Category Technology/Electronics

A short laser pulse travels through a diamond (black spheres) and excites electrons inside it. The strength of the excitation is measured using an attosecond ultraviolet pulse (violet). Credit: Matteo Lucchini, Copyright ETH Zurich

These insights are important for petahertz electronics of the future. Today’s electronic circuits already routinely work at frequencies of several gigahertz (a billion oscillations per second) up to terahertz (a thousand billion oscillations). Modern computers are as powerful as they are because tiny switches inside them steer electric currents in fractions of a billionth of a second...

An effective and low-cost solution for storing solar energy. Credit: © Infini Lab / 2016 EPFL

How can we store solar energy for period when the sun doesn’t shine? One solution is to convert it into hydrogen through water electrolysis. The idea is to use the electrical current produced by a solar panel to ‘split’ water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Clean hydrogen can then be stored away for future use to produce electricity on demand, or even as a fuel.

Even though different hydrogen-production technologies have given us promising results in the lab, they are still too unstable or expensive and need to be further developed to use on a commercial and large scale...

The octobot is powered by a chemical reaction and controlled with a soft logic board. A reaction inside the bot transforms a small amount of liquid fuel (hydrogen peroxide) into a large amount of gas, which flows into the octobot’s arms and inflates them like a balloon. The team used a microfluidic logic circuit, a soft analog of a simple electronic oscillator, to control when hydrogen peroxide decomposes to gas in the octobot. Credit: Lori Sanders

Powered by a chemical reaction controlled by microfluidics, 3D-printed ‘octobot’ has no electronics. A team of Harvard University researchers with expertise in 3D printing, mechanical engineering, and microfluidics has demonstrated the first autonomous, untethered, entirely soft robot...

Electromagnetic antenna in transmitting (a) and receiving (b) modes. Credit: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

A team of physicists has demonstrated the potential of silicon nanoparticles for effective non-linear light manipulation. Their work lays the foundation for the development of novel optical devices with a wide range of functionalities. These silicon nanoparticles based devices would allow to transmit, reflect, or scatter incident light in a specified direction, depending on its intensity. They could be integrated into microchips that would enable ultrafast all-optical signal processing in optical communication lines and next generation optical computers.

An essential component of any equipment that relies on electromagnetic waves for information transmission and processin...