Category Technology/Electronics

A semiconductor crystal has shown an unprecedented capacity to shape ultrashort laser pulses. Credit: Fabian Langer, Regensburg University

Extremely short, configurable “femtosecond” pulses of light demonstrated by an international team could lead to future computers that run up to 100,000 times faster than today’s electronics. The researchers, including engineers at the University of Michigan, showed that they could control the peaks within the laser pulses and also twist the light. The method moves electrons faster and more efficiently than electrical currents – and with reliable effects on their quantum states. It is a step toward so-called “lightwave electronics” and, in the more distant future, quantum computing, said U-M professor Mackillo Kira.

Electrons moving through a semiconduct...

Al Molnar, holding a test board with the two-way transceiver chip mounted in the center, is shown with graduate student Hazal Yüksel in Molnar’s lab. Yüksel is co-lead author of the latest paper from the Molnar lab, published earlier this year in the Journal of Solid-State Circuits. Credit: Cornell University

Cornell engineers have devised a method for transmitting and receiving radio signals on a single chip, which could ultimately help change the way wireless communication is done. Separating the send and receive bands is difficult enough, but the problem is compounded by the ever-increasing number of bands in the latest devices, which handle everything wireless technology has to offer...

Visual comparison of printed surface before smoothing (1), with smoothing by conventional methods (2) and by 3D-CMF (3). CMF result (a-3) is more uniform than polishing (a-2), and CMF (b-3) accurately preserves more desired surface detail than solvent vapor method (b-2).
Credit: Waseda University

New process combines better quality with low cost and less waste, giant step towards home 3D printing. Waseda University researchers have developed a process to dramatically improve the quality of 3D printed resin products. The process combines greatly improved surface texture and higher structural rigidity with lower cost, less complexity, safer use of solvent chemicals and elimination of troublesome waste dust.

Kensuke Takagishi and Professor Shinjiro Umezu, both of the Waseda University Faculty ...

A holmium (Ho) and a iron (Fe) atom placed on a MgO substrate are the components for the world’s smallest memory device. Ho is used as a storage medium and Fe as a sensor were. The magnetism of the holmium atom can be changed or read by flowing current through the STM tip.

Storing 1 bit in 1 atom is possible: The extraordinary end of Moore’s law. One bit of digital information can now be successfully stored in an individual atom, according to a study just published in Nature. Current commercially-available magnetic memory devices require approximately 1 million atoms to do the same...