Category Technology/Electronics

This image shows a 3-D illustration of a metasurface skin cloak made from an ultrathin layer of nanoantennas (gold blocks) covering an arbitrarily shaped object. Light reflects off the cloak (red arrows) as if it were reflecting off a flat mirror. Credit: Image courtesy of Xiang Zhang group, Berkeley Lab/UC Berkeley

It conforms to the shape of an object and conceal it from detection with visible light. Although this cloak is only microscopic in size, the principles behind the technology should enable it to be scaled-up to conceal macroscopic items as well.

Working with brick-like blocks of gold nanoantennas, the Berkeley researchers fashioned a “skin cloak” barely 80nm in thickness, that was wrapped around a 3D object about the size of a few biological cells and arbitrarily shaped with mul...

Scientists developed an adaptive system to accurately extract 3D data while maintaining the ability to capture a full-resolution 2D image without a dramatic system change, such as switching out a lens. Credit: © Artur Marciniec / Fotolia

A team of engineers has discovered how to harness the image stabilization and focus modules of a modern, digital camera to unlock new 3D imaging capabilities: ie repurposing its existing components. This new capability was successfully demonstrated in a proof-of-concept laboratory experiment using a small deformable mirror -a reflective surface that can direct and focus light.

The purpose of the experiment was to extract depth-of-field information from a “single shot” image – rather than traditional 3D imaging techniques that require multiple images- with...

Interference of complex molecules are pictured in the Kapitza-Dirac-Talbot-Lau interferometer. Credit: Copyright: Quantum Nanophysics group, University of Vienna; Image: Mathias Tomandl & Patrick Braun

Topical research experiments are often too expensive or too complex to be rebuilt and incorporated in teaching. How can one, nevertheless, make modern science accessible to the public? This challenge was tackled in the research group Quantum Nanophysics led by Markus Arndt at the University of Vienna. For the first time, 2 research laboratories were created as complete, photorealistic computer simulations allowing university and high-school students as well as the general public to virtually access unique instruments...

Interfacial functionalization steps.

An international team has succeeded in considerably increasing the efficiency for direct solar water splitting with a tandem solar cell whose surfaces have been selectively modified. The new record tops the previous 12.4%. Until now, manufacturing of solar hydrogen at the industrial level has failed due to the costs, however. This is because the efficiency of artificial photosynthesis, i.e. the energy content of the hydrogen compared to that of sunlight, has simply been too low to produce hydrogen from the sun economically.

Matthias May at TU Ilmenau and the HZB Institute for Solar Fuels, processed and surveyed about one hundred samples in his excellent doctoral dissertation to achieve this...