Category Technology/Electronics

Quantum Thermal Transistor can Control Heat Currents

quantum thermal transistor

The quantum thermal transistor consists of three two-level systems, which can be implemented as spins with an up and a down state. Any one of these systems can control the heat current that flows to the other two, resulting in switching their spins. Credit: Joulain et al. ©2016 American Physical Society

Researchers have designed a quantum thermal transistor that can control heat currents, in analogy to the way in which an electronic transistor controls electric current. The thermal transistor could be used in applications that recycle waste heat that has been harvested from power stations and other energy systems...

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New Catalyst Found for Clean Energy Fuel

Cover of the March 2016 Advanced Materials journal. (A.M. El-Sawy et al., “Oxygen Reactions: Controlling the Active Sites of Sulfur-Doped Carbon Nanotube–Graphene Nanolobes for Highly Efficient Oxygen Evolution and Reduction Catalysis,” Advanced Energy Materials, 2016, Vol. 6, no. 5. © Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Reproduced with permission.)

Cover of the March 2016 Advanced Materials journal. (A.M. El-Sawy et al., “Oxygen Reactions: Controlling the Active Sites of Sulfur-Doped Carbon Nanotube–Graphene Nanolobes for Highly Efficient Oxygen Evolution and Reduction Catalysis,” Advanced Energy Materials, 2016, Vol. 6, no. 5. © Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Reproduced with permission.)

A new material could make H capture more commercially viable and provide a key element for a new generation of cheaper, light-weight hydrogen fuel cells. The new metal-free catalyst uses carbon graphene nanotubes infused with sulfur. Producing high-grade hydrogen is an expensive and energy-consuming process...

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Fast, Stretchy Circuits could Yield new Wave of Wearable Electronics

Photo: Stretchable, wearable circuit

Fabricated in interlocking segments like a 3-D puzzle, the new integrated circuits could be used in wearable electronics that adhere to the skin like temporary tattoos. Because the circuits increase wireless speed, these systems could allow health care staff to monitor patients remotely, without the use of cables and cords. IMAGE COURTESY OF YEI HWAN JUNG AND JUHWAN LEE

The consumer marketplace is flooded with a lively assortment of smart wearable electronics that do everything from monitor vital signs, fitness or sun exposure to play music, charge other electronics or even purify the air around you—all wirelessly...

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Engineers Discover a new Gatekeeper for Light

A photograph (left) shows the experimental set-up used to confirm the existence of the Bloch wave resonance, which was first predicted theoretically. An illustration (right) shows the interior of the experimental device, called a hollow periodic waveguide, which consists of two corrugated metallic plates separated by a variable distance of about one inch, and the upper plate can slide with respect to the lower. When researchers shot microwaves between the plates through the air, they were able to control which wavelengths of microwaves were allowed through by varying the position of the upper plate. Credit: Lab of Victor Pogrebnyak/University at Buffalo

A photograph (left) shows the experimental set-up used to confirm the existence of the Bloch wave resonance, which was first predicted theoretically. An illustration (right) shows the interior of the experimental device, called a hollow periodic waveguide, which consists of two corrugated metallic plates separated by a variable distance of about one inch, and the upper plate can slide with respect to the lower. When researchers shot microwaves between the plates through the air, they were able to control which wavelengths of microwaves were allowed through by varying the position of the upper plate. Credit: Lab of Victor Pogrebnyak/University at Buffalo

Imagine a device that is selectively transparent to various wavelengths of light at one moment, and opaque to them the next, following a m...

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