Phys.org July 10, 2023 Manganese (Mn) dendrites are a common type of mineral dendrite that typically forms two-dimensional structures on rock surfaces. Three-dimensional (3-D) Mn dendrites in rocks have rarely been reported, and so their growth implications have largely escaped attention. Understanding the dynamics of the growth of three-dimensional mineral dendrites is important for various fields of science—physics, geology, material sciences and even the study of extraterrestrial environments. An international team of researchers (Austria, Poland, UK) combined high-resolution X-ray and electron-based data with numerical modeling to give the first detailed description of natural 3-D Mn dendrites (in clinoptilolite tuffs) and […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of July 7, 2023
01. Physicists develop a metamaterial that can count 02. Cutting edge transistors for semiconductors of the future 03. Finding the flux of quantum technology 04. Flaky compound to prevent computer chips from getting fried 05. Fluxonium Qubit Retains Information For 1.43 Milliseconds – 10x Longer Than Before 06. Limiting loss in leaky fibers 07. Nanosheet technology developed to boost energy storage dielectric capacitors 08. New breakthrough shows how short pulses of light destroy particles 09. Researchers create antenna for nanoscale light sources using unusual placement of semiconductor material 10. Transferring data with many colors of light simultaneously And others Magnetic […]
Cutting edge transistors for semiconductors of the future
Science Daily July 3, 2023 Researchers in Sweden have demonstrated the integration of a ferroelectric gate stack on a heterostructure tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET) with subthermionic operation. Based on the ultrashort effective channel created by the band-to-band tunneling process, the localized potential variations induced by single domains and individual defects were sensed without physical gate-length scaling required for conventional transistors. They electrically measured abrupt threshold voltage shifts and quantified the appearance of new individual defects activated by the ferroelectric switching. According to the researchers their results show that ferroelectric films can be integrated on heterostructure devices and indicated that the […]
Finding the flux of quantum technology
Science Daily July 5, 2023 Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh showed that a circularly polarized electric dipole harbors a near-field concentrated wave which orbits around with an energy flux five orders of magnitude larger than far-field radiation. The near-field wave was found to carry transverse spins and reveal skyrmion spin texture. By performing electromagnetic analysis and numerical simulation, they demonstrated chiral extraction of a near-field rotational energy flux: the confined energy flow was out-coupled to surface plasmons on metal surface, whose curvature was designed to provide orbital angular momentum matched to spin angular momentum of dipole field, that is, […]
Flaky compound to prevent computer chips from getting fried
Phys.org July 4, 2023 To address overheating in microchip-based devices researchers in Russia 3D printed a model of a composite radiator with different boron nitride fillings. The measured absolute values of the thermal conductivity of such a composite in the temperature range of 3–300 K strongly depend on the concentration of boron nitride. Filling the photopolymer with boron nitride led to a change in the behavior of the volt–current curves, which might have been associated with the occurrence of percolation currents during the deposition of boron nitride. The ab initio calculations showed the behavior and spatial orientation of BN flakes […]
Fluxonium Qubit Retains Information For 1.43 Milliseconds – 10x Longer Than Before
Science Alert July 6, 2023 An international team of researchers (USA- University of Maryland, Switzerland) has built a fluxonium qubit that could retain information for 1.43 milliseconds. The superconducting fluxonium qubit had uncorrected coherence time T∗2=1.48±0.13ms, exceeding the state of the art for transmons by an order of magnitude. The average gate fidelity was benchmarked at 0.99991(1). Even in the millisecond range, the coherence time was limited by material absorption and could be further improved with a more rigorous fabrication. According to the researchers their demonstration may be useful for suppressing errors in the next generation quantum processors… read more. […]
Limiting loss in leaky fibers
Science Daily July 3, 2023 Antiresonant, hollow-core optical fibers are currently challenging or even exceeding the loss performance of conventional solid-core fibers. Researchers in the UK have shown that the glass elements of the cladding structure with an approximately radial orientation play a crucial role in determining the confinement loss by strongly shaping the wave fields in the azimuthal coordinate. Azimuthal confinement can result in an evanescent field in the radial direction through the cladding, leading to a confinement loss that is substantially lower than would be the case without azimuthal confinement. They developed a comprehensive theory of azimuthal confinement, […]
Magnetic bacteria point the way
Science Daily June 27, 2023 Magnetotactic bacteria contain magnetosomes, iron crystals wrapped in a membrane, which arrange themselves to align with the Earth’s magnetic field, causing the bacteria to travel in the direction of Earth’s magnetic field lines leading north or south. Magnetosome-producing microorganisms can sense and move toward the redox gradient. Researchers in Japan collected a deep-sea hydrothermal vent chimney. The mineralogical and geochemical characterization of the vent chimney sample showed an internal iron redox gradient. The electron microscopy of particles collected from the chimney sample revealed magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) cells with bullet-shaped magnetosomes, and there were minor occurrences […]
Nanosheet technology developed to boost energy storage dielectric capacitors
Science Daily July 4, 2023 Dielectric capacitors can become ideal, safe energy storage devices. However, they yield rather low energy densities compared with other energy storage devices such as batteries and supercapacitors. Researchers in Japan designed ultrahigh energy storage capacitors using two-dimensional (2D) high-κ dielectric perovskites (Ca2Nam–3NbmO3m+1; m = 3–6). Individual Ca2Nam–3NbmO3m+1 nanosheets exhibited an ultrahigh dielectric strength even in the monolayer form, which exceeded those of conventional dielectric materials. Multilayer stacked nanosheet capacitors exhibited ultrahigh energy densities, high efficiencies (>90%), excellent reliability (>107 cycles), and temperature stability (−50–300 °C); the maximum energy density was much higher than those of […]
New breakthrough shows how short pulses of light destroy particles
Phys.org July 6, 2023 Molecular polaritons are hybrid light-matter states that emerge when a molecular transition strongly interacts with photons in a resonator. At optical frequencies, this interaction unlocks a way to explore and control new chemical phenomena at the nanoscale. However achieving such control at ultrafast timescales is challenging as it requires a deep understanding of the dynamics of the collectively coupled molecular excitation and the light modes. An international team of researchers (Germany, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Luxembourg) investigated the dynamics of collective polariton states, realized by coupling molecular photoswitches to optically anisotropic plasmonic nanoantennas. Pump-probe experiments revealed an […]