Category Technology/Electronics

Charge carriers in polymeric carbon nitrides always take paths perpendicular to the sheets, as Merschjann’s group has now shown. Light creates an electron-hole pair. The opposite happens when an electron and hole meet under certain conditions (forming a singlet exciton) and emit light (fluorescence). Credit: C. Merschjann.

Polymeric carbon nitride is an organic material with interesting optoelectronic properties. As an inexpensive photocatalyst, it can be used to facilitate water splitting using sunlight. Research has now investigated for the 1st time how light creates charge carriers in this class of materials and established details about charge mobility and lifetimes...

An artist’s rendering shows the layers of a new, onion-like nanoparticle whose specially crafted layers enable it to efficiently convert invisible near-infrared light to higher energy blue and UV light. Credit: Kaiheng Wei (Davidwei_loga@foxmail.com)

A dye-coated surface is 1 of 3 specially crafted layers that help the particle emit light ideal for bioimaging, solar energy harvesting and light-based security techniques. The particle’s innovation lies in its layers: a coating of organic dye, a neodymium-containing shell, and a core that incorporates ytterbium and thulium...

New high-temperature superconducting materials are also compatible with high magnetic fields. In fusion reactor designs, superconductors are used to generate the magnetic fields that confine the 100 million degree C plasma. While increasing magnetic field strength offers potential ways to improve reactor performance, conventional low-temperature superconductors suffer dramatic drops in current carrying ability at high magnetic fields. Now, the emergence of high-temperature superconductors that can also operate at high magnetic fields opens a new, lower-cost path to fusion energy.

A typical measure of fusion plasma performance is called “plasma beta,” which is the ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic field pressure...

Implanted microLED devices light up, activating peripheral nerve cells in mice. The devices are being developed and studied by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a potential treatment for pain that does not respond to other therapies. Credit: Gereau lab/Washington University

Building on wireless technology that has the potential to interfere with pain, scientists have developed flexible, implantable devices that can activate – and, in theory, block – pain signals in the body and spinal cord before those signals reach the brain. The implants one day may be used in different parts of the body to fight pain that doesn’t respond to other therapies.

“Our eventual goal is to use this technology to treat pain ...