News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

According to Igor Smolyaninov of the University of Maryland, "One of the more unusual applications of metamaterials was a theoretical proposal to construct a physical system that would exhibit two-time physics behavior on small scales."

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used new techniques to create a composite that increases the electrical current capacity of copper wires, providing a new material that can be scaled for use in ultra-efficient, power-dense electric vehicle traction motors.

Physicists from Lancaster University have established why objects moving through superfluid helium-3 lack a speed limit; exotic particles that stick to all surfaces in the superfluid. The discovery may guide applications in quantum technology, even quantum computing, where multiple research groups already aim to make use of these unusual particles.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology has developed a unique superconducting hot electron bolometer mixer (HEBM) using magnetic materials. The 2 THz band HEBM produced this time has a low noise performance of about 570 K (DSB), which is about 6 times the quantum noise limit, and a wide IF band characteristic of about 6.9 GHz, which is about 3 GHz larger than the conventional structure HEBM. Both of these are world-class performance.

A medical robotic hand could allow doctors to more accurately diagnose and treat people from halfway around the world, but currently available technologies aren't good enough to match the in-person experience. Now researchers have reported that they have designed and produced a smart electronic skin and a medical robotic hand capable of assessing vital diagnostic data by using a newly invented rubbery semiconductor.

Researchers at the Hybrid Photonics Laboratories in Skoltech and Southampton (UK), in collaboration with Lancaster University (UK), have demonstrated a new optical method to synthesize artificial solid-state crystal structures for cavity-polaritons using only laser light. The results could lead to realization of field-programmable polariton circuitry and new strategies to create guided light and robust confinement of coherent light sources.

Researchers at the Microsoft Quantum Materials Lab and the University of Copenhagen, working closely together, have succeeded in realizing an important and promising material for use in a future quantum computer. For this end, the researchers have to create materials that hold the delicate quantum information and protect it from decoherence.