Discover new technologies by our partners

A Korean company is seeking to commercialize its innovative magnetic flux-controlling technology. The technology helps to hold or detach a magnetic body (armature) through controlling magnetic force with the arrangement of the permanent magnet rotating freely with a coil without using electronic power within less than 1 second. It helps address the inherent limitations faced by electropermanent magnets (EPM), such as instability, high power consumption and performance losses at high temperatures.Manufacturers of automobile components, magnetic drills, semiconductor, electromagnetic locks, deadbolt, safety equipment etc. are sought for license agreements.

This technology enables the seamless integration of multiple functional components into one flexible fiber with precise control over nanometre-level architecture and composition, at fiber length, uniformity, and cost. This technology also allows an all-in-fiber solution, achieving multiple functionalities, offering a lego-like template to enable the integration of different components into a single flexible fiber. These new fibers and their multi-dimensional fabrics have the ability to see, hear, and sense their surroundings, communicate, store and convert energy, monitor health, control temperature, and many more. This technology also offers industry scale-up capabilities, with kilometer length from one fabrication, to accomplish high production yield and cost-effectiveness.

The way we protect big data privacy is by mathematically decomposing big data into randomized fragments that are un-recognizable, un-linkable, and un-interpretable; these shredded fragments can then be sent over the internet or stored in multiple clouds, servers, or devices with metadata privacy. The attackers would need to search through the sea of big data in order to identify the fragments that belong to a particular record. What we are building is essentially a big data shredder that disperses the information of big data from different software applications into un-recognizable fragments before storing or communicating the data, by doing so, this technology provides the distributed trust in protecting the big data privacy. Big data is protected by different security mechanisms whether they are at rest or in transit using our proposed technology. Hackers will have to gain access to multiple storage locations and communication channels in order to retrieve the shredded fragments and recover the original records. For authorised users, the original data can be reconstructed instantaneously in any software applications, environments, or platforms using the metadata information and the corresponding shredded data fragments. Any security breach to the software application is confined to the amount of metadata loss during the attacks, thus our proposed technology differentiates ourselves from encryption because any loss of encryption keys may lead to massive data loss. As a mathematical technique, our proposed big data privacy solution can be easily integrated and combined with existing privacy-preserving technologies such as anonymization and encryption technology.

Woven authentication pattern in textile is an important method for identification, which commonly include fibers with different colors, such as security labels. However, the colored fiber is not a promising solution for authentication patterns as it would affect the appearance of the textiles and the visible pattern is less secure. Meanwhile, the limited choice of fluorescent limits the particularity of the constituent fibers and the authentication function is deeply dependent on the interweaving technique, which may be easily forged. Here, we demonstrate a new approach towards textile authentication by introducing fibers with predesigned functional structures. The emission of the fibers in the infrared region has been effectively modified by these structures, which can be directly observed under a thermal camera, while the formed pattern cannot be seen in the visible region. Textiles with thermal identification are thus achieved by the combination of functional pattern and interweaving technique.

The global energy dilemma and climate warming are becoming increasingly serious, with fifteen percent of the electricity being used for the cooling system. With advantages like air-permeability and stretchability when woven into clothing, radiative cooling textiles have been recognized as an effective strategy for personal thermal management. Some existing solution adopt an active cooling strategy where they use forced convention. However, such solutions required the use of mechanical devices to move air, which makes the entire solution bulky and requires external power sources. In many applications, this strategy is not practical. While some have explored radiative cooling, the existing radiative cooling solutions are mainly constructed by randomly embedding nanoparticles and undergo solution-based treatment processes, which is not environmentally friendly. We have developed and demonstrated a new method for constructing radiative cooling solution. Our proprietary fibers and thin films are designed and constructed with periodic structures inside. These periodic structures will greatly improve the cooling performance compared with randomly distributed structures. Our solution has the potential to be scaled up for  large-scale production without introducing harmful reagents.We have demonstrated that by using our passive cooling technology it is possible to achieve a temperature difference 6 deg C without the use of any external or additional devices.  

Nanoimprint is a lithographic technique to fabricate both micro- and nano-scale patterns via the mechanical deformation of an imprint resist. This technology offers a solution based on the combination of nanoimprinting and conventional injection molding elements—nanoinjection molding—which enables the production of micro- and nano-scale 3D free form products with functionalised surfaces. This technology allows the fabrication of high-resolution patterns that are suitable for us in optics, consumer products, biomedical and 3D imaging, amongst others. The high-resolution patterns are transferred to thermoplastic material and resin via a mold, and subsequently printed onto polymeric or glass substrates. As nanoimprint lithography and nanoinjection molding are highly versatile solutions with the ability to impart various functionalities, the technology owner is able to develop customised solutions for various applications, starting from patterning and mold fabrication to pilot-scale production.

Radio frequency localization principle is based on measurement of Received Signal Strength (RSS) from the anchor transmitters. Further corrections are made at runtime with compensation algorithm to remove noise and interference to accurately determine the location of the unknown node. This method can be accomplished with fixed-strength radio frequency transmission that allows RSS to be reliably measured. There are also variants that use different radio frequency to achieve different distance vs. precision vs. power consumption performance metrics.Leveraging on commonly available ISM band of 2.4GHz spectrum radio equipment, there are indoor positioning systems based on WiFi transmission (IEEE 802.11), Zigbee or equivalent (IEEE 802.15.4), and Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.3).This technology offers indoor location solution using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons because of its advantages of being low-cost, easy to deploy and maintain.

Wireless networks of wearable devices have so far been limited by challenges in the radiative loss, interference, and data security that are inherent to the use of radio-wave radiation for interconnection. Despite promising advances in advanced communication circuits and protocols, such wireless networks have not yet been widely adopted owing primarily to energy constraints and limited sensor lifetimes. The technology describes a method to confine radio-waves onto clothing patterned with conductive textiles. Wireless signals transmitted near these patterns, referred to as “metamaterial textiles”, propagate along the surface of the textile rather than into the surrounding space. Moreover, the geometry of the metamaterial textiles can be modified to direct the propagation of radio-waves and to implement passive devices for applications in energy transfer, sensing, and signal processing.

Transmission of viruses may occur through contaminated surfaces, where viruses can remain active for varying periods of time, from hours to several days, on different materials. To lower the possibility of spread of infections through contact with high-touch surfaces such as elevator buttons, grocery carts and door knobs, antimicrobial materials such as silver and copper ions are currently utilised. However, these solutions face challenges such as low durability and longer time needed to inactivate viruses. To overcome these challenges, durable anti-viral materials containing Copper (I) Oxide (Cu2O) and visible-light photocatalyst are developed. These materials are demonstrated to be able to inactivate >99% of viruses within an hour, even in environments without light. Using patented dispersion techniques, the active Cu2O and visible-light photocatalyst materials remain as stable, nano-sized particles on the outermost surfaces of products that incorporate them. This provides a large reaction surface area for high performance and durable anti-viral property.