Category Technology/Electronics

This was first deemed impossible. Apps include: novel, energy-efficient electronic devices, particularly integrated circuits. A spin wave is caused by a perturbation of local magnetisation direction in a magnetic material. Such a perturbation is caused by an electron with an opposite spin, relative to the magnetisation. Spin waves transmit these perturbations in the material. This research demonstrates for the first time that it is possible to transmit electric signals in an insulating material.

So far, electrical circuits based on spin waves have not been realised, since it turned out to be impossible to introduce a perturbation in the system large enough to create spin waves...

. On-chip visible-to-infrared supercontinuum generation with more than 495 THz spectral bandwidth Credit: http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OE.23.019596

Sending information with the help of light is an exciting prospect for future technologies. It requires ‘light chips’, made of a special glass (already known for their extremely low losses) which now have been equipped with ‘active’ functionalities, eg generating, strengthening, and modulating light. Their chip is capable of creating a very wide light spectrum that runs from blue to infrared, 470 to 2130 nm wavelengths. By doing so they have made a light chip with the largest frequency range ever.

The width and regularity of the light spectrum plays a central role in fiber optics info transfer...

Scientists announced the first observation of a dynamic vortex Mott transition, which experimentally connects the worlds of quantum mechanics and classical physics and could shed light on the poorly understood world of non-equilibrium physics. Credit: Image courtesy Valerii Vinokur, Argonne National Laboratory/Science

It also could shed light on non-equilibrium physics, which is poorly understood but governs most of what occurs in our world. The finding may also represent a step towards more efficient electronics based on the Mott transition.

Magnetic fields penetrate superconducting material in the form of tiny filaments called vortices, which control the electronic and magnetic properties of the materials...

Understanding motions of thin layers may help design solar cells, flexible electronics and catalysts of the future. New research shows how individual atoms move in trillionths of a second to form wrinkles on a 3-atom-thick material. It was made possible with SLAC’s instrument for ultrafast electron diffraction (UED), which uses energetic electrons to take snapshots of atoms and molecules on timescales as fast as 100 quadrillionths of a second.

Monolayers, or 2D materials, contain just a single layer of molecules. In this form they can take on new and exciting properties such as superior mechanical strength and an extraordinary ability to conduct electricity and heat...