Category Technology/Electronics

Successful Morphing of Inorganic Perovskites Without Damaging their Functional Properties

inorganic perovskites
Applying morphed perovskites to construct an innovative photodetector. (Photo credits: © Dr Li Xiaocui / City University of Hong Kong)

A research team co-led by scholars from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has successfully morphed all-inorganic perovskites at room temperature without compromising their functional properties. Their findings demonstrate the potential of this class of semiconductors for manufacturing next-generation deformable electronics and energy systems in the future.

All-inorganic lead halide perovskites are becoming increasingly important semiconducting materials in energy conversion and optoelectronics because of their outstanding performance and enhanced environmental stability.

“However, unlike metal materials or polymers, inorganic semiconductors ar...

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MilliMobile is a Tiny, Self-driving Robot Powered only by Light and Radio Waves

MilliMobile is a tiny, self-driving robot powered only by light and radio waves
Researchers at the University of Washington have created MilliMobile, a tiny, self-driving robot powered only by surrounding light or radio waves. It’s about the size of a penny and can run indefinitely on harvested energy. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington

Small mobile robots carrying sensors could perform tasks like catching gas leaks or tracking warehouse inventory. But moving robots demands a lot of energy, and batteries, the typical power source, limit lifetime and raise environmental concerns. Researchers have explored various alternatives: affixing sensors to insects, keeping charging mats nearby, or powering the robots with lasers. Each has drawbacks: Insects roam, chargers limit range, and lasers can burn people’s eyes.

Researchers at the University of Washington ...

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Thermal MagIC: Digging into the Details of an Ambitious New ‘Thermometry Camera’

Diagram of the series of tiny wells and the magnetic particle image itself
Left: Diagram of the series of tiny wells, in clusters of fours, filled with solution. Each well in a foursome is spaced away from the other wells by a certain amount, anywhere from 0.1 mm (very close together) to 1 mm (further apart). Right: The magnetic particle image itself, showing distinctions between the wells spaced farther apart but not between the wells spaced close together. The dashed red circle in both images shows the foursome of wells spaced 0.5 mm apart.
Credit: NIST

Thermometers can do a lot of things: Measure the temperature at the center of your perfectly braised chicken or tell you whether to keep your child home from school due to illness. But because of their size, traditional thermometers’ uses are still limited.

“How do you non-invasively measure a temperature...

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Cloud Services Without Servers: What’s behind it

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Start image of a video in which Würzburg computer science Professor Samuel Kounev explains what “serverless computing” is – and what it is not. (Image: Screenshot von Vimeo.de / ACM)

A new generation of cloud services is on the rise. It is based on the paradigm of ‘serverless computing’. A recent article deals with the history, status and potential of serverless computing.

In cloud computing, commercial providers make computing resources available on demand to their customers over the Internet. This service is partly offered “serverless,” that is, without servers. How can that work? Computing resources without a server, isn’t that like a restaurant without a kitchen?

“The term is misleading,” says computer science Professor Samuel Kounev from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JM...

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