There has been a massive boom in wind power capacity both in Europe and worldwide. In 2015 global installed capacity was around 350 GW, with 135 GW installed in Europe, distributed across some 87,000 wind turbines. Wind power now provides a bigger share (13%) of electricity than nuclear power stations.

Speed may not be witchcraft, but it is the basis for technologies that often seem like magic. Modern computers, for instance, are as powerful as they are because tiny switches inside them steer electric currents in fractions of a billionth of a second. The incredible data flows of the internet, on the other hand, are only possible because extremely fast electro-optic modulators can send information through fibre-optic cables in the shape of very ...

Nine students from ETH Zurich and ZHdK are preparing to take on developers from renowned manufacturers and universities from around the world with their "Scewo" wheelchair at the Cybathlon. The Balgrist campus is bustling with activity. After ten months and countless technical changes, the revised wheelchair from the Scewo team is ready for its first test drive.

A deuteron is a very simple atomic nucleus made up of just one proton and one neutron — that is, one each of the two nuclear building blocks. An international research collaboration, working at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, has measured the deuteron more accurately than ever before. The value they obtained for the radius of the deuteron does not, however, correspond to the measurements of other research groups but instead shows a signifi...

A team based at ETH Zurich, Switzerland has introduced two theoretical approaches to stabilise the ferromagnetic state in quantum gases to help study the characteristics of itinerant ferromagnetic materials. These results were recently published in EPJ B by Ilia Zintchenko and colleagues. Physicists already know that magnetic order can arise in materials when the temperature drops below their material-specific critical temperature.

  Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a lithium-ion battery made entirely of solid material: it contains neither liquids nor gels. The battery cannot ignite, even at very high temperatures, giving it a safety advantage over conventional batteries. In addition, they allow new forms of battery design.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a lattice structure capable of absorbing a wide range of vibrations while also being useful as a load-bearing component – for example, in propellers, rotors and rockets. It can absorb vibrations in the audible range, which are the most undesirable in engineering applications. Vibrations from a bus engine can sometimes be felt uncomfortably strongly through the seats.

  Researchers from ETH Zurich (Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering) and the ETH spin-off Celeroton have developed an ultra-fast magnetically levitated electric motor for reaction wheels. The high speed of rotation allows intensive miniaturisation of the drive system, making it attractive for use in small satellites.

ETH researchers have developed a method using a nanosyringe whose tiny needle is able to penetrate single living cells and extract their content. The technology can be used for cell cultures, for example, in order to investigate the interior of the cells. This allows scientists to identify the differences between individual cells at the molecular level, as well as to identify and analyse rare cell types.

An ETH spin-off, Vir2sense, specialises in the development of virtual testbeds designed to optimise the performance of marine diesel engines. The young entrepreneurs, Christophe Barro and Panagiotis Kyrtatos, hope to sell their product to big shipping companies. In the world of global shipping, deep-sea vessels are the industry’s workhorses, tirelessly transporting goods across the main maritime routes.

  For the first time, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the ETH Zurich have unveiled a chemical process that uses the sun’s thermal energy to convert carbon dioxide and water directly into high-energy fuels. This discovery marks a significant step towards the chemical storage of solar energy.

Materials researchers at the Swiss Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in Villigen and the ETH Zurich have developed a very simple and cost-effective procedure for significantly enhancing the performance of conventional Li-ion rechargeable batteries. The procedure is scalable in size, so the use of rechargeable batteries will be optimised in all areas of application-whether in wristwatches, smartphones, laptops or cars.

At the Cybathlon, 74 athletes from 25 countries will be showing how robotic technology helps them in their daily lives. In 100 days, the starting gun will be fired on the world’s first trial of bionic strength. The Swiss public broadcaster Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF) will incorporate the Cybathlon into a day of themed programming and broadcast the unique competition live.

Iron, sodium, magnesium and sulphur – with these four simple chemical elements, Maksym Kovalenko, Assistant Professor for Functional Inorganic Materials at ETH Zurich, together with his colleagues at Empa (the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) in Dübendorf, intends to build a high-performance battery. The researchers’ goal is to overcome a fundamental dilemma associated with the use of bat...

The present-day chemical industry is based on oil. Many chemical products – from plastics through to detergents and solvents to medication and crop protection products – have their origins in oil and its constituents. Since oil reserves are finite, scientists have been looking for ways to manufacture these products from sustainable materials. An international research team has now demonstrated just such an alternative manufacturi...

ETH Zurich will present a whole range of projects at this year’s International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. At the invitation of curator Alejandro Aravena, several project groups in which ETH is involved will present their contributions in the main exhibition, exhibit at national pavilions and play an active role in the supporting programme. Confronted with rapid population growth, urban regions face an influx of migrants and the...

ETH scientists have discovered a catalyst that allows the easy conversion of natural gas constituents into precursors for the production of fuels or complex chemicals, such as polymers or pharmaceuticals. The new catalyst is extremely stable and results in fewer unwanted by-products. The use of natural gas as a raw material for chemicals production is a goal pursued intensively in chemical research.

Researchers at ETH Zurich, Disney Research Zurich, and Carnegie Mellon University have developed a software tool that empowers average users to design custom robotic creatures and their movements. The user starts by creating a basic skeleton for the desired robot, specifying how many extremities the figure will have and how many segments there will be in the backbone. This skeleton can be modified at will by extending or shortening its segme...

Researchers at ETH Zurich have established a record for the size of quantum states generated with massive particles. Their technique could be used to make quantum computers faster. During the last decades, quantum physicists have been working towards reaching their dream: to be able to control single atoms, molecules or other tiny particles governed by the laws of quantum physics so accurately that it would be possible to build new types of ...

Scientists at ETH Zurich and IBM Research Zurich have developed a technique that enables for the first time the manufacture of complexly structured tiny objects joining together microspheres. The objects have a size of just a few micrometres and are produced in a modular fashion, making it possible to program their design in such a way that each component exhibits different physical properties.