News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Researchers at the University of Basel succeeded in developing capsules capable of producing the bio-molecule glucose-6-phosphate that plays an important role in metabolic processes. The researchers were able to produce the metabolite in conditions very similar to the biochemical reaction inside natural cells. The results have been published in the scientific journal Chemical Communications.

Scarce metals are found in a wide range of everyday objects around us. They are complicated to extract, difficult to recycle and so rare that several of them have become "conflict minerals" which can promote conflicts and oppression. A survey at Chalmers University of Technology now shows that there are potential technology-based solutions that can replace many of the metals with carbon nanomaterials, such as graphene.

At UC Santa Cruz, an electrical engineer has teamed up with astronomers to improve telescope mirrors using thin-film technology from the electronics industry. They are developing new protective coatings using an atomic layer deposition system large enough to accommodate telescope mirrors.

Graphene Flagship researchers show the first new type of quantum oscillation to be reported for thirty years. It is the first of its kind to be present at high temperature and on the mesoscale and sheds light on the Hofstadter butterfly phenomenon.

A group of researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and University of California, Santa Barbara, successfully demonstrated record-small electrically pumped micro-lasers epitaxially grown on industry standard (001) silicon substrates in a recent study. A submilliamp threshold of 0.6 mA, emitting at the near-infrared (1.3?m) was achieved for a micro-laser with a radius of 5 μm. The thresholds and footprints are orders of magnitude smaller than those previously reported lasers epitaxially grown on Si.

IBS researchers produced the first 2-D field-effect transistor (FET) made of a single material.

In a world first, University of Sydney researchers have stored photonic information on a microchip as an acoustic wave. This allows precious extra time to store, process and then redistribute the data without relying on electronics, which produce excess heat. Such a hybrid chip could have a huge impact in cloud computing and telecommunication centres, which are overheating as we churn through data on our phones.

As electronic devices get smaller, their ability to provide precise, chip-based sensing of dynamic physical properties such as motion become challenging to develop. An international group of researchers have put a literal twist on this challenge, demonstrating a new nanoscale optomechanical resonator that can detect torsional motion at near state-of-the-art sensitivity. Their resonator, into which they couple light, also demonstrates torsional frequency mixing, a novel ability to impact optical energies using mechanical motions.