Category Technology/Electronics

This is the memristor array situated on a circuit board.
Credit: Mohammed Zidan, Nanoelectronics group, University of Michigan.

A new way of arranging advanced computer components called memristors on a chip could enable them to be used for general computing, which could cut energy consumption by a factor of 100. This would improve performance in low power environments such as smartphones or make for more efficient supercomputers, says a University of Michigan researcher. “Historically, the semiconductor industry has improved performance by making devices faster...

Table 1: θSH: spin Hall angle, δ: conductivity, δSH: spin Hall conductivity. The figures in the bottom row are those achieved in the present study. Remarkably, the spin Hall conductivity, shown in the right-hand column, is two orders of magnitude greater than the previous record. (Image: Pham Nam Hai)

BiSb expands the potential of topological insulators for ultra-low-power electronic devices. Scientists have developed the world’s best-performing pure spin current source made of bismuth-antimony (BiSb) alloys, which they report as the best candidate for the first industrial application of topological insulators...

Lattice architecture can provide channels for effective transportation of electrolyte inside the volume of material, while for the cube electrode, most of the material will not be exposed to the electrolyte. The cross-section view shows the silver mesh enabling the charge (Li+ ions) transportation to the current collector and how most of the printed material has been utilized.
Credit: Rahul Panat, Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering

Additive manufacturing, otherwise known as 3D printing, can be used to manufacture porous electrodes for lithium-ion batteries – but because of the nature of the manufacturing process, the design of these 3D printed electrodes is limited to just a few possible architectures...

A phonon laser formed by coupled optical resonators. Mechanical vibrations in resonator (blue) could be enhanced when the frequency difference of two optical supermodes matches with the frequency mechanical vibrations.
Credit: Micro/Nano Photonics Lab

New laser uses light to create sound. A team of international researchers led by engineers at Washington University in St. Louis has seen the light and now has a lasing system that produces “good vibrations.” They developed a lasing system already adept at producing tiny light packets called photons into a tunable system that also makes little bits of mechanical energy called phonons – the energy products of oscillation, or vibration...