Category Physics

A close-up look at the transparent wood created at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Credit: KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Windows and solar panels in the future could be made from one of the best – and cheapest – construction materials known: wood. Researchers at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a new transparent wood material that’s suitable for mass production. Prof. Berglund says transparent wood panels can also be used for windows, and semitransparent facades, when the idea is to let light in but maintain privacy.

The optically transparent wood is a type of wood veneer in which the lignin, a component of the cell walls, is removed chemically. “When the lignin is removed, the wood becomes beautifully white...

This is a schematic illustration of the lattice and magnetic structures for EuMnBi2 at zero field, together with the formal valence of each ion. The arrangement of the Mn sublattice is assumed to be the same as in SrMnBi2. Credit: Hideaki Sakai

This achievement will lead to a new field of study, strong correlated quantum transport of Dirac electrons, and become an innovation in realizing super high speed spintronics, the foundation of high-speed and energy-saving electronics.

A/Prof Hideaki Sakai at Osaka University and A/Prof Shintaro Ishiwata, Hidetoshi MASUDA (Grad Student) at Uni of Tokyo succeeded in the synthesis of high-quality single crystals of EuMnBi2, a layered compound which is thought to have both properties of Dirac fermions and magnets, using flux growth in a high vacuum...

Acoustic waveguide channels phonons into the optomechanical cavity, enabling the group to manipulate the motion of the suspended nanoscale beam directly. Credit: K. Balram/K. Srinivasan/NIST

A system based on this design could move and store information in next-generation computers. While Moore’s Law, the idea that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every 2 years, has proven remarkably resilient, engineers will soon begin to encounter fundamental limits. As transistors shrink, heat and other factors will begin to have magnified effects in circuits. So researchers are considering designs in which electronic components interface with other physical systems that carry information such as light and sound...

Crystal structures of the competing phases.

The quantum behaviour of hydrogen affects the structural properties of hydrogen-rich compounds, which are possible candidates for the elusive room temperature superconductor. New theoretical results suggest that the quantum nature of hydrogen – meaning that it can behave like a particle or a wave — strongly affects the recently discovered hydrogen sulphur superconductor, a compound that when subjected to extremely high pressure, is the highest-temperature superconductor yet identified...