Category Technology/Electronics

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of California, Los Angeles have made an important advance that could lead to more energy efficient magnetic memory storage components for computers and other devices.

Magnets are widely used for computer memory because their “up” or “down” polarity — the magnetic state — can be “flipped” to write or encode data and store information. Magnetic memory is nonvolatile, so information can be stored on devices without refreshing. However, magnetic memory also requires a lot of energy.

A recently discovered magnetic state called the skyrmion, which is neither “up” nor “down” but flower-shaped, offers a solution...

A new fundamental understanding of polymeric relaxor ferroelectric behavior could lead to advances in flexible electronics, actuators and transducers, energy storage, piezoelectric sensors and electrocaloric cooling, according to a team of researchers at Penn State and North Carolina State.

Researchers have debated the theory behind the mechanism of relaxor ferroelectrics for more than 50 years, said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. While relaxor ferroelectrics are well-recognized, fundamentally fascinating and technologically useful materials, a Nature article commented in 2006 that they were heterogeneous, hopeless messes.

Without a funda...

Indium nitride is a promising material for use in electronics, but difficult to manufacture. Scientists at Linköping University, Sweden, have developed a new molecule that can be used to create high-quality indium nitride, making it possible to use it in, for example, high-frequency electronics.

The bandwidth we currently use for wireless data transfer will soon be full. If we are to continue transmitting ever-increasing amounts of data, the available bandwidth must be increased by bringing further frequencies into use. Indium nitride may be part of the solution.
“Since electrons move through indium n...

By making use of the ‘spooky’ laws behind quantum entanglement physicists think have found a way to make information leap between a pair of electrons separated by distance.

Teleporting fundamental states between photons – massless particles of light – is quickly becoming old news, a trick we are still learning to exploit in computing and encrypted communications technology.

But what the latest research has achieved is quantum teleportation between particles of matter – electrons –something that could help connect quantum computing with the more traditional electronic kind.

“We provide evidence for ‘entanglement swapping,’ in which we create entanglement between two electrons even thou...