IEEE Spectrum June 3, 2019 Six years ago, the EU embarked on an ambitious project to create a kind of Silicon Valley for graphene. Over 10 years to push graphene into commercial markets the project, Graphene Flagship would leverage €1 billion. In the past six years, the Graphene Flagship has spawned nine companies and 46 new graphene-based products. Despite these achievements, there remains a sense among critics that the wonder material has not lived up to expectations and the Flagship’s efforts have not done much to change that perception…read more.
Tag Archives: Advanced materials
Physicists propose perfect material for lasers
Eurekalert May 8, 2019 In Weyl semimetals charge carriers behave the way electrons and positrons do in particle accelerators. Researchers in Russia have shown that reactions forbidden for elementary particles can also be forbidden in the crystalline materials known as Weyl semimetals. Specifically, this applies to the forbidden reaction of mutual particle-antiparticle annihilation without light emission. This property suggests that a Weyl semimetal could be the perfect gain medium for lasers. The team gauged the lifetime of an electron-hole pair in a Weyl semimetal to be about 10 nanoseconds which is much longer than in conventional materials used in laser […]
Flexible, transparent monolayer graphene device for power generation and storage
Nanowerk May 8, 2019 Researchers in North Korea adapted a single-layer graphene (SLG) as an electrode for the supercapacitor, touch sensor, and a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), thus making an electronic system that is ultrathin, lightweight, transparent, and flexible. Capacitive-type transparent and flexible electronic devices can be simultaneously used as an electrochemical double-layer capacitance-based supercapacitor and as a sensitive, fast-responding touch sensor in a single-device architecture by inserting a separator of polyvinyl alcohol–lithium chloride-soaked polyacrylonitrile electrospun mat on polyethylene naphthalate between two symmetric SLG film electrodes. They successfully demonstrated the device…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Biosensor Could Scale New Sensitivity Heights
Optical Society of America News April 4, 2019 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Australia) combined dielectric metasurfaces and hyperspectral imaging to develop an ultrasensitive label-free analytical platform for biosensing. The technique can acquire spatially resolved spectra from millions of image pixels and use smart data-processing tools to extract high-throughput digital sensing information at the unprecedented level of less than three molecules per μm2. Spectral data retrieval from a single image without using spectrometers enabled paving the way for portable diagnostic applications. This combination of nanophotonics and imaging optics extends the capabilities of dielectric metasurfaces to analyse biological entities and […]
Copper-based alternative for next-generation electronics
Science Daily April 1, 2019 In the existing techniques for the preparation of copper nanoparticles, impurities can be removed via extremely high temperatures hence those prepared at room temperature could not solidify into usable parts. Researchers in Japan have synthesised copper nanoparticles with the ability to solidify at much lower temperatures, remain pure; they altered the structure of the copper nanoparticles and rendered them more stable so that they do not degrade at low temperatures. With the new technique copper nanoparticle-based materials can be utilized in various types of on-demand flexible and wearable devices which can be fabricated easily via […]
Ferromagnetic nanoparticle systems show promise for ultrahigh-speed spintronics
Phys.org March 28, 2019 Based on their previous discovery that the “electric field” component of a terahertz pulse plays a key role in the terahertz magnetization modulation of semiconductor-based ferromagnetic materials, researchers in Japan embedded MnAs ferromagnetic nanoparticles in a GaAs host matrix. They observed a large modulation up to 20% of the magnetization of the nanoparticles with terahertz pump pulse irradiation. They found that the modulation is induced by the electric-field component of the terahertz pulse via spin-carrier interactions. The results will lead to an ultrafast coherent magnetization reversal within a picosecond, which will be an essential technique for […]
Engineers demonstrate metamaterials that can solve equations
Science Daily March 22, 2019 Signal processing of light waves can be used to represent certain mathematical functions and to perform computational tasks on signals or images in an analog fashion using complex systems of bulk optical elements such as lenses, filters, and mirrors. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated that specially designed nanophotonic structures can take input waveforms encoded as complex mathematical functions, manipulate them, and provide an output that is the integral of the functions. The results, demonstrated for microwaves, provide a route to develop chip-based analog optical computers and computing elements… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
The best topological conductor yet: Spiraling crystal is the key to exotic discovery
Science Daily March 20, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – Princeton University, Louisiana State University, industry, Taiwan, Germany, China) has observed chiral properties in the DNA-like spiraling structure, or helicoid, in cobalt-silicon and rhodium-silicon crystals. In some cases, chirality can be flipped proving that this is a new state of quantum matter, which is also exhibiting nearly ideal topological surface properties. Its topological conductivity was measured to be about 100 times larger than that observed in previously identified topological metals. They can produce an electrical current of a fixed strength when you shine a light on them regardless […]
Russian Army Has New Body Armor and Promise Combat Exoskeletons
Next Big Future March 11, 2019 Russia is promising to develop Ratnik-3 which would be advanced combat exoskeletons, UAVs and combat robots. They are displaying mockups of advanced guns, new helmets and more complete body armor. The main problem for real exoskeletons that boost the weight that a soldier can carry or provide real force multipliers is the batteries and power systems for the gear. US has also been developing combat exoskeletons. Russia and the USA have had small field tests of some exoskeleton systems. US military research has admitted that it will still be 5-10 years or more before […]
Researchers develop ‘acoustic metamaterial’ that cancels sound
Phys.org March 7, 2019 Based on the premise that metamaterial needs to be shaped in such a way that it sends incoming sounds back to where they came from, researchers at Boston University calculated the dimensions and specifications that the metamaterial would need to have in order to interfere with the transmitted sound waves. Using the calculation they created a structure made of plastic that could silence sound from a loudspeaker. In tests they found that 94 percent of the sound emanating from the loudspeaker was imperceptible to the human ear. The shape of acoustic-silencing metamaterials is also completely customizable. […]