Category Technology/Electronics

Fifteen years ago, UC Jim Sanchezta Barbara electrical and materials professor John Bowers pioneered a method for integrating a laser onto a silicon wafer. The technology has since been widely deployed in combination with other silicon photonics devices to replace the copper-wire interconnects that formerly linked servers at data centers, dramatically increasing energy efficiency — an important endeavor at a time when data traffic is growing by roughly 25% per year.

For several years, the Bowers group has collaborated with the group of Tobias J...

University of Colorado Boulder researchers have discovered that minuscule, self-propelled particles called “nanoswimmers” can escape from mazes as much as 20 times faster than other passive particles, paving the way for their use in everything from industrial clean-ups to medication delivery.

The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describe how these tiny synthetic nanorobots are incredibly effective at escaping cavities within maze-like environments...

A new electrode that could free up 20% more light from organic light-emitting diodes has been developed at the University of Michigan. It could help extend the battery life of smartphones and laptops, or make next-gen televisions and displays much more energy efficient.

The approach prevents light from being trapped in the light-emitting part of an OLED, enabling OLEDs to maintain brightness while using less power. In addition, the electrode is easy to fit into existing processes for making OLED displays and light fixtures.

“With our approach, you can do it all in the same vacuum chamber,” said L. Jay Guo, U-M professor of electrical and computer engineering and corresponding author of the study.

Unless engineers take action, about 80% of the light produced by an OLED gets tr...

Acoustoelectronic tweezers gently manipulate biological nanoparticles just a few nanometers wide. Engineers at Duke University have devised a system for manipulating particles approaching the miniscule 2.5 nanometer diameter of DNA using sound-induced electric fields. Dubbed “acoustoelectronic nanotweezers,” the approach provides a label-free, dynamically controllable method of moving and trapping nanoparticles over a large area...