Electrical Materials
Nontoxic nanosheets could turn waste heat into power
April 13, 2012 3:05 am | by Anne Ju | News | CommentsCornell materials scientists have developed an inexpensive, environmentally friendly way of synthesizing oxide crystal sheets, just nanometers thick, which have useful properties for electronics and alternative energy applications. Unlike typical oxides, these sheets are conducting, and could be ideal for use in thermoelectric devices to convert waste heat into power.
Multiplexed photonic chips transfer data at light speed
April 12, 2012 12:36 pm | News | CommentsPowerful microprocessors in computers today use vast quantities of data and perform millions of calculations per second, but the connections simply cannot shift electrons fast enough. Wadimos, an effort in Europe to develop process technology for building wavelength division multiplexed photonic layers on CMOS chips is an effort to bring photon-fast performance to chip connections.
Carbon nanoparticles improve lithium-sulfur batteries
April 11, 2012 11:11 am | News | CommentsIn prototypes of the lithium-sulfur battery, lithium ions are exchanged between lithium- and sulfur-carbon electrodes. The sulfur is an excellent energy storage material due to its low weight. At the same time, sulfur is a poor conductor, so researchers have a devised a way to greatly improve conductivity using a porous network of carbon nanoparticles.
Precision tests of catalyst defects expands to oxides
April 10, 2012 2:38 pm | News | CommentsA newly developed combination device for infrared spectroscopy has allowed researchers in Germany to conduct highly precise measurements of the vibration frequency of oxide materials at the surface. Surface defect analyses have previously been well-documented for metals, but materials such as titanium dioxide haven’t before been studied in such detail.
High-temperature superconducting nanowires are slim, but tough
April 5, 2012 6:29 am | News | CommentsA team headed by Dr. Kazunari Yamaura at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science has succeeded in the development of particularly strong and tough high temperature superconducting nanowires. Containing iron and arsenic, the wires, or “whiskers”, offer advantages over copper-oxide or fullerene-based whiskers which are either too brittle or have a limited aspect ratio.
Honeycombs of nanomagnets could lead to new type of computer processing
April 2, 2012 5:09 am | News | CommentsResearchers in the U.K. have demonstrated that a honeycomb pattern of nano-sized magnets, in a material known as spin ice, introduces competition between neighboring magnets, and reduces the problems caused by these interactions by two-thirds. Large arrays of these nano-magnets, they say, can store computable information.
Black silicon cells have lowest reflectance ever recorded
March 29, 2012 1:32 pm | News | CommentsUsing a simple liquid bath process, scientists at Natcore Technology Inc. have create have created a black surface on a silicon wafer with an average reflectance in the visible and near-infrared region of the solar spectrum of 0.3%, making it the "blackest" silicon solar cell surface ever recorded.
Chemist reveals transparent, flexible memory
March 28, 2012 7:23 am | News | CommentsAt this week’s American Chemical Society meeting in San Diego, Rice University chemist James Tour revealed a new device his laboratory has invented. Using silicon oxide as the active component, his team has made a transparent, flexible memory technology that could be combined with other see-through components such as integrated circuits and batteries.
Integrated silicon laser offers big efficiency jump
March 28, 2012 7:16 am | News | CommentsPrevious efforts to integrated lasers in silicon chips have relied on and air-and-semiconductor interface, but this has resulted in poor emission efficiency. Researchers in Singapore have invented a solution called a micro-loop mirror that acts as a waveguide to improve operation to 98% light reflection efficiency.
Butterfly wings' 'art of blackness' could boost production of green fuels
March 27, 2012 12:25 pm | News | CommentsScientists long have known that butterfly wings contain tiny scales that serve as natural solar collectors to enable butterflies, which cannot generate enough heat from their own metabolism, to remain active in the cold. Scientists in China have used this same structure, taken from a black butterfly to create a titanium dioxide-based device catalyst that significantly improved hydrogen production.
Researchers unlock behavior of plasmons in metal particles
March 22, 2012 5:04 am | by Andrew Myers, associate director of communications for the Stanford University School of Engineering | News | CommentsAddressing five decades of debate, Stanford University engineers have determine how collective electron oscillations, called plasmons, behave in individual metal particles as small as just a few nanometers in diameter. This knowledge may open up new avenues in nanotechnology ranging from solar catalysis to biomedical therapeutics.
Qubits generated in semiconductors for the first time
March 22, 2012 4:53 am | News | CommentsSo far, quantum bits have only existed in relatively large vacuum chambers. A research team in Germany, with help from colleagues in Japan and France, has now generated them in a high-quality gallium arsenide crystal.
