Phys.org June 13, 1023 So far, most efforts in invisibility science have been devoted to achieving practically realizable cloak designs and to improving the effectiveness of these devices in reducing their scattering cross-section. Little attention has been paid to the opposite side of the technology – the development of more efficient techniques for the detection of invisibility devices. Researchers in Spain proposed a path taking advantage of the smarter way in which diffraction tomography processes all overlooked information to improve the efficiency in unveiling the presence of invisibility devices. This approach not only resulted in a considerable sensitivity enhancement in […]
Researchers discover materials exhibiting huge magnetoresistance
Nanowerk June 9, 2023 Much of the hardware and sensors electronic devices rely on magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) and magnetic sensors. In magnetoresistive devices when the magnets are aligned, electrons can easily tunnel through the thin insulating barrier between them making the device efficient; when magnets are not aligned the device is less efficient due to higher resistance. Current tunnel magnetoresistive devices comprise magnesium oxide and iron-based magnetic alloys, like iron-cobalt. Iron-based alloys have a body-centered cubic crystal structure in ambient conditions and exhibit a huge tunnel magnetoresistance effect in devices with a rock salt-type magnesium oxide. Researchers in […]
Researchers tune thermal conductivity of materials ‘on the fly’ for more energy-efficient devices
Phys.org June 8, 2923 A team of researchers in the US (University of Minnesota, University of Utah, Argonne National Laboratory) demonstrated the ability to continuously tune the thermal conductivity of nanoscale films of La0.5Sr0.5CoO3-δ (LSCO) by a factor of over 5, via a room-temperature electrolyte-gate-induced non-volatile topotactic phase transformation from perovskite to an oxygen-vacancy-ordered brownmillerite phase accompanied by a metal-insulator transition. Combining time-domain thermoreflectance and electronic transport measurements, model analyses based on molecular dynamics and Boltzmann transport equation, and structural characterization by X-ray diffraction, they uncovered and deconvolved the effects of these transitions on heat carriers, including electrons and lattice […]
Ultrafast and tunable: Graphene-based terahertz-to-visible light conversion
Nanowerk, June 15, 2023 Several technologies could benefit from the availability of fast and controllable conversion of terahertz light to visible light. An international team of researchers (Germany, Spain, UK) demonstrated that the exceptional properties and dynamics of electronic heat in graphene allow for a THz-to-visible conversion, which is switchable at a sub-nanosecond time scale. They showed a tunable on/off ratio of more than 30 for the emitted visible light, achieved through electrical gating using a gate voltage on the order of 1 V and that a grating-graphene metamaterial leads to an increase in THz-induced emitted power in the visible […]
Unveiling the invisible: A breakthrough in spectroscopy to allow discoveries in materials physics
Phys.org June 12, 2023 Slow motion movies allow us to see intricate details of the mechanical dynamics of complex phenomena. If the images in each frame are replaced by terahertz (THz) waves, such movies can monitor low-energy resonances and reveal fast structural or chemical transitions. An international team of researchers (Canada, Germany) combined THz spectroscopy as a non-invasive optical probe with a real-time monitoring technique to demonstrate the ability to resolve non-reproducible phenomena at 50k frames per second, extracting each of the generated THz waveforms every 20 μs. Based on a photonic time-stretch technique to achieve unprecedented data acquisition speeds, […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of June 9, 2023
01. The ‘breath’ between atoms — a new building block for quantum technology 02. Buckle up! A new class of materials is here 03. Caltech Demonstrates Space Based Solar 04. Carbon-based stimuli-responsive nanomaterials: Their classification and application 05. Elastocaloric cooling system opens door to climate-friendly AC 06. Landmark study finds that the shape of the brain influences the way it works 07. Optical memristors review: Shining a light on neuromorphic computing 08. Researchers demonstrate secure information transfer using spatial correlations in quantum entangled beams of light 09. Researchers find a way to reduce the overheating of semiconductor devices 10. Revolutionizing […]
The ‘breath’ between atoms — a new building block for quantum technology
Science Daily June 1, 2023 Quantum light sources in which coupling between single photons and phonons can be controlled and harnessed enables quantum information transduction. Researchers at the University of Washington created quantum emitters featuring highly tunable coupling between excitons and phonons. The quantum emitters were formed in strain-induced quantum dots created in homobilayer WSe2. The colocalization of quantum-confined interlayer excitons and terahertz interlayer breathing-mode phonons, which directly modulated the exciton energy, led to a uniquely strong phonon coupling to single-photon emission. Due to the vertical dipole moment of the interlayer exciton, the phonon–photon interaction was electrically tunable to be […]
Buckle up! A new class of materials is here
Science Daily June 2, 2023 Many passive damping methods rely on using low stiffness, complex mechanical structures, or electrical systems, which render them unfeasible in many of applications. Researchers in the Netherlands have developed a new method for passive vibration damping by allowing buckling of the primary load path in mechanical metamaterials and lattice structures, which sets an upper limit for vibration transmission: the transmitted acceleration saturates at a maximum value in both tension and compression, no matter what the input acceleration is. This nonlinear mechanism leads to an extreme damping coefficient —orders of magnitude larger than the linear damping […]
Caltech Demonstrates Space Based Solar
Next Big Future June 6, 2023 Researchers at Caltech launched Space Solar Power Project (SSPD) launched into orbit a prototype to beam power to Earth and that transmitted power from orbit to another receiver in orbit. They confirmed that MAPLE (Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment) can transmit power successfully to receivers in space. They programed the array to direct its energy toward Earth. It could survive the trip to space and operate there. Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE) and one of the three key experiments within SSPD-1 includes a small window through which the array can beam […]
Carbon-based stimuli-responsive nanomaterials: Their classification and application
Phys.org June 5, 2023 With the development of material synthesis technology, carbon-based nanomaterials can be functionalized and used in various fields such as energy, environment, and biomedicine. Researchers in China applied carbon-based nanomaterials to different disease treatments based on their stimulus-response properties. They categorized them into carbon nanotubes, carbon nanospheres, and carbon nanofibers according to their morphology. They discussed the materials’’ applications in probes, bioimaging, tumor therapy, and other fields. They addressed the advantages and disadvantages of carbon-based stimuli-responsive nanomaterials and discussed their future perspective… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE