Category Physics

A nano-spacecraft such as ChipSat, which consists of solar cells and functional blocks in a printed circuit board, would face a high risk of damage from radiation and aging issues on a flight into deep space. Especially, most of functional blocks such as microcontroller, memories, sensors, and communication system are semiconductor-based chips. Credit: D.-I. Moon et al.

Self healing chips—healing after radiation damage—could have an impact on interstellar spacecraft, according to reports. Scientists at NASA and KAIST) have been pioneering development of “tiny spacecraft made from a single silicon chip that could slash interstellar exploration times.” Inverse described this breakthrough as “a transistor for silicon chips that can heal itself after radiation damage...

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...