Manufacturing Bits: May 2


Patterning 1nm features The Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory has patterned features down to 1nm using a direct-write lithography technique. Using a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), researchers have patterned thin films of the polymer poly(methyl methacrylate), or PMMA, down to 1nm with a spacing between features at 11nm. Re... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: March 28


Storing solar energy as carbon monoxide A team at Indiana University engineered a molecule that collects and stores solar energy without solar panels. The molecule uses light or electricity to convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide more efficiently than any other method of carbon reduction. Burning fuel such as carbon monoxide produces carbon dioxide and releases e... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 10


Singing to your storage Existing research on 'racetrack memory', which uses tiny magnetic wires, each one hundreds of times thinner than a human hair, down which magnetic bits of data run like racing cars around a track, has focused on using either magnetic fields or electric currents to move the data bits down the wires. However, both these options create heat and reduce power efficiency. ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 4


Lead halide perovskites Paving the way to the design of photovoltaic converters with improved efficiency, researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) said they have uncovered the mechanism by which solar cells based on lead iodide perovskite light-absorbing semiconductor transfer electrons along their surface. Photovoltaic systems based on lead halide perovskite are a n... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 21


Metamaterial modeling Metamaterials -- artificial materials engineered to have properties that are not normally found in nature and being explored in a number of technologies such as perfect lenses, antennas and terahertz devices – are becoming more important to model. Modeling them is a difficult task considering their unconventional nature and delicate properties but researchers from Ecole... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 21


Spinning towards superconduction With spintronics widely believed to be the basis of a future revolution in computing, researchers at the University of Cambridge are reporting what they said is the first evidence that superconductors could be used as an energy-efficient source for so-called “spin-based” devices, which are already starting to appear in electronic devices. Spintronic devi... » read more

Power-Performance Bits: Dec 3


In this week’s edition of Power/Performance Bits we look at two very different types of antennas, in one case a combined antenna and solar panel and in the second nanoantennas that can create holograms. Combining Antennas with Solar Panels When it comes to satellites weight is everything, and historically telecommunication antennas and solar cells have never really worked well together, a... » read more

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