Tech

New Haven, Conn. — Yale engineers have created a process that may revolutionize the manufacture of nano-devices from computer memory to biomedical sensors by exploiting a novel type of metal. The material can be molded like plastics to create features at the nano-scale and yet is more durable and stronger than silicon or steel. The work is reported in the February 12 issue of Nature.

Plasmonics -- a possible replacement for current computing approaches -- may pave the way for the next generation of computers that operate faster and store more information than electronically-based systems and are smaller than optically-based systems, according to a Penn State engineer who has developed a plasmonic switch.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered that a carefully built magnetic sandwich that interleaves layers of a magnetic alloy with a few nanometers of silver “spacer” has dramatically enhanced sensitivity—a 400-fold improvement in some cases. This material could lead to greatly improved magnetic sensors for a wide range of applications from weapons detection and non-destructive testing to medical devices and high-performance data storage.

Your refrigerator’s humming, electricity-guzzling cooling system could soon be a lot smaller, quieter and more economical thanks to an exotic metal alloy discovered by an international collaboration working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s Center for Neutron Research (NCNR).*

New imaging and high capacity wireless communications systems are one step closer to reality, thanks to a millimeter wave amplifier invented at the University of California, San Diego and unveiled on Feb 11, 2009 at the prestigious International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, Calif.

One of the themes of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is the need to keep vital and sensitive information secure. Today, we take it for granted that most of our information is safe because it's encrypted. Every time we use a credit card, transfer money from our checking accounts -- or even chat on a cell phone -- our personal information is protected by a cryptographic system.

But the development of quantum computers threatens to shatter the security of current cryptographic systems used by businesses and banks around the world.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — By integrating a solid-state electron emitter and a microcavity plasma device, researchers at the University of Illinois have created a plasma transistor that could be used to make lighter, less expensive and higher resolution flat-panel displays.

"The new device is capable of controlling both the plasma conduction current and the light emission with an emitter voltage of 5 volts or less," said Gary Eden, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, and director of the Laboratory for Optical Physics and Engineering at the U. of I.

This issue of Sports Technology, published by Wiley-Blackwell, spotlights recent developments that seek to close the gap between able-bodied athletes and para-athletes, with two published articles highlighting running prostheses.

The first article, entitled "Biomechanics of double transtibial amputee sprinting using dedicated sprinting prostheses" by Bruggemann et al., compares the sprinting mechanics data of able-bodied sprinters with that of a double transtibial amputee by examining the overall kinetics and the kinetics at the joints – while sprinting at maximum speed.

BERKELEY, CA – In the electronics industry, thin metal films are deposited on silicon wafers with a sputter gun, which uses energetic ions – atoms with a positive charge – to knock the metal atoms off a target. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have now developed a powerful new kind of sputter process that can deposit high-quality metal films in complex, three-dimensional nanoscale patterns at a rate that by one important measure is orders of magnitude greater than typical systems.

In the race to develop the next generation of storage and recording media, a major hurdle has been the difficulty of studying the tiny magnetic structures that will serve as their building blocks. Now a team of physicists at the University of California, Davis, has developed a technique to capture the magnetic "fingerprints" of certain nanostructures – even when they are buried within the boards and junctions of an electronic device. This breakthrough in nanomagnetism was published in the Jan. 19 issue of Applied Physics Letters.

Often referred to as artificial atoms, quantum dots have previously ranged in size from 2-10 nanometers in diameter. While typically composed of several thousand atoms, all the atoms pool their electrons to "sing with one voice", that is, the electrons are shared and coordinated as if there is only one atomic nucleus at the centre. That property enables numerous revolutionary schemes for electronic devices.

The principle behind whispering galleries – where words spoken softly beneath a domed ceiling or in a vault can be clearly heard on the opposite side of the chamber – has been used to achieve what could prove to be a significant breakthrough in the miniaturization of lasers. Ultrasmall lasers, i.e., nanoscale, promise a wide variety of intriguing applications, including superfast communications and data handling (photonics), and optical microchips for instant and detailed chemical analyses.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22—Tiny disk-shaped lasers as small as a speck of dust could one day beam information through optical computers. Unfortunately, a perfect disk will spray light out, not as a beam, but in all directions. New theoretical results, reported in the Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Letters, explain how adding a small notch to the disk edge provides a single outlet for laser light to stream out.

Common sense tells us that when you heat something up it gets softer, but a team of researchers, led by University of Toronto chemistry and physics professor R.J. Dwayne Miller, has demonstrated the exact opposite. Their findings will be published online in the prestigious international journal Science on January 22.