Freelance

Specialist Freelance #Chemistry and #Nanotechnology Writer | Advisory board member at @NGAgraphene and @NanotechnoWorld and @AMPTnetwork #scicomm

Articles

Are Zinc Microcapacitors the Future of Compact Energy Solutions?

5 days ago | spectrum.ieee.org | Liam Critchley

As electronics shrink, they require smaller components—including for energy storage. Batteries store a lot of energy but deliver power more slowly, whereas supercapacitors can rapidly charge and discharge but don’t hold much energy. This is the case not only for larger bulk batteries and supercapacitors, but also at much smaller scales, with both micro-batteries and micro-supercapacitors having the same limitations as their bigger counterparts.
Smart Glasses for the Visually Impaired with Sensor Fusion

1 week ago | electropages.com | Liam Critchley

Key Takeaways: Over 1 billion people globally live with visual impairment, with urban environments posing significant navigation risks due to fast-moving or sudden obstacles. A newly developed wearable device combines glasses and a smartphone to deliver real-time obstacle detection using cross-modal sensor fusion and AI. The system demonstrated 100% collision avoidance in field trials, with under-320ms end-to-end response time and over 11 hours of operational duration.
Bitcoin Mining's Big Impact on U.S. Electricity

1 week ago | spectrum.ieee.org | Liam Critchley

Bitcoin mining takes a lot of computation, and therefore, a lot of electricity. After the initial Bitcoin boom in China, the lure of cheaper electricity and a more stable power grid has lured many of the world’s Bitcoin mines to the United States. With that shift comes a corresponding shift in the greenhouse gases and other pollutants created by the energy production required for Bitcoin mining.
Quantum transducer enables optical control of a superconducting qubit – Physics World

2 weeks ago | physicsworld.com | Liam Critchley

The future of quantum communication and quantum computing technologies may well revolve around superconducting qubits and quantum circuits, which have already been shown to improve processing capabilities over classical supercomputers – even when there is noise within the system. This scenario could be one step closer with the development of a novel quantum transducer by a team headed up at the Harvard John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).
How Big Data Could Reduce Traffic Carbon Emissions

3 weeks ago | electropages.com | Liam Critchley

Key Thing to Know: Urban road traffic is a major emitter, contributing 11.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions—around 5.88 billion tonnes annually—with congestion in cities like London and Paris generating millions of tonnes of CO₂ each year. China’s megacities face a growing challenge, with transport emissions rising from 96 million tonnes in 1990 to 996 million tonnes in 2021, threatening progress toward the country’s 2060 carbon neutrality goals.
Nanogap Pressure Sensors in Capacitive HMI Technology

1 month ago | electropages.com | Liam Critchley

Key Thing to Know: Flexible pressure sensors are essential for enabling fine motor control in humanoid robots, but current versions often struggle with interference from moisture, bending, and electromagnetic fields in real-world environments. Capacitive pressure sensors are a promising class thanks to their durability and temperature stability, but they are currently limited by external interferences like EMI and moisture, which affect accuracy and reliability.
Extracting Uranium from Seawater for Clean Energy

1 month ago | electropages.com | Liam Critchley

Key Thing to Know: Uranium in seawater is a vast, untapped resource, with ~4.5 billion tonnes—about 1,000 times more than land-based reserves—but traditional extraction methods produce impure uranium. Electrochemical extraction offers a promising solution by reducing uranium (VI) to uranium (IV), improving extraction efficiency and purity, though it depends heavily on advanced electrode design.
Solar cell greenhouse accelerates plant growth – Physics World

1 month ago | physicsworld.com | Liam Critchley

Agrivoltaics is an interdisciplinary research area that lies at the intersection of photovoltaics (PVs) and agriculture. Traditional PV systems used in agricultural settings are made from silicon materials and are opaque. The opaque nature of these solar cells can block sunlight reaching plants and hinder their growth. As such, there’s a need for advanced semi-transparent solar cells that can provide sufficient power but still enable plants to grow instead of casting a shadow over them.
Shaping the Future of Smart Farming

1 month ago | electronicsmedia.info | Liam Critchley

Industrial robots have been around since the 1950s, but their capabilities and intelligence have steadily advanced in line with new material, technology, fabrication, and computing advancements. By leveraging advanced computer science, sensing, and control capabilities that are now at their fingertips, engineers have rapidly transformed modern agricultural robots.
Where is AI Being Used to Improve AMRs?

1 month ago | eetimes.com | Liam Critchley

//php echo do_shortcode('[responsivevoice_button voice="US English Male" buttontext="Listen to Post"]') ?> Advanced algorithms are used in Autonomous Mobile Robot (ARM) sensing, monitoring and movement operations. While many algorithms provide AMRs with autonomous capabilities, the integration of AI algorithms, such as machine learning, deep learning and reinforcement learning, are being used to optimize AMR operations to make them more efficient at performing their tasks.