Nanowerk March 8, 2022 Researchers in China reviewed the latest developments in the design of memristors for artificial synapses, the main component of a neuromorphic computing architecture, used in neuromorphic computing. Memristors are a relatively ideal candidate for artificial synapse applications due to their high scalability and low power consumption. However, oxide memristors suffer from unsatisfactory stability and reliability. Oxide-based hybrid structures can effectively improve the device stability and reliability, therefore providing a promising prospect for the application of oxide memristors to neuromorphic computing. The discussion is organized according to the blending schemes as well as the working mechanisms of […]
Breakthrough in quantum sensing provides new material to make qubits
Phys.org March 9, 2022 Being atomically thin and amenable to external controls, 2D materials offer a new paradigm for the realization of patterned qubit fabrication and operation at room temperature for quantum information sciences applications. An international team of researchers (USA – Temple University, Northeastern University, Taiwan) has shown that the antisite defect in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) can provide a controllable solid-state spin qubit system. Using high-throughput atomistic simulations, they identified several neutral antisite defects in TMDs that lie deep in the bulk band gap and host a paramagnetic triplet ground state. The analysis revealed the presence of […]
Carbon dioxide could be stored below ocean floor, research shows
Science Daily March 7, 2022 Naturally occurring methane (CH4) hydrates in oceanic sediments have been stable for millions of years kept in place by the natural pressure created by the weight of the seawater above. At low-temperature and under high-pressure conditions created by the ocean, CO2 can be trapped within water molecules, forming an ice-like substance. These CO2 hydrates form at a temperature just above the freezing point of water and can store as much as 184 cubic metres of CO2 in one cubic meter of hydrates. An international team of researchers (Singapore, USA – industry) recreated the conditions of […]
Exploring the bounds of room-temperature superconductivity
Science Daily March 9, 2022 Several reports of high superconducting transition temperature (Tc) up to 287 K in hydrides under pressure of up to 267 GPa have appeared. The ultrahigh pressure needed to create the high-temperature superconductivity (HTS) in hydrides has hampered the detailed study of the high-pressure-induced high-Tc superconductivity state, as well as any potential applications. Researchers at the University of Houston developed a pressure-quench process (PQP) and demonstrated it successfully in stabilizing at ambient the high-pressure-induced superconducting phases and other phases in the non-superconducting element Sb, the binary superconducting compound FeSe, and the non-superconducting compound Cu-doped FeSe. According […]
‘Fingerprint’ machine learning technique identifies different bacteria in seconds
Phys.org March 4, 2022 Researchers in South Korea have demonstrated a markedly simpler, faster, and effective route to classify signals of two common bacteria E. coli and S. epidermidis and their resident media without any separation procedures by using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) analysis boosted with a newly proposed deep learning model named dual-branch wide-kernel network (DualWKNet). With outstanding classification accuracies up to 98%, the synergistic combination of SERS and deep learning serves as an effective platform for “separation-free“ detection of bacteria in arbitrary media with short data acquisition times and small amounts of training data. Universal and fast bacterial […]
Form-free metasurfaces enable novel and intelligent optical illusion
Nanowerk March 4, 2022 The mainstream transformation-optics-based optical illusions are inherently hindered by the extreme requirements of metamaterial compositions in practice and large computational cost. To address these issues researchers in China have proposed an intelligent optical illusion supported by form-free metasurfaces via a deep learning architecture which can render a similar illusion effect and greatly reduce the parameter space in physics. They have presented illustrative examples of conformal metasurfaces with a high-fidelity inverse design from either the near- or far-field in the simulation and experiment. They developed a full set of intelligent systems to benchmark the real-world optical illusion […]
The future of data storage is double-helical, research indicates
Science Daily March 3, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (University of Illinois, UMass Amherst, Stanford University) expanded molecular alphabet for DNA data storage comprising four natural and seven chemically modified nucleotides that are readily detected and distinguished using nanopore sequencers. They showed that Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A (MspA) nanopores can accurately discriminate 77 combinations and orderings of chemically diverse monomers within homo- and heterotetrameric sequences. The sequencing accuracy exceeded 60%. The extended molecular alphabet may potentially offer a nearly 2-fold increase in storage density and potentially the same order of reduction in the recording latency, thereby enabling […]
Physicists show how frequencies can easily be multiplied without special circuitry
Phys.org March 10, 2022 Non-linear electronic circuits are typically used to generate the high-frequency gigahertz signals needed to operate today’s devices. An international team of researchers (Germany, Switzerland) found a way to do this within a magnetic material without the electronic components. Instead, the magnetization is excited by a low-frequency megahertz source. Using the newly discovered effect the source generates several frequency components, each of which is a multiple of the excitation frequency. These cover a range of six octaves and reach up to several gigahertz. The frequency multiplication is explained by synchronized switching of the dynamic magnetization on a […]
Researchers design charged ‘power suits’ for electric vehicles and spacecraft
Phys.org March 7, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (University of Central Florida, NASA Kennedy space Center, FL) has developed a supercapacitor using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (e-CFRP) that can store electrical energy and function as the structural component for the EV’s body shell. Vertically aligned graphene sheets were attached to carbon fiber electrodes on which different metal oxides were deposited to obtain high-energy density electrodes. They fabricated a high-strength multilayer e-CFRP assembly using an alternate layer patterning configuration of epoxy and polyacrylamide gel electrolyte. It delivered a high areal energy density of 0.31 mWh cm–2 at 0.3 […]
Robot ‘bugs’ that can go just about anywhere
Science Daily March 3, 2022 For many creatures under a certain size—like trap-jaw ants, mantis shrimp, and fleas—jumping across a surface is more energy-efficient than crawling. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh built a robot about the size of a cricket made of a polymeric artificial muscle and replicated such movements. The curved composite shape of the polymer muscle allows it to build energy when it is powered to move along moving surfaces like sand as easily as hard surfaces, and even to hop across water. High speed imaging reveals tip velocities of several 100 mm s−1 with powers approaching […]