Category Technology/Electronics

Researchers from MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory report an important step toward practical quantum computers, with a paper describing a prototype chip that can trap ions in an electric field and, with built-in optics, direct laser light toward each of them.

Built-in optics could enable chips that use trapped ions as quantum bits. Although quantum systems with as many as 12 qubits have been demonstrated in the lab, building quantum computers complex enough to perform useful computations will require miniaturizing qubit technology, much the way the miniaturization of transistors enabled modern computers.

Trapped ions are probably the most widely studied qubit technology, but they’ve historically required a large and complex hardware apparatus...

Nanofiber mat electrode (John Russell / Vanderbilt)

The project is part of a $13 million Department of Energy program to advance fuel cell performance and durability and hydrogen storage technologies announced last month. The $4.5 million collaboration is based on a new nanofiber mat technology developed by Peter Pintauro, the H. Eugene McBrayer Professor of Chemical Engineering at Vanderbilt, that replaces the conventional electrodes used in fuel cells. The nanofiber electrodes boost the power output of fuel cells by 30% while being less expensive and more durable than conventional catalyst layers...

Individual crystals of synthetic zhemchuzhnikovite, prepared by Igor Huski?, McGill University. Credit: Igor Huski?, Friš?i? Research Group, McGill University

A surprising discovery reveals that MOFs also exist in nature – albeit in the form of rare minerals found so far only in Siberian coal mines. Metal-organic frameworks are human-made materials introduced in the 1990s, and researchers are working on ways to use them as molecular sponges for applications such as H storage, C sequestration, or photovoltaics.

The finding “completely changes the normal view of these highly popular materials as solely artificial, ‘designer’ solids,” says Tomislav Friščić, an associate professor of chemistry at McGill University in Montreal...

A 32-face 3-D truncated icosahedron mesh was created to test the simulation’s ability to precisely construct complex geometries. The SEM image of the final experimental product (left) was highly consistent with the structure predicted by the virtual SEM image (center) and the simulated design model (right). (hi-res image)

Focused electron beam induced deposition, or FEBID can essentially 3D print at the nanoscale. FEBID uses an electron beam from a scanning electron microscope to condense gaseous precursor molecules into a solid deposit on a surface. Previously, this method was laborious, prone to errors and impractical for creating complex structures larger than a few nanometers...