Category Technology/Electronics

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas and Seoul National University have designed a novel battery cathode material that offers a potentially lower-cost, more eco-friendly option to lithium-ion batteries. Their sodium-ion design, which retains the high energy density of a lithium-ion cathode, replaces the most of the lithium atoms (green) with sodium (yellow). The layered structure of the new material also incorporates manganese (purple) and oxygen (red). The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials. Credit: University of Texas at Dallas

In the battle of the batteries, lithium-ion technology is the reigning champion, powering that cellphone in your pocket as well as an increasing number of electric vehicles on the road...

This is a gold microchip. Credit: Lancaster University

1st demo of patented technology smartphone app aims to eliminate counterfeiting. Counterfeit products are a huge problem – from medicines to car parts, fake technology costs lives. Every year, imports of counterfeited and pirated goods around the world cost nearly US $0.5 trillion in lost revenue. Counterfeit medicines alone cost the industry over US $200 billion every year. They are also dangerous to our health – around a third contain no active ingredients, resulting in a million deaths a year. As the Internet of Things expands, there is the need to trust the identity of smart systems, such as the brake system components within connected and driverless cars.

But researchers exhibiting at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition be...

Single molecule-high sheets of graphene oxide mix in solution with synthetic tandem repeat proteins patterned on squid ring teeth. The two separate materials self assemble so that the tandem repeat proteins attach to the edges of the graphene oxide sheets — one end on a sheet — to bring the graphene into stacks and uniformly space the sheets. The amount of spacing between graphene oxide sheets is determined by the length of the tandem repeat protein. Credit: Penn State

Squid-inspired proteins can act as programmable assemblers of 2D materials, like graphene oxide, to form hybrid materials with minute spacing between layers suitable for high-efficiency devices including flexible electronics, energy storage systems and mechanical actuators, according to an interdisciplinary team of Penn Stat...

André Dankert, Saroj P. Dash. Electrical gate control of spin current in van der Waals heterostructures at room temperature. Nature Communications, 2017; 8: 16093 DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS16093

Graphene Flagship researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden have showed a graphene-based spin field-effect transistor operating at room temperature. Using the spin of the electrons in graphene and other layered material heterostructures they have produced working devices as a step towards integrating spintronic logic and memory devices. Current semiconductor logic devices within our computers use the flow and control of electronic charge for information processing. Spintronic memory devices use electron spin to store information...