Category Technology/Electronics

Physicists use Light Waves to Accelerate Supercurrents, enable Ultrafast Quantum Computing

An illustration shows light-induced acceleration of supercurrents, enabling ultrafast quantum computing
Jigang Wang and his collaborators have demonstrated light-induced acceleration of supercurrents, which could enable practical applications of quantum mechanics such as computing, sensing and communicating. Larger image. Image courtesy of Jigang Wang.

Scientists have discovered that terahertz light – light at trillions of cycles per second – can act as a control knob to accelerate supercurrents. That can help open up the quantum world of matter and energy at atomic and subatomic scales to practical applications such as ultrafast computing.

Jigang Wang patiently explained his latest discovery in quantum control that could lead to superfast computing based on quantum mechanics: He mentioned light-induced superconductivity without energy gap...

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How you Charge your Mobile Phone could Compromise its Battery Lifespan

Schematic illustration of the sources of energy loss (inefficiency) and heat generation during inductive charging.

Researchers at WMG at the University of Warwick have found that use of inductive charging, whilst highly convenient, risks depleting the life of mobile phones using typical LIBs (Lithium-ion batteries).

Consumers and manufacturers have ramped up their interest in this convenient charging technology, abandoning fiddling with plugs and cables in a favour of just setting the phone directly on a charging base.

Standardisation of charging stations, and inclusion of inductive charging coils in many new smartphones has led to rapidly increasing adoption of the technology...

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Research reveals Exotic Quantum States in Double-layer Graphene

A new type of quasiparticle is discovered in graphene double-layer structure. This so-called composite fermion consists of one electron and two different types of magnetic flux, illustrated as blue and gold colored arrows in the figure. Composite fermions are capable of forming pairs, such unique interaction leads to experimental discovery of unexpected new quantum Hall phenomena.

Researchers from Brown and Columbia Universities have demonstrated previously unknown states of matter that arise in double-layer stacks of graphene, a 2D nanomaterial. These new states, known as the fractional quantum Hall effect, arise from the complex interactions of electrons both within and across graphene layers.

“The findings show that stacking 2D materials together in close proximity generates en...

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A New ‘Golden’ Age for Electronics?

Samarium sulfide doped with various rare earth elements shrinks as the temperature increases from about minus 175°C to about 40-60°C. Shown here is the relative linear shrinkage compared to the length at about 120°C. For the Cerium (Ce) dopant, the percentage volume decrease is about 2.6%. These samples were produced by an industrially scalable process, paving the way for practical applications of this class of sulfides as thermal-expansion compensators.
CREDIT
K. Takenaka/John Wojdylo

Materials that shrink when heated – changing color from black to golden – could save expensive electronics from heat damage.
Scientists have created materials that shrink uniformly in all directions when heated under normal everyday conditions, using a cheap and industrially scalable process...

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