Category Technology/Electronics

A new material, may finally bring an end to the misery of cracked devices. Molecular Arrangement and Charge Transfer in C60/Graphene Heterostructures. ACS Nano, 2017; 11 (5): 4686 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b00551 Credit: © smspsy / Fotolia

Currently, most parts of a smart phone are made of silicon and other compounds, which are expensive and break easily, but with almost 1.5 billion smart phones purchased worldwide last year, manufacturers are on the lookout for something more durable and less costly...

MELRAM cell and the electric scheme for the magnetic state identification.

A team from France and Russia has now developed a magnetoelectric random access memory (MELRAM) cell that has the potential to increase power efficiency, and decrease heat waste, by orders of magnitude for read operations at room temperature. The research could aid production of devices such as instant-on laptops, close-to-0-consumption flash drives, and data storage centers that require much less air conditioning.

Billions of transistors can now be etched onto single chips in a space the size of a dime, but at some point, increasing this number for even better performance using the same space will not be possible...

1.Prototype of a semi-transparent perovskite solar cell with thermal-mirror functionality.
Copyright : Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
2. Thermal images are taken by an infrared camera to compare the heat rejection performance of automobile window film, semi-transparent solar cell and glass.
Copyright : Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
3. Typical solar cells today are made of crystalline silicon, which is difficult to make translucent.
Copyright : Liu Fuyu / 123rf

A Korean team has developed semi-transparent perovskite solar cells that could be great candidates for solar windows...

Electron microscopy images of perovskite quantum dots embedded in the protective alumina matrix, and a photograph of the same film stable in water. Credit: © R. Buonsanti/EPFL

EPFL scientists have built a new type of inorganic nanocomposite that makes perovskite quantum dot exceptionally stable against air exposure, sunlight, heat, and water. Quantum dots are nanometer-size, semiconducting materials whose tiny size gives them unique optical properties. Much effort has been put in building quantum dots from perovskites, which already show much promise for solar panels, LEDs and laser technologies.

The new approach to stabilize the perovskite quantum dots was developed in the lab of Raffaella Buonsanti at EPFL Valais Wallis...