Category Technology/Electronics

Research at Lund University in Sweden has found a new way to create nano-sized magnetic particles using ultrafast laser light pulses. The discovery could pave the way for new and more energy-efficient technical components and become useful in the quantum computers of the future.

Magnetic skyrmions are sometimes described as magnetic vortices. Unlike ferromagnetic states — which occur in conventional magnets such as compasses and refrigerator magnets — the skyrmion state is quite peculiar: the orientation of the magnetization does not point in the same direction everywhere in the material, but is instead best described as a kind of swirling magnetism.

Skyrmions are of great interest to both basic researchand industry, as they can be used to manufactu...

Scientists have made a major breakthrough on how the spin evolves in the nanoworld on extremely short time scales. Sharing real-time information requires complex networks of systems. A promising approach for speeding up data storage devices consists of switching the magnetization, or the electrons’ spin, of magnetic materials with ultra-short femtosecond laser pulses. But, how the spin evolves in the nanoworld on extremely short time scales, in one millionth of one billionth of a second, has remained largely mysterious...

New solar cell devices that are cheaper and easier to make could soon make their way to market thanks to materials made at Imperial College London.

Traditional solar cells are made from silicon, which has good efficiency and stability, but is relatively expensive to make and can only be manufactured in stiff panels.

Perovskite solar cells offer an intriguing alternative; they can be printed from inks, making them low cost, high efficiency, thin, lightweight and flexible. However, they have trailed behind silicon solar cells in efficiency and, importantly, stability, breaking down under normal environmental conditions.

New metal-containing materials called ferrocenes could help with these problems...

Researchers have discovered that light – in the form of a laser – can trigger a form of magnetism in a normally nonmagnetic material. This magnetism centers on the behavior of electrons...