Category Technology/Electronics

A System for the Nonreciprocal Transmission of Microwave Acoustic Waves

Rendered image of the device developed by the researchers. Credit: Shao et al.

Acoustic waves have been found to be highly versatile and promising carriers of information between chip-based electronic devices. This characteristic is ideal for the development of a number of electronic components, including microwave filters and transducers.

In the past, some researchers have tried to build devices in which waves are transmitted between two ports in a non-symmetric way. These are known as nonreciprocal devices. These devices could be particularly promising for the manipulation and routing of phonons, quasiparticles associated with acoustic waves...

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Solar Hydrogen production: Splitting Water with UV is now at almost 100% Quantum Efficiency

Photocatalytic water splitting with a quantum efficiency of almost unity
Authors:Tsuyoshi Takata, Junzhe Jiang, Yoshihisa Sakata, Mamiko Nakabayashi, Naoya Shibata, Vikas Nandal, Kazuhiko Seki, Takashi Hisatomi, Kazunari Domen
Journal:Nature, 581, 411-414 (2020)
DOI10.1038/s41586-020-2278-9

Scientists have successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen using light and meticulously designed catalysts, and they did so at the maximum efficiency meaning there was almost no loss and undesired side reactions. This latest breakthrough in solar hydrogen production makes the likelihood of scalable, economically viable hydrogen production more than likely, paving the way for humanity to make the switch to clean energy.

Pour yourself a glass of water and take a look at it...

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Paper-Thin Gallium Oxide Transistor handles more than 8,000 Volts

The graph image on the left shows the breakdown voltage of three different versions of the gallium oxide transistor. The illustration on the right shows the configuration and materials that make up the transistor that achieved a breakdown voltage of more than 8,000 volts. Credit: University at Buffalo

People love their electric cars. But not so much the bulky batteries and related power systems that take up precious cargo space. Help could be on the way from a gallium oxide-based transistor under development at the University at Buffalo.

In a study published in the June edition of IEEE Electron Device Letters, electrical engineers describe how the tiny electronic switch can handle more than 8,000 volts, an impressive feat considering it’s about as thin as a sheet of paper.

The tr...

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Physicists develop world’s best Quantum Bits

A photo of Assistant Professor Wesley Campbell, UCLA Physics & Astronomy
Assistant Professor Wesley Campbell, UCLA Physics & Astronomy (Photo Credit: UCLA)

A team of researchers at UCLA has set a new record for preparing and measuring the quantum bits, or qubits, inside of a quantum computer without error. The techniques they have developed make it easier to build quantum computers that outperform classical computers for important tasks, including the design of new materials and pharmaceuticals. The research is published in the peer-reviewed, online open-access journal, npj Quantum Information, published by Nature and including the exceptional research on quantum information and quantum computing.

Currently, the most powerful quantum computers are “noisy intermediate-scale quantum” (NISQ) devices and are very sensitive to errors...

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