Category Technology/Electronics

Three-dimensional image using scanning tunneling electron microscopy of electrons on the surface of a Weyl semi-metal, a kind of crystal with unusual conducting and insulating properties. Credit: Yazdani et al., Princeton University.

Princeton Uni researchers have observed a bizarre behavior in a strange new topological crystal material that could hold the key for faster electronics. Unlike most materials in which electrons travel on the surface, in these new materials the electrons sink into the depths of the crystal through special conductive channels. “It is like these electrons go down a rabbit hole and show up on the opposite surface,” said Prof. Ali Yazdani, . “You don’t find anything else like this in other materials.”

Yazdani and his colleagues discovered the odd behavior while stu...

Graduate students Junyi Wu and Curtis Wang and professor Milton Feng found that light stimulates switching speed in the transistor laser, a device they hope will usher in the next generation of high-speed data transmission. Credit: Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Light and electrons interact in a complex dance within fiber optic devices. A new study by University of Illinois engineers found that in the transistor laser, a device for next-generation high-speed computing, the light and electrons spur one another on to faster switching speeds than any devices available.

As big data become bigger and cloud computing becomes more commonplace, the infrastructure for transferring the ever-increasing amounts of data needs to speed up...

Squeezing iron-containing ferrocene (not to scale) in the pores of the metal-organic framework known as MIL-101 lets ferrocene’s iron snag oxygen from passing air. Credit: PNNL

Inexpensive materials called MOFs pull gases out of air or other mixed gas streams, but fail to do so with oxygen. Now, a team has overcome this limitation by creating a composite of a MOF and a helper molecule in which the 2 work in concert to separate oxygen from other gases simply and cheaply. The results might help with a wide variety of applications, including making pure oxygen for fuel cells, using that oxygen in a fuel cell, removing oxygen in food packaging, making oxygen sensors, or for other industrial processes...

The magnetic structure of a skyrmion is symmetrical around its core; arrows indicate the direction of spin. Credit: Ill./©: Benjamin Krüger

JGU and MIT joint teams have for the first time achieved targeted shifting of individual skyrmions at room temperature using electrical impulses. The idea is that electronic storage units (bits) will not be stored on rotating hard disks as is currently standard practice but on a nanowire in the form of magnetic vortex structures, ie skyrmions, using a process similar to that of a shift register. The magnetic skyrmion bits would be rapidly accessible, while storage density would be high and there would be improved energy efficiency.

Magnetic skyrmions are special spin configurations that can occur in materials especially in thin layer structures when ...