Category Physics

Scientists have made a pivotal breakthrough in the important, emerging field of spintronics—which could lead to a new high speed energy efficient data technology.

An international team of researchers, including the University of Exeter, has made a revolutionary discovery that has the potential to provide high speed, low power-usage for some of the world’s most well-used electronic devices.

While today’s information technology relies on electronics that consumes a huge amount of energy, the electrons within electric currents can also transfer a form of angular momentum called spin.

‘Spin-based electronics or ‘spintronics’, that exploits spin current, has the potential to be not just significantly faster, but also more energy efficient.

Scientists have recently discovered ...

Protection against electromagnetic interference

Researchers have succeeded in applying aerogels to microelectronics: Aerogels based on cellulose nanofibers can effectively shield electromagnetic radiation over a wide frequency range – and they are unrivaled in terms of weight.

Electric motors and electronic devices generate electromagnetic fields that sometimes have to be shielded in order not to affect neighboring electronic components or the transmission of signals. High-frequency electromagnetic fields can only be shielded with conductive shells that are closed on all sides...

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of California, Los Angeles have made an important advance that could lead to more energy efficient magnetic memory storage components for computers and other devices.

Magnets are widely used for computer memory because their “up” or “down” polarity — the magnetic state — can be “flipped” to write or encode data and store information. Magnetic memory is nonvolatile, so information can be stored on devices without refreshing. However, magnetic memory also requires a lot of energy.

A recently discovered magnetic state called the skyrmion, which is neither “up” nor “down” but flower-shaped, offers a solution...

A new fundamental understanding of polymeric relaxor ferroelectric behavior could lead to advances in flexible electronics, actuators and transducers, energy storage, piezoelectric sensors and electrocaloric cooling, according to a team of researchers at Penn State and North Carolina State.

Researchers have debated the theory behind the mechanism of relaxor ferroelectrics for more than 50 years, said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. While relaxor ferroelectrics are well-recognized, fundamentally fascinating and technologically useful materials, a Nature article commented in 2006 that they were heterogeneous, hopeless messes.

Without a funda...