Category Technology/Electronics

Tracks called waveguides guide photons in silicon. Spirals of these waveguides are used to generate photons that are routed around the processor circuit.
Credit: Xiaogang Qiang, University of Bristol

Light may be the missing ingredient in making usable quantum silicon computer chips, according to an international study featuring a University of Queensland researcher. The team has engineered a silicon chip that can guide photons along optical tracks, encoding and processing quantum-bits of information – ‘qubits’.

Professor Timothy Ralph from UQ’s Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology said that the use of photons in this way could increase the number and types of tasks that computers can help us with...

Test set-up for the solid-state battery: the battery of the size of a button cell is located in the middle of the acrylic glass casing, which ensures permanent contact with the battery.
Credit: Forschungszentrum Jülich / Regine Panknin

There are currently great hopes for solid-state batteries. They contain no liquid parts that could leak or catch fire. For this reason, they do not require cooling and are considered to be much safer, more reliable, and longer lasting than traditional lithium-ion batteries. Scientists have now introduced a new concept that allows currents up to 10X greater during charging and discharging than previously described in the literature.

The low current is considered one of the biggest hurdles in the development of solid-state batteries...

Elliptical orbits of bismuth surface electrons in a large magnetic field. The orientation and interference patterns of the electronic states reveal that the electrons prefer to occupy a single valley. Image created using a theoretical model of the data.
Credit: Ali Yazdani Laboratory, Princeton University

Researchers have made a finding that could help usher in new area of technology called ‘valleytronics.’ The study found that electrons in bismuth crystals prefer to collect in one valley rather than being distributed equally across valleys, setting up a type of electricity known as ferroelectricity. Energy valleys forming in crystals can trap single electrons. These valleys potentially could be used to store information, greatly enhancing what is capable with modern electronic devices.

In ...

The single-atom transistor that works in a gel electrolyte reaches the limit of miniaturization.
Credit: Group of Professor Thomas Schimmel/KIT

Milestone of energy efficiency in information technology. At Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), physicist Professor Thomas Schimmel and his team have developed a single-atom transistor, the world’s smallest. This quantum electronics component switches electrical current by controlled repositioning of a single atom, now also in the solid state in a gel electrolyte. The single-atom transistor works at room temperature and consumes very little energy, which opens up entirely new perspectives for information technology. The transistor is presented in Advanced Materials.

Digitization results in a high energy consumption...