Category Technology/Electronics

This is the target chamber (front) and ultra-high intensity laser (back) used in the micro-scale fusion experiment at Colorado State University. Credit: Advanced Beam Laboratory/Colorado State University

Record-setting efficiency for generation of neutrons. Nuclear fusion, the process that powers our sun, happens when nuclear reactions between light elements produce heavier ones. It’s also happening – at a smaller scale – in a Colorado State University laboratory. Using a compact but powerful laser to heat arrays of ordered nanowires, CSU scientists and collaborators have demonstrated micro-scale nuclear fusion in the lab. They have achieved record-setting efficiency for the generation of neutrons – chargeless sub-atomic particles resulting from the fusion process.

Laser-driven controlled ...

A single circuit board, foreground, that when joined with others forms the experimental array of the quadrupole topological insulator. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer

Researchers have produced a “human scale” demonstration of a new phase of matter called quadrupole topological insulators that was recently predicted using theoretical physics. These are the first experimental findings to validate this theory. The team’s work with QTIs was born out of the decade-old understanding of the properties of a class of materials called topological insulators...

In a controlled environment, the fastest-growing orientation of graphene crystals overwhelms the others and gets “evolutionarily selected” into a single crystal, even on a polycrystalline substrate, without having to match the substrate’s orientation. An Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led team developed the novel method that produces large, monolayer single-crystal-like graphene films more than a foot long. Credit: Andy Sproles/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Dept. of Energy

A new method to produce large, monolayer single-crystal-like graphene films more than a foot long relies on harnessing a “survival of the fittest” competition among crystals...

An artist’s concept of two kinds of monolayer atomic crystal molecular superlattices. On the left, molybdenum disulfide with layers of ammonium molecules; on the right, black phosphorus with layers of ammonium molecules. Credit: UCLA

New kinds of ‘superlattices’ could lead to improvements in electronics, from transistors to LEDs. A research team led by UCLA scientists and engineers has developed a method to make new kinds of artificial “superlattices” – materials composed of alternating layers of ultra-thin “2D” sheets, which are only one or a few atoms thick...