Category Technology/Electronics

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) made a technological breakthrough and constructed a perovskite solar cell with the dual benefits of being both highly efficient and highly stable.

The work was done in collaboration with scientists from the University of Toledo, the University of Colorado-Boulder, and the University of California-San Diego.

A unique architectural structure enabled the researchers to record a certified stabilized efficiency of 24% under 1-sun illumination, making it the highest reported of its kind...

Engineering researchers have created new high-power electronic devices that are more energy efficient than previous technologies. The devices are made possible by a unique technique for “doping” gallium nitride (GaN) in a controlled way.

“Many technologies require power conversion — where power is switched from one format to another,” says Dolar Khachariya, the first author of a paper on the work and a former Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. “For example, the technology might need to convert AC to DC, or convert electricity into work — like an electric motor. And in any power conversion system, most power loss takes place at the power switch — which is an active component of the electrical circuit that makes the power conversion system.

“Developing more efficien...

A research team led by a physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has demonstrated a new magnetized state in a monolayer of tungsten ditelluride, or WTe2, a new quantum material. Called a magnetized or ferromagnetic quantum spin Hall insulator, this material of one-atom thickness has an insulating interior but a conducting edge, which has important implications for controlling electron flow in nanodevices.

In a typical conductor, electrical current flows evenly everywhere. Insulators, on the other hand, do not readily conduct electricity. Ordinarily, monolayer WTe2 is a special insulator with a conducting edge; magnetizing it bestows upon it more unusual properties.

“We stacked monolayer WTe2 with an insulating ferromagnet of several atomic layer thickness—of Cr2Ge2...

Breakthroughs in modern microelectronics depend on understanding and manipulating the movement of electrons in metal. Reducing the thickness of metal sheets to the order of nanometers can enable exquisite control over how the metal’s electrons move. In so doing, one can impart properties that aren’t seen in bulk metals, such as ultrafast conduction of electricity. Now, researchers from Osaka University and collaborating partners have synthesized a novel class of nanostructured superlattices. This study enables an unusually high degree of control over the movement of electrons within metal semiconductors, which promises to enhance the functionality of everyday technologies.

Precisely tuning the architecture of metal nanosheets, and thus facilitating advanced microelectronics functio...