Bits Blog: Researchers Develop Flexible Metal for 3-D Printers

A group of researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a liquid metal material that could be used in 3-D printers and lead to flexible gadgets.

The technology is outlined in a paper published in the journal Advanced Materials, which describes the flexible metal as “stretchable” and explains that many tiny dots of this material could be placed together to create larger, bendable sheets of metal.

screenshot via North Carolina State University Small drops of metal could be connected together to create flexible electronics.

The metal, an alloy of gallium and indium, is liquid at room temperature. But when it is exposed to air the alloy can create a thin skin around its outer layer. Think of the way air bubbles look when floating on top of water.

Although flexible metal might sound futuristic enough, the paper also says that this metal can be “self-healing,” similar to animals that can regenerate limbs when they are sliced off.

“These stretchable wires can be completely severed with scissors and rapidly self-heal both mechanically and electrically,” the paper notes.

A video demonstrating how the technology works uses a syringe to produce tiny dots of the metal that connect with each other and collectively join together.

“The fact that they are liquid means you could surround them with another material like rubber to make metallic structures that you can stretch and deform,” Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of engineering at North Carolina State University, told New Scientist in an interview.

Mr. Dickey said that if the syringe was switched with a 3-D printing head, that would produce a 3-D printer that could print metal. There is at least one caveat though. The material’s cost, he said, is roughly 100 times that of 3-D printing plastic.

Who Should Develop Games For LucasArts?

With LucasArts closed, and internal development ceased, the studio has become a licensing house for others to borrow brands and create new games. With that in mind, the IGN editors convened to fantasize about what the future might hold -- obviously the completion of Star Wars: 1313 would make sense if, say, Crystal Dynamics picked up development. Of course DICE would do a great Battlefront reboot. But we wanted to explore less obvious options.

Let us know what you'd like to see come from the limitless potential that is the new era of LucasArts.

Volition Presents: Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter 2

Dan Stapleton, Executive Editor

These days Volition's mostly known for Saints Row and Red Faction, but back in the late 1990s it was responsible for Descent: FreeSpace and FreeSpace 2, which are to this day regarded as some of the best space combat games ever made. I can't think of anyone I'd rather see pick up the X-Wing/TIE Fighter mantle from Totally Games (which is now mostly a mobile developer). It's not a radical reinvention, but a modern Star Wars space-combat game is just something that needs to exist.

Relic Presents: Star Wars: Empire at War 2

Dan Stapleton, Still Executive Editor

The original Empire at War was alright, but the ground combat lacked detail and the space combat lacked tactical gameplay. There's only one RTS developer I know capable of developing both intense ground- and space-based warfare, and it's the studio that brought us both Homeworld and Company of Heroes. Imagining a game that begins as a Homeworld-style, true 3D space battles with Star Destroyers launching waves of TIE Fighters, Interceptors, and Bombers against Mon Calamari Cruisers loaded with X-Wings, A-Wings, and B-Wings, then transitioning to a Company of Heroes-style battle between Stormtroopers with AT-AT and AT-ST walkers and Rebel troops (perhaps with Warhammer: Dawn of War 2-style Jedi heroes thrown in) is enough to make any Star Wars fan lose his mind.

Bungie Presents: Rogue Squadron

Sam Claiborn, Executive Editor

I only want to do one thing in a Star Wars game: I want to fly X-Wings around. Space combat is the focus of the very best Star Wars games, including the original Atari Star Wars and Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader. In Halo: Reach, Bungie captured a little bit of the Rogue Squadron spirit in the Saber battles above Reach. I'd like to see an entire Halo space combat game, but now that Bungie has divorced the series, I'd like to see them tackle the Death Star.

Square-Enix and Eidos Present: Star Wars 1313

Meghan Sullivan, Database Editor Star Wars 1313 was a game that caused many Star War fans (and video game fans in general) to sit up and take notice. The trailer featured over-the-top action, great graphics and what looked to be an interesting storyline. Now that LucasArts has closed shop, who could possibly make 1313 a reality? BioWare would be one possible candidate (no doubt they'd love a fresh start with the franchise after Star Wars: The Old Republic), but a more exciting option would be Square-Enix. After all, who better to handle amazing graphics, over-the-top action and crazy storylines than the makers of Final Fantasy? And should fans fear the story might get a little TOO zany, Square-Enix could always hand the game over Eidos Montreal, a studio that could probably handle the grittier side of the story and action.

Gearbox Software Presents: Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Marty Sliva, Associate Editor

I'm sure a lot of these suggestions are going to revolve around Star Wars or something from the holy trinity/law firm of Schafer, Grossman, and Gilbert, but I'd love to see someone like Gearbox tackle a sequel to Zombies Ate My Neighbors. I'm picturing the loot-based madness of Borderlands, but set in the pastiche '50s Americana of the SNES classic. I'd love to roam the streets of a ghoul-infested Anytown, USA armed with water guns, soda cans, and inflatable clown dolls.

Firaxis Presents: The Clone Wars

Flip the bird to continuity and bring some non-canonical concepts in there, like the Yuuzhan Vong. Capture a Holocron and add Nomi Sunrider's Force ghost to your army.

Jeremy Parish, Executive Editor

The world knows and loves Firaxis for its vast, engrossing Civilization series. For their next attempt, why not take on the art of conquest at an even larger scale? As in, a civil war engulfing the entirety of a galaxy far, far away? Take the turn-based strategy, politics, and resource management of Civ into the Star Wars universe as the Republic and Separatists duke it out for galactic supremacy, swaying systems to their side and unleashing special units like Jedis and Sith as resources allow.

