EurekAlert April 22, 2020 In order to generate and detect spin currents, spintronics traditionally uses ferromagnetic materials whose magnetization switching consume high amounts of energy. Researchers in France have demonstrated an alternative strategy to achieve low-power spin detection in a non-magnetic system by harnessing the electric-field-induced ferroelectric-like state of strontium titanate to manipulate the spin–orbit properties of a two-dimensional electron gas and efficiently convert spin currents into positive or negative charge currents, depending on the polarization direction. The research opens the way to the electric-field control of spin currents and to ultralow-power spintronics…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Tag Archives: S&T France
Sliding walls – a new paradigm for microfluidic devices
Nanowerk April 9, 2020 Currently, fluidic control in microdevices is mainly achieved either by external pumps and valves, which are expensive and bulky, or by valves integrated in the chip. Researchers in France propose a new paradigm for actuation in microfluidic devices based on rigid or semi-rigid walls with transversal dimensions of hundreds of micrometres that can slide within a microfluidic chip and to intersect microchannels with hand-driven or translation stage-based actuation. The new concept for reconfigurable microfluidics, the implementation of a wide range of functionalities was facilitated and allowed for no or limited dead volume, low cost and low […]
The extraordinary powers of bacteria visualized in real time
Science Daily May 23, 2019 The global spread of antibiotic resistance is a major public health issue. The spread of antibiotic resistance is for the most part due to the capacity of bacteria to exchange genetic material through a process known as bacterial conjugation. The ability of the bacterium to expel the antibiotic before it can exert its destructive effect using “efflux pumps” found on its membrane. Experimenting with E. Coli researchers in France have revealed that in just 1 to 2 hours, the single-stranded DNA fragment of the efflux pump was transformed into double-stranded DNA and then translated into […]
Locating a shooter from the first shot via cellphone
Phys.org May 13, 2019 Tactical Communication and Protective Systems (TCAPS), earmuffs or earplugs with built-in microphones allowing active hearing protection, have four microphones: two outside the ear canal and two inside it, underneath the hearing protection. Researchers in France have developed a proof of concept shooter location device because most modern combat weapons fire bullets at supersonic speeds, creating two acoustic wave – supersonic shock wave and the second one is a muzzle wave. The device uses the microphone underneath the hearing protection to detect the shock and muzzle waves generated by supersonic shots and record the time difference of […]
Toward novel computing and fraud detection technologies with on-demand polymers
Science Daily April 1, 2019 Researchers in France have constructed synthetic polymers with fully controlled primary structures using solid-phase iterative chemistry, a process that was originally developed to make peptides. In the last few years, the team has been making precisely tailored polymers for data-storage applications. In these polymers, each monomer or subunit stands for a specific piece of information. So far, the researchers have created tiny data storage devices made of layered sequence-coded polymers. Recently observed that the molecular bits that they contain occupy much smaller volumes than do the nucleotides in DNA. They believe that within the next […]
The first walking robot that moves without GPS
Science Daily February 13, 2019 To navigate safely in hostile environment, desert ants assess their direction from the polarized pattern of skylight and judge the distance traveled based on both a stride-counting method and the optic flow. Using this concept a team of researchers in France has designed AntBot equipped with an optical compass used to determine its direction by means of polarized light, and by an optical movement sensor directed to the sun to measure the distance covered. Armed with this information, AntBot was able to explore its environment and to return on its own to its base, with […]
A step closer to single-atom data storage
Phys.org July 10, 2018 Researchers in France found that the holmium atoms could retain record-breaking coercivity in a magnetic field exceeding 8 Tesla. Only at around 45K, the magnets began to spontaneously align themselves to the applied magnetic field. This showed that they can withstand relatively high temperature perturbations and might point to the way forward for running single-atom magnets at more commercially viable temperatures. Each atom can store a single bit of data that can be written and read using quantum mechanics. Such devices promise enormous data capacities… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Aerial robot that can morph in flight
Science Daily May 31, 2018 Researchers in France have designed a flying robot called Quad-Morphing which has two rotating arms each equipped with two propellers for helicopter-like flight. A system of elastic and rigid wires allows the robot to change the orientation of its arms in flight so that they are either perpendicular or parallel to its central axis. It adopts the parallel position, halving its wingspan, to traverse a narrow stretch and then switches back to perpendicular position to stabilize its flight, all while flying at a speed of 9 km/h. It paves the way for a new generation […]
Self-propelled mindless tiny robots work together to move a corral
Phys.org May 16, 2018 Researchers in France used assemblies of rodlike robots made motile through self-vibration. When confined in circular arenas, dilute assemblies of these rods act as a gas. Increasing the surface fraction leads to a collective behavior near the boundaries. The coexistence between a gas and surface clusters is a direct consequence of inertial effects as shown by their simulations. By using deformable but free to move arenas the surface induced clusters can lead to directed motion, while the topology of the surface states can be controlled by biasing the motility of the particles… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Nanoporous carbon electrodes harvest blue energy
Nanotechweb May 11, 2018 Capacitive mixing and capacitive deionization are currently developed as alternatives to membrane-based processes to harvest blue energy from salinity gradients between river and sea water and to desalinate water using charge-discharge cycles of capacitors. By simulating realistic capacitors based on aqueous electrolytes and nanoporous carbide-derived carbon electrodes, researchers in France accounted for both their complex structure and their polarization by the electrolyte under applied voltage. They have shown that molecular simulations can realistically predict the capacitance of devices that contain nanoporous carbon materials as the electrodes and salty water as the electrolyte…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL […]