Category Technology/Electronics

Printed, flexible touchscreen. Credit: INM

Flexible smart phones are desirable for a lot of users. Up to now the displays of the innumerable phones and pods are rigid and do not yield to the anatomical forms adopted by the people carrying them. By now it is no longer any secret that the big players in the industry are working on flexible displays. INM – Leibniz Institute for New Materials shows, how they might become reality in the near future: At this year’s Hannover Messe, INM will be presenting suitable coatings for cost-efficient inkjet processes on 24 April to 28 April.

INM will be demonstrating flexible touch screens, which are produced by printing recently developed nanoparticle inks on thin plastic foils...

Two black diamonds on a superconducting chip (12x4mm). The wiggly line is a resonator, coupling the two diamonds.

Atomic defects in diamonds can be used as quantum memories. Researchers at TU Wien have been studying the quantum properties of such diamonds, but only now have they succeeded in coupling the specific defects in two such diamonds with one another. This is an important prerequisite for the development of new applications, such as highly sensitive sensors and switches for quantum computers.

“Unfortunately, quantum states are very fragile and decay very quickly,” explains Johannes Majer, head of the hybrid quantum research group, Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics at TU Wien...

The Navy has since 2014 been testing a 30-kilowatt laser on one of its warships, the USS Ponce (AFP Photo/John F. Williams)

A sci-fi staple for decades, laser weapons are finally becoming reality in the US military, albeit with capabilities a little less dramatic than at the movies. Lightsabers—the favored weapon of the Jedi in “Star Wars” films—will remain in the fictional realm for now, but after decades of development, laser weapons are now here and are being deployed on military vehicles and planes. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon—all the big defense players—are developing prototypes for the Pentagon. The Navy has since 2014 been testing a 30-kilowatt laser on one of its warships, the USS Ponce.

Lockheed Martin has just announced a 60-kilowatt laser weapon ...

Prof Jonathan Coleman and team have fabricated printed transistors consisting entirely of 2-dimensional nanomaterials for the first time. Credit: AMBER, Trinity College Dublin

Researchers in AMBER, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded materials science research centre hosted in Trinity College Dublin, have fabricated printed transistors consisting entirely of 2D nanomaterials for the first time. These 2D materials combine exciting electronic properties with the potential for low-cost production. This breakthrough could unlock the potential for applications such as food packaging that displays a digital countdown to warn you of spoiling, wine labels that alert you when your white wine is at its optimum temperature, or even a window pane that shows the day’s forecast.

This discovery opens t...