Category Technology/Electronics

Light on a CMOS chip. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Twente

Electronics and light don’t go well together on a standard ‘CMOS’ chip. Researcher Satadal Dutta of the University of Twente succeeded in introducing a light connection into the heart of a semiconductor chip. In this way, two circuits can communicate. Or: the worlds of electronics and photonics are connected.

What is particularly attractive about Dutta’s solution is that no special materials or manufacturing processes are needed: the light comes from silicon. The light source, detector and the light channel can be made using the technology that is used to make the electronic circuits...

A new pencil-like wireless spectrometer can be used with a smartphone to collect 3-D spectral images of the body and other objects. This design could make the device useful for point-of-care diagnostics. Credit: Dan Wang, Beijing University of Chemical Technology

Easy-to-use spectrometer less than $300, holds promise for remote medical diagnostics. A new smartphone-compatible device that is held like a pencil could make it practical to acquire spectral images of everyday objects and may eventually be used for point-of-care medical diagnosis in remote locations. Spectral images, which contain more color information than is obtainable with a typical camera, reveal characteristics of tissue and other biological samples that can’t be seen by the naked eye...

Cosimo Rusconi (l.) and Oriol Romero-Isart (r.) play with a levitron to illustrate their work on nano magnets.
Credit: IQOQI Innsbruck/M.R.Knabl

Quantum physicists have now shown that, despite Earnshaw’s theorem, nanomagnets can be stably levitated in an external static magnetic field owing to quantum mechanical principles. The quantum angular momentum of electrons, which also causes magnetism, is accountable for this mechanism.

Already in 1842, British mathematician Samuel Earnshaw proved that there is no stable configuration of levitating permanent magnets. If one magnet is levitated above another, the smallest disturbance will cause the system to crash...

Decorating Graphene Oxide with Ionic Liquid Nanodroplets: An Approach Leading to Energy-Dense, High-Voltage Supercapacitors

The ability to charge cellphones in seconds is one step closer after researchers at the University of Waterloo used nanotechnology to significantly improve supercapacitors. Their novel design roughly doubles the amount of electrical energy the rapid-charging devices can hold, helping pave the way for eventual use in everything from smartphones and laptop computers, to electric vehicles and high-powered lasers.

“We’re showing record numbers for the energy-storage capacity of supercapacitors,” said Michael Pope, a professor of chemical engineering who led the Waterloo research. “And the more energy-dense we can make them, the more batteries we can start displacing...