Flip the bird to continuity and bring some non-canonical concepts in there, like the Yuuzhan Vong. Capture a Holocron and add Nomi Sunrider's Force ghost to your army. Go hog wild.

People Can Fly Presents: Clone Squadron

Bob Fekete, Associate Editor

People Can Fly should make a Clones game that is a squad-based shooter. It would feature a group of clones cutting their way through the forces of the Confederacy, often meeting up with various Jedi to help them with their missions. It would feature many different planets to fight on, with tons of signature weapons from across the galaxy (think fighting on Kashyyyk and getting a Wookiee bowcaster). This game would be perfect for both split-screen and online co-op, and would run on the Unreal 4 engine.

Spicy Horse Presents: Labyrinth

Mike Pereira, Video Producer

American McGee's team reinvented Wonderland as dark and terrifying mirror to Alice's broken psyche. Since Labyrinth is already a dark and terrifying mirror (and broke my own psyche as a wee child), this would be an awesome fit. Spicy Horse is great at coming up with an atmospheric sense of place, which is also the strong point of the movie (other than David Bowie's amazing hair). At the very least, I'd love to see some of the goblin/Bowie designs that the team comes up with. Let's just hope that the game wouldn't linger on Bowie's...er...Goblin King as much as the movie does.

FromSoftware Presents: Star Wars: 100-Year Darkness

Casey Lynch, Head of Brand and Community

Imagine a third-person combat-driven exploration of the origin story of the dark side of the Force told through the perspective of the first Sith Lord, Ajunta Pall. In the maniacal hands of FromSoftware, we'd get razor sharp lightsaber CQC and force-fueled PVP action, presented through the twisted and abyssal point of view of the lords of Lordran. Take my money now!

Naughty Dog Presents: Han Solo Origins

Sean Allen, Community Manager

Imagine exploring what turned Han from a street beggar into one of the greatest smugglers in the Galaxy. The story could cover the meet-up between Chewbacca and Han and the origin of Chewie's life debt. Over the course of the game you would win the Millennium Falcon from Lando, escape from Jabba and shake off the Imperial blockades. Gameplay would be much like Uncharted on alien worlds, with a combination of action, sneaking and exploration. The dialogue trees would feature the moral choices of Mass Effect which would in turn not shape the outcome, but how the characters react to Han. Was Han a good man turned bad? Or a bad man turned good? YOU GET TO DECIDE IF HE SHOOTS FIRST. Though the game would not be co-op, Chewbacca would be fighting at your side throughout the length of the game a la Elizabeth in Bioshock. The main story would focus on the odd friendship between Chewy and Han. Not bad, right?

Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor at IGN. He’s also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.

Duke Researchers Develop a New Way to Compress Images

Using a new class of artificial materials, scientists at Duke University have designed a sensor that compresses images far more efficiently than existing technologies like JPEG.

The materials, called metamaterials, have exotic qualities that bend light, X-rays and radio waves in unusual ways.

While they are barely a decade old, they are fast falling in cost and are expected to become commercially available beginning within two years for a wide array of applications, including radio communications, security and automotive safety.

In 2006, the Duke researchers made headlines by demonstrating that an “invisibility cloak” could be created by bending the light that strikes a metamaterial.

The researchers, at the Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics, reported Thursday in the journal Science that their scanning sensor captures both still and video images while simplifying compression by integrating it directly into the sensor array.

A cost advantage of the new technology is that it permits image compression to be performed directly by the sensor hardware, rather than by the specialized hardware and software in use today.

Although the cost of optical sensors has fallen rapidly, automobile manufacturers have been searching for alternatives to expensive laser radar, or Lidar, to provide sensors that work in a range of natural light conditions, including night, dust clouds and snowstorms.

The current generation of airport millimeter-wave security scanners has gained popularity because they do not rely on X-ray radiation and its attendant health risks.

But they require an elaborate mechanical arm that sweeps around a passenger standing in a scanning booth.

“The drawbacks are that it takes time and adds a lot of expense because of complicated mechanical rotors,” said the lead author of the Science paper, John Hunt, a graduate researcher at the Duke center. “We have been trying to replace the whole system with one that has no moving parts.”

Although the design of metamaterial sensors might offer high compression ratios, Mr. Hunt said the real advantage lay in the potential for reductions in size. For example, he noted, even the most advanced planes and boats today use a mechanically steered dish antenna for radar. This requires setting aside a large space to swivel the dish.

“Our system could potentially replace that with a flat sheet wrapped onto the side of the fuselage,” he said.

Another potential advantage is speed. Intellectual Ventures, established by the former Microsoft chief scientist Nathan Myhrvold, has started a company to develop communications antennas made from metamaterials.

The company, Kymeta, has said it will introduce an inexpensive high-speed satellite antenna as soon as the end of next year. Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, is an investor.

Depending on the wavelength they are focused on, metamaterials are made with either printed circuit boards or semiconductors. The sensor elements can be laid out in a linear array or as a three-dimensional matrix.

If the elements are small enough, the materials can manipulate visible light; other researchers are exploring applications with both sound waves and seismic waves.

Metamaterials bend radiation more sharply than natural materials. One of their strangest qualities is the ability to create a structure with what scientists call a “negative refractive index” — a behavior of light and other forms of radiation that is not found when light waves pass through materials like glass or water. They can be aimed in many different directions, or used in parallel to increase bandwidth.