Category Physics

Engineers ‘Grow’ Atomically Thin Transistors on Top of Computer Chips

Engineers 'grow' atomically thin transistors on top of computer chips
Uniformity characterization of the 200 mm monolayer MoS2 synthesized at low temperature. Credit: Nature Nanotechnology (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-023-01375-6

Emerging AI applications, like chatbots that generate natural human language, demand denser, more powerful computer chips. But semiconductor chips are traditionally made with bulk materials, which are boxy 3D structures, so stacking multiple layers of transistors to create denser integrations is very difficult.

However, semiconductor transistors made from ultrathin 2D materials, each only about three atoms in thickness, could be stacked up to create more powerful chips...

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Using Quantum Physics to Secure Wireless Devices

Using quantum physics to secure wireless devices
Physically unclonable function (PUF) based cryptographic keys generated by the PT-symmetric electronic system. a Illustration of the PUF-enabled secure radio-frequency (RF) authentication and communication. b Generation of the challenge-response pair (CRP) and the cryptographic key in the proposed PUF system. Our experiments utilize the pulse excitation shown in the left panel of b, and the response, represented by the transient voltage signal measured across the reader’s capacitor, and its discretized form are shown in the middle and right panels of b, respectively. After proper sampling and processing, the analog response is converted to a digital key composed of a bitstring. Credit: Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36508-x

From access cards and key fobs to Blu...

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Transforming Highways for High-Speed Travel and Energy Transport

Schematic illustration of the superconducting highway for energy transport and storage and superconductor levitation for the transport of people and goods. Credit: Vakaliuk et al.
Schematic illustration of the superconducting highway for energy transport and storage and superconductor levitation for the transport of people and goods. Credit: Vakaliuk et al.

Revolutionary design could combine superconductor levitation, lossless electricity transmission, and liquid hydrogen transportation into one system. Superconductors can conduct electricity without any resistance or power loss, and they can effortlessly cause magnets to levitate above them. These properties would make superconductors useful for high-speed trains or long-distance power transmission, except for one glaring problem: superconductors only work at low temperatures, more than a hundred degrees below zero.

This one requirement makes building a hyperefficient electrical grid or high-speed rail netwo...

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Researchers use AI to discover New Planet outside Solar System

The exoplanet was detected using machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence

A University of Georgia research team has confirmed evidence of a previously unknown planet outside of our solar system, and they used machine learning tools to detect it.

A recent study by the team showed that machine learning can correctly determine if an exoplanet is present by looking in protoplanetary disks, the gas around newly formed stars.

The newly published findings represent a first step toward using machine learning to identify previously overlooked exoplanets.

“We confirmed the planet using traditional techniques, but our models directed us to run those simulations and showed us exactly where the planet might be,” said Jason Terry, doctoral student in the UGA Franklin Colleg...

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