which an electrode used for splitting water absorbs solar photons while at the same time improving the flow of electrons from one electrode to another.
"Excited electrons When building a sun-capturing electrode, scientists aim to use as much of the solar spectrum as possible to excite electrons in the electrode to move from one state to another,
where they will be available for the water-splitting reaction. Equally important, but a separate problem entirely, the electrons need to move easily from the electrode to a counter-electrode,
creating a flow of current. Until now, scientists have had to use separate manipulations to increase photon absorption
if they heated an electrode made of the semiconducting compound bismuth vanadate to 350 degrees Celsius
Nitrogen's role Galli and former graduate student Yuan Ping, now a post-doc at Caltech, found that the nitrogen was acting on the electrode in several ways.
This meant that more of the solar energy could be used by the electrode.""Now we understand what's going on at the microscopic level,
which acres of mirrors precisely reflect sunlight onto a solar receiver. That energy has been used to heat a fluid that in turn drives a turbine to produce electricity.
#Electronic skin sensors to control mobile gadgets A skin-worn sensor that turns the human body into a touch sensitive surface for controlling mobile devices has been developed by scientists in Germany. iskin is made from biocompatible silicone rubber
with pressure-sensitive sensors that are stuck to the skin of the users, allowing them to use their own body to control mobile devices.
The sensor is capable of detecting touch input pressure even when being stretched or bent. With the current prototypes;
"Current electronics are mostly using rigid components which are very uncomfortable to wear on the body
But our sensor is a flexible and stretchable sensor, so it can cover many locations.
So, we have a much larger input space than current electronics allow for, "he said. The prototype is based on advances in so-called'electronic skin'that allow robots to better sense their environment,
as well as more humanlike prostheses that can sense contact, pressure and temperature. iskin's makers saw this as an ideal platform for on-body interaction for mobile computing."(
which makes up the sensor. This is then sandwiched between two clear sheets of silicone.""The sensor is made out of biocompatible silicone and carbon-doped silicone.
So there are carbon particles inside the silicone which make it conductive so we can use it for electronics,
"explained Weigel. The stickers are attached to the body using a medical-grade adhesive that can be peeled easily off after use without hurting the skin.
although the technology could evolve to use integrated microchips. Weigel also hopes that it could one day be possible to incorporate an energy harvesting system that would power iskin via the wear's body.
the team hope it will inspire future research on electronic skin for human computer interaction n
#Google to become Alphabet Inc in shakeup Google Inc (GOOGL. O) announced a major shake-up of its operating structure on Monday, creating a holding company called Alphabet
and General electric are organized, with a central unit handling corporate-wide activities such as finance and relatively independent business units focused on specific areas.
Revival of a 100-year-old techniquecross-section of the artificial tooth under an electron microscope (false colour:
which would allow the use of such materials in electronics. he base substances and the orientation of the platelets can be combined as required,
while also serving as the sensor net that sends touch, temperature and pain signals to the brain.
Ultimately she wants to create a flexible electronic fabric embedded with sensors that could cover a prosthetic limb
who led the 17-person research team responsible for the achievement. Benjamin Tee, a recent doctoral graduate in electrical engineering;
The top layer in the new work featured a sensor that can detect pressure over the same range as human skin,
and rubbers as pressure sensors by measuring the natural springiness of their molecular structures. They then increased this natural pressure sensitivity by indenting a waffle pattern into the thin plastic
This allowed the plastic sensor to mimic human skin, which transmits pressure information as short pulses of electricity, similar to Morse code, to the brain.
allowing more electricity to flow through the sensor, and those varied impulses are sent as short pulses to the sensing mechanism.
a flexible electronic circuit that could carry pulses of electricity to nerve cells. Bao's team has been developing flexible electronics that can bend without breaking.
For this project, team members worked with researchers from PARC, a