Category Physics

This foldable keyboard, created by Michigan State University engineer Nelson Sepulveda and his research team, operates by touch; no battery is needed. Sepulveda developed a new way to harvest energy from human motion using a pioneering device called a biocompatible ferroelectret nanogenerator, or FENG. Credit: Image courtesy of Michigan State University

The day of charging cellphones with finger swipes and powering Bluetooth headsets simply by walking is now much closer. Michigan State University engineering researchers have created a new way to harvest energy from human motion, using a film-like device that actually can be folded to create more power...

Illustration of the filtering of unwanted quasiparticles (red spheres) from a stream of superconducting electron pairs (blue spheres) using a microwave-driven pump. Credit: Copyright Philip Krantz, Krantz NanoArt

An international team has succeeded in making further improvements to the lifetime of superconducting quantum circuits. An important prerequisite for the realization of high-performance quantum computers is that the stored data should remain intact for as long as possible. Researchers have developed and tested a technique that removes unpaired electrons from the circuits. These are known to shorten the qubit lifetime (to be published online by the journal Science today.

Superconducting circuits belong to the most promising candidates for implementing quantum bits, ie qubits, with ...

For the first time, a NIMS research team designed and fabricated single-component organic molecules that are conductive like metal under normal pressure, despite the fact that the molecules contain neither multiple molecules nor metal elements. Because the molecules are completely pure, they are more durable and stable compared to conventional chemically doped organic conductive materials. The new molecules may be applied to solar cell electrodes and touch panels.

Organic molecules consisting solely of light elements essentially do not have carriers by which an electric charge can pass through. As such, they are not high quality conductors...

By harnessing the photoswitchable Rabi splitting, all-optical light modulators and rewritable waveguides were developed. The demonstration of Rabi splitting in the HPWMs (hybrid plasmon–waveguide modes)  will further advance scientific research and device applications of hybrid plasmon–molecule systems.

A military drone flying on a reconnaissance mission is captured behind enemy lines, setting into motion a team of engineers who need to remotely delete sensitive information carried on the drone’s chips. Because the chips are optical and not electronic, the engineers can now simply flash a beam of UV light onto the chip to instantly erase all content. Disaster averted...