Research Bits: Feb. 28


Single-molecule switch An international team of researchers have demonstrated a switch on a single fullerene molecule. Using a laser, the team switched the path of an incoming electron. “What we’ve managed to do here is control the way a molecule directs the path of an incoming electron using a very short pulse of red laser light,” said Project Researcher Hirofumi Yanagisawa from the Uni... » read more

Research Bits: March 29


Brain-like AI chip Researchers from Purdue University, Santa Clara University, Portland State University, Pennsylvania State University, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Illinois Chicago, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and University of Georgia built a reprogrammable chip that could be used as the basis for brain-like AI hardware. “The brains of living beings can continuously l... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 23


Materials database The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has published a study that quantifies the thermodynamic scale of metastability of some 29,902 materials. To quantify the materials, researchers used Berkeley Lab’s Materials Project, a large and open database of known and predicted materials. The open and Web-based database has calculated the properties ... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 19


Electromagnetic properties of graphene-boron nitride materials Rice University and Montreal Polytechnic researchers reported that developing novel materials from the atoms up goes faster when some of the trial and error is eliminated. The work aims to simplify development of certain exotic materials for next-generation electronics. Specifically, Rouzbeh Shahsavari, a Rice materials scient... » read more