Researchers invent material that could transform flat screen TV
March 21, 2012 11:19 am | News | CommentsResearchers at CRANN, a nanoscience institute based in Trinity College Dublin, have discovered a new material could fill a previously missing component in display electronics—a good quality p-type transparent conducting oxide.
Luminescent organic liquid can be applied to electronics like ink
March 16, 2012 9:23 am | News | CommentsCurrent approaches to organic electronics mainly involve plastic film supports with conducting paths and components made of organic molecules inexpensively printed or glued on. Researchers in Japan have made a new advance, using uncharged organic substances that are luminescent liquids at room temperature and require no solvent.
Straintronics: Engineers create piezoelectric graphene
March 16, 2012 9:11 am | by Andrew Myers | News | CommentsBy depositing atoms on one side of a grid of the “miracle material” graphene, researchers at Stanford have engineered piezoelectricity into a nanoscale material for the first time. And the effect, which could dramatically affect electrical control of graphene materials, can be just as pronounced as in conventional 3D materials.
Process makes polymers truly plastic
March 16, 2012 5:25 am | News | CommentsJust as a chameleon changes its color to blend in with its environment, Duke University engineers have demonstrated for the first time that they can alter the texture of plastics on demand, for example, switching back and forth between a rough surface and a smooth one.
MRAM invention could give spintronics a boost
March 7, 2012 10:29 am | News | CommentsResearchers at Helmholtz Center in Germany have developed a magnetic valve that could be an enabling technology for spintronics. The new structure allows for data to remain stored even after electric current has been cut, and memory in the valve can be re-written indefinitely.
Engineers build an electrical switch for magnetic current
March 1, 2012 3:15 am | News | CommentsResearchers at the Max Planck Institute have put together a sandwich of a ferroelectric layer between two ferromagnetic materials that responded to a short electric pulse. This changes the magnetic transport properties of the material in such a way that information can be placed in four states instead of just two. The potential increase in storage density is great.
Photovoltaic cells wiggle when lit
February 28, 2012 7:36 am | by Mike Ross | News | CommentsFor decades, scientists have known that some ferroelectric materials—materials that possess a stable electrical polarization switchable by an external electric field—are also photovoltaic. But scientists didn’t know how or why. Recent research has revealed an atomic-scale wiggle just 10 trillionths of a second long that reveals the mechanism for the materials’ photovoltaic effect.
IBM captures first-ever image of single-molecule charge distribution
February 28, 2012 3:29 am | News | CommentsScientists using a variant of atomic force microscopy called Kelvin probe force microscopy, at low temperatures and in ultrahigh vacuum, have recently obtained the first image of the charge distribution within a single molecule. The molecule is the same as the type used in IBM’s single-molecule logic switch.
Solution found to spintronics mystery
February 27, 2012 4:52 pm | by Lynn Yarris | News | CommentsA long-standing controversy regarding the semiconductor gallium manganese arsenide, one of the most promising materials for spintronic technology, looks to have been resolved. Researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Notre Dame University found the that the spintronic properties do not arise from a valence energy band, as many scientists have argued.
‘Power Felt’ creates electricity from heat—or cold
February 22, 2012 6:17 am | by Katie Neal | News | CommentsMade from carbon nanotubes locked up in flexible plastic fibers and made to feel like fabric, an invention called Power Felt from Wake Forest University uses temperature differences—room temperature versus body temperature, for example—to create a charge.
Engineers achieve major band gap improvement for metal oxides
February 21, 2012 11:38 am | News | CommentsComplex transition metal oxides have for years held great promise for information and energy applications, but reducing the band gaps of these insulators without hurting performance has been a major challenge. A recent layer-by-layer growth method pioneered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has achieved a 30% reduction in this band gap, a significant improvement.
Nanostructured electrodes form basis for new sodium-ion batteries
February 13, 2012 9:02 am | News | CommentsHighly efficient 3V cathodes for rechargeable sodium-ion batteries have been developed by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago. With a near-theoretical capacity of 250 mAh/g and power densities 1,200 W/kg, these new electrodes can be used at ambient temperature.
Researchers find way to examine batteries—from the inside
February 12, 2012 5:39 pm | News | CommentsUntil now, looking inside a battery to determine its health has been difficult without destroying the battery. An international team of researchers has now development a way to do this, based on magnetic resonance imaging technology.
