Nanowerk April 17, 2023 The quantum light sources developed so far have relied on external bulky excitation lasers, making them impractical prototype devices that are not reproducible, hindering their scalability and transfer out of the laboratory into real-world applications. An international team of researchers (Germany, the Netherlands) demonstrated a fully integrated quantum light source that overcame these challenges through the integration of a laser cavity, a highly efficient tunable noise suppression filter and a nonlinear microring for entangled photon-pair generation through spontaneous four-wave mixing. The hybrid quantum source employed an electrically pumped InP gain section and a Si3N4 low-loss microring […]
The quantum spin liquid that isn’t one
Phys.org April 18, 2023 For two decades, it was believed that a possible quantum spin liquid was discovered in a synthetically produced material. In this case, it would not follow the laws of classical physics even on a macroscopic level, but rather those of the quantum world. An international team of researchers (Austria, Spain) has shown that the promising material, κ-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu2(CN)3, is not the predicted quantum spin liquid, but a material that can be described using known concepts. They were able to precisely map the spin-gapped phase through the Mott transition by ultrahigh-resolution strain tuning. Through transport experiments they revealed […]
Team develops the world’s smallest and fastest nano-excitonic transistor
Phys.org April 14, 2023 Optical computing with optical transistors has emerged as a possible solution to the growing computational workloads, yet an on-chip nano-optical modulation remains a challenge due to the intrinsically noninteracting nature of photons in addition to the diffraction limit. An international team of researchers (South Korea, Russia) has presented an all-optical approach toward nano-excitonic transistors using an atomically thin heterobilayer inside a plasmonic tip-based nanocavity. Through optical wavefront shaping, they selectively modulated tip-enhanced photoluminescence (TEPL) responses of intra- and interlayer excitons in a ∼25 nm2 area, demonstrating the enabling concept of an ultrathin 2-bit nano-excitonic transistor. They […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of April 14, 2023
01. New textile unravels warmth-trapping secrets of polar bear fur 02. Hydrogel-based flexible electronics 03. This Incredible Tiny Robot Can Locate And Capture Individual Cells 04, The Key to Securing Legacy Computing Systems 05. Merons and antimerons 06. A new type of photonic time crystal gives light a boost 07. Physicists Have Successfully Generated Tiny Solar Flares In The Lab 08. Robots predict human intention for faster builds 09. Tiny biobattery with potential 100-year shelf life runs on bacteria 10. Tiny movements, deep inside a battery And others Cell imaging could provide next step for developing synthetic photosynthesis Lake water […]
Cell imaging could provide next step for developing synthetic photosynthesis
Phys.org April 5, 2023 Carboxysomes are proteinaceous bacterial microcompartments that sequester the key enzymes for carbon fixation in cyanobacteria and some proteobacteria. Despite their significance in carbon fixation and great bioengineering potentials, the structural understanding of native carboxysomes is currently limited to low-resolution studies. An international team of researchers (UK, Germany, Austria) has characterized a native α-carboxysome from a marine cyanobacterium by single-particle cryoelectron microscopy. They have determined the structure of its RuBisCO enzyme, and obtained low-resolution maps of its icosahedral shell, and its concentric interior organization. They proposed a complete atomic model of an intact carboxysome, providing insight into […]
Hydrogel-based flexible electronics
Nanowerk April 11, 2023 Although flexible electronics is an emerging field of research involving multiple disciplines, the broad applications of flexible electronics are still restricted due to several limitations, including high Young’s modulus, poor biocompatibility, and poor responsiveness. An international team of researchers (China, Singapore) reviewed the latest methods of synthesizing advanced functional hydrogels and the state-of-art applications of hydrogel-based flexible electronics. Hydrogel is a class of 3D crosslinked hydrated polymer networks, and its exceptional material properties render it as a promising candidate for the next generation of flexible electronics. They discussed the correlation between properties of the hydrogel and […]
This Incredible Tiny Robot Can Locate And Capture Individual Cells
Science Alert April 8, 2023 While dielectrophoretic (DEP)-based cargo manipulation can be achieved at high-solution conductivity, electrical propulsion of these micromotors becomes ineffective at solution conductivities. Researchers in Israel found that combination of a rotating magnetic field and electric field results in enhanced micromotor mobility and steering control through tuning of the electric field frequency. They demonstrated the micromotor’s ability of identifying apoptotic cell among viable and necrotic cells based on their dielectrophoretic difference. This enabled analysis of apoptotic status in the single-cell samples for drug discovery, cell therapeutics, and immunotherapy. According to the researcher’s hybrid micromotor approach for label-free […]
The Key to Securing Legacy Computing Systems
DARPA News April 10, 2023 For a cyber-attack to be successful, one must conduct a sequence of exploits to move from the initial system access, through privilege escalation and lateral motion steps, until reaching the ultimate target. With processor hardware enhancements, fine-grained software compartmentalization would not significantly impact the system’s speed and efficiency. The challenge, however, is in the billions of lines of existing software, all of which would be impossibly time-consuming to rewrite in safer programming languages. Through its new Compartmentalization and Privilege Management (CPM) program, DARPA is seeking proposals to develop tools that can automatically restructure a software […]
Lake water storage on Inner Tibetan Plateau increases under climate change, finds study
Phys.org April 10, 2023 Lakes store 20% of surface freshwater resources and are an important link for studying the interactions between the various spheres of the Earth system. There are approximately 1400 lakes larger than 1 km2 on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), with a total area of approximately 50,000 km2, accounting for half of the number and area of lakes in China. Researchers in China estimated lake water storage anomalies (LWSA) of 18 lakes (area greater than 300 km2) during 2002–2018 on the Inner TP. They projected future changes of LWSA for an intermediate scenario based on an artificial neural […]
Merons and antimerons
Science Daily April 11, 2023 Out-of-plane polar domain structures have recently been discovered in strained and twisted bilayers of inversion symmetry broken systems such as hexagonal boron nitride. An international team of researchers (Belgium, UK, USA – Harvard University) has shown that this symmetry breaking also gives rise to an in-plane component of polarization, and the form of the total polarization is determined purely from symmetry considerations. The in-plane component of the polarization makes the polar domains in strained and twisted bilayers topologically non-trivial, forming a network of merons and antimerons (half-skyrmions and half-antiskyrmions). For twisted systems, the merons are […]