Category Physics

Engineering researchers have created ultrathin, stretchable electronic material that is gas permeable, allowing the material to “breathe.” The material was designed specifically for use in biomedical or wearable technologies, since the gas permeability allows sweat and volatile organic compounds to evaporate away from the skin, making it more comfortable for users – especially for long-term wear.

“The gas permeability is the big advance over earlier stretchable electronics,” says Yong Zhu, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University...

Laser opens up a new world of applications using optical control of physical objects. Researchers have demonstrated the world’s first metasurface laser that produces “super-chiral light”: light with ultra-high angular momentum. The light from this laser can be used as a type of “optical spanner” to or for encoding information in optical communications.

“Because light can carry angular momentum, it means that this can be transferred to matter. The more angular momentum light carries, the more it can transfer. So you can think of light as an ‘optical spanner’,” Professor Andrew Forbes from the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa, who led the research...

Relatively inexpensive compound could perform safely and effectively in solar cells. A team of engineers, material scientists, and physicists demonstrated how a new material — a lead-free chalcogenide perovskite — that hadn’t previously been considered for use in solar cells could provide a safer and more effective option than others that are commonly considered.

A widespread transition to solar energy will depend heavily on reliable, safe, and affordable technology like batteries for energy storage and solar cells for energy conversion. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, researchers are focused heavily on both parts of that equation.

In research published today in Advanced Functional Materials, a team of e...

Researchers see application in future quantum technologies. The fundamental laws of physics are based on symmetries that, among other things, determine the interactions between charged particles. Using ultracold atoms, researchers at Heidelberg University have experimentally constructed the symmetries of quantum electrodynamics. They hope to gain new insights for implementing future quantum technologies that can simulate complex physical phenomena. The results of the study were published in the journal Science.

The theory of quantum electrodynamics deals with the electromagnetic interaction between electrons and light particles...