Category Technology/Electronics

Scientists have developed a terahertz (THz) transmitter capable of signal transmission at a per-channel data rate of >10 Gb/s over multiple channels at ~300 GHz. The aggregate multi-channel data rate exceeds 100 gigabits per second. The transmitter was implemented as a silicon CMOS integrated circuit, which would have a great advantage for commercialization and consumer use.

This technology could open a new frontier in wireless communication with data rates 10X higher than current technology allows. The THz band is a new, vast frequency resource not currently used for wireless communications. Its frequencies are even higher than those used by the mm-wave wireless local area network (57 GHz to 66 GHz), and bandwidths are much wider...

UAlberta electrical engineering PhD student Gem Shoute (second from right) is the lead author on a research paper demonstrating a powerful new flexible transistor. The team: electrical engineering professor Doug Barlage, Triranta Muneshwar, Shoute and materials engineering professor Ken Cadien, published its work in Nature Communications. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Alberta

Engineering first with applications in displays to medical imaging and renewable energy production.The transistor is easily scaled and has power-handling capabilities at least 10X greater than commercially produced thin film transistors...

This model car’s carbon fibre roof and battery electrodes are made with wood. Credit: Image courtesy of KTH The Royal Institute of Technology

Swedish researchers have produced the world’s first model car with a roof and battery made from wood-based carbon fibre – a lightweight and renewable alternative to metals and other composites. Remember wood paneled station wagons? Well, wood is back, but this time it’s not for aesthetics – it’s for reducing vehicle weight with renewable materials. Swedish researchers have just produced the world’s first model car with a roof and battery made from wood-based carbon fibre.

Although it’s built on the scale of a toy, the prototype vehicle represents a giant step towards realizing a vision of new lightweight materials from the forest, one of the benefits...

This is a graphic that describes how the new interface acts as a quantum switch. Credit: S. Kelley/JQI

Single photons can quickly modify individual electrons embedded in a semiconductor chip and vice versa, an advance that could be a significant step toward establishing quantum networks in the future. Such networks would transmit qubits from place to place and would offer unbreakable security for the transmitted information. But researchers must first develop ways for qubits that are better at storing information to interact with photons that are better at transporting it, a task achieved in conventional networks by electro-optic modulators that use electronic signals to modulate properties of light.

A/Prof Edo Waks et al have struck upon an interface between photons and single electrons t...