Phys.org August 26, 2022 The performance of organic optoelectronic and energy-harvesting devices is largely determined by the molecular orientation and resultant permanent dipole moment, yet this property is difficult to control during film preparation. Researchers in Japan have demonstrated the active control of dipole direction in organic glassy films by physical vapour deposition. It was obtained by utilizing the small surface free energy of a trifluoromethyl unit and intramolecular permanent dipole moment induced by functional groups. According to the researchers their work could pave a way toward the formation of spontaneously polarized organic glassy films, leading to improvement in the […]
Tag Archives: S&T Japan
Scientists fine-tune ‘tweezers of sound’ for contactless manipulation of objects
Phys.org August 22, 2022 The previous acoustic tweezers developed by researchers in Japan could lift things from reflective surfaces without physical contact, but stability remained an issue. Now, using an adaptive algorithm to fine-tune how the tweezers are controlled, they have drastically improved how stably the particles can be lifted. They found a way of using the same setup to achieve significant enhancements in how they can lift particles from rigid surfaces. With the right arrangement of speakers at the right frequency, amplitude, and phase, it becomes possible to superimpose the sound waves and setup a field of influence which […]
Tiny crystal vases
Nanowerk August 13, 2022 Skeletal or concave polyhedral crystals appear in a variety of synthetic processes and natural environments. However, their morphology, size, and orientation are difficult to control because of their highly kinetic growth character. Researchers in Japan have developed a new method to produce micrometer-scale single crystals in the form of hollow vessels. Upon drop-casting of a heated ethanol solution onto a quartz substrate, the molecules spontaneously assembled into standing vessel-shaped single crystals uniaxially and synchronously over the wide area of the substrate, with small size polydispersity. The crystal edge was active even after consumption of the molecules […]
Record-Breaking Experiment Could Solve a Huge Challenge in Quantum Computing
Science Alert August 8, 2022 Strong interactions between two single atoms have not been harnessed for ultrafast quantum operations due to the stringent requirements on the fluctuation of the atom positions and the necessary excitation strength. Researchers in Japan have developed a technique to trap and cool atoms to the motional quantum ground state of holographic optical tweezers, which allows control of the inter-atomic distance down to 1.5 μm with a quantum-limited precision of 30 nm. Then they used ultrashort laser pulses to excite a pair of these nearby atoms far beyond the Rydberg blockade regime and performed Ramsey interferometry with attosecond […]
At the water’s edge: Self-assembling 2D materials at a liquid-liquid interface
Science Daily July 21, 2022 Researchers in Japan have demonstrated a facile one-pot synthesis of laminated 2D coordination polymer films comprising bis(terpyridine)iron and cobalt at a water/dichloromethane interface. Cross-sectional elemental mapping unveiled the stratum-like structure of the film and revealed that the second layer grows to the dichloromethane side below the first layer. Cyclic voltammetry clarified that the bottom layer mediates charge transfer between the top layer and the substrate in a narrow potential region of mixed-valence states. Furthermore, the bilayer film sandwiched by electrodes in a dry condition shows stable rectification character, and the barrier voltage corresponds to the […]
Shockwave caused by Tonga underwater eruption may help scientists predict future tsunamis
Phys.org July 14, 2022 Researchers in Japan believe that it may be possible to predict tsunamis faster by tracking the atmospheric disturbances caused by the airwaves they create and the errors in the positional information supplied by GPS satellites. Examining the errors following eruption they found that it caused waves of air pressure to spread as far as Australia and Japan. These waves oscillated the lower part of the ionosphere and generated an electric field that was then transmitted at high speed to the upper ionosphere. They detected the electron changes much earlier than the air pressure waves that caused […]
Novel microfluidic chip can detect contaminants in 100-picoliter samples
Nanowerk June 27, 2022 Researchers in Japan have developed a nonlinear optical crystal-based compact terahertz (THz)-microfluidic chip with several I-design meta-atoms for attomole (amol)-level sensing of trace amounts of solution samples. The chip consists of a metallic strip with a micrometer-sized gap sandwiched by other metallic strips. A point THz source locally generated by optical rectification at the irradiation spot of a femtosecond-pulse laser beam induced a tightly confined electric-field mode at the gap regions and modified the resonance frequency when a microchannel fabricated along the space between the metallic strips was filled with solutions. Using this chip, they could […]
Improving quantum sensors by measuring the orientation of coherent spins inside a diamond lattice
Phys.org June 16, 2022 Researchers in Japan have developed a new method for implementing magnetic field measurements in nitrogen-vacancy centers. The spin state of an extra electron at this site can be read or coherently manipulated using pulses of light. They used an “inverse Cotton-Mouton” effect to test their method. They used light of different polarizations to create tiny controlled local magnetic fields. They have demonstrated that by measuring the orientation of coherent spins inside a diamond lattice, the magnetic fields can be measured even over very short times. The team hopes that this work will help enable quantum spintronic […]
Building up new data-storage memory
EurekAlert June 11, 2022 Researchers in Japan have developed a proof-of-concept 3D stacked memory cell based on ferroelectric and antiferroelectric FETs with atomic-layer-deposited oxide semiconductor channel. The vertical device structure increases information density and reduces operation energy needs. Hafnium oxide and indium oxide layers were deposited in a vertical trench structure. By using antiferroelectric instead of ferroelectric, they found that only a tiny net charge was required to erase data, which leads to more efficient write operations. This work may allow for new even smaller and more eco-friendly data-storage memory. The team experimented with various thicknesses for the indium oxide […]
Japan Is Dropping a Gargantuan Turbine Into The Ocean to Harness ‘Limitless’ Energy
Science Alert June 10, 2022 To tap into the source of power beneath the waves an industry in Japan has constructed a 330-ton prototype of a device called Kairyu whose structure consists of a 20 meter (66 foot) long fuselage flanked by a pair of similar-sized cylinders, each housing a power generation system attached to an 11-meter-long turbine blade. When tethered to the ocean floor by an anchor line and power cables, the device can orient itself to find the most efficient position to generate power from the push of a deep-water current, and channel it into a grid. Kairyu […]