Category Technology/Electronics

One of the unsung workhorses of modern technology is the humble interconnect. This is essentially a wire or set of wires that link one part of an electronic system to another. In ordinary silicon chips, interconnect can take up most of the area of a chip; and the speed and efficiency with which information can travel along these interconnects, is a major limiting factor in computing performance.

A separate entanglement stage is used to preserve the original entanglement needed as part of normal operations—demonstrating a way to connect 2 photonic chips...

Density functional-based tight-binding modelling. Credit: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150820/ncomms9029/full/ncomms9029.html

>>inherent defects give rise to a surprising mechanical property caused by an unusual mechanochemical reaction.What they discovered could potentially unlock the secret to successfully scaling up graphene oxide. “Our team discovered that graphene oxide exhibits remarkable plastic deformation before breaking,” said Espinosa. “Graphene is very strong, but it can break suddenly. We found that graphene oxide, however, will deform first before eventually breaking.”

Huang compares the difference in the materials’ properties to common objects. “Ceramic is strong,” he says, “but if you break it, it will shatter...

Graphene drives potential for Next-gen Green Fuel-Efficient Cars

>>converting heat into electricity. Graphene’s range of superlative properties and small size causes the transfer of heat through the material to slow leading to the desired lower operating temperatures. Harvesting heat produced by a car’s engine which would otherwise be wasted and using it to recharge the car’s batteries or powering the air-conditioning system could be a significant feature in the next generation of hybrid cars.

The average car currently loses around 70% of energy generated through fuel consumption to heat. Utilising that lost energy requires a thermoelectric material which can generate an electrical current from the application of heat...

This corresponds to half of the pressure of Earth’s core. With their high-pressure experiments the Mainz researchers have thus not only set a new record for superconductivity, their findings have also highlighted a potential new way to transport current at room temperature with no loss.

For many solid-state physicists, superconductors that are suitable for use at room temperature are still a dream. Special copper oxide ceramics, so-called cuprates, took the leading positions in terms of transition temperature, i.e., the temperature at which the material loses its resistance. The record for a ceramic of this type is roughly -140C at normal air pressure -109C at high pressure. In the ceramics, a special, unconventional form of superconductivity occurs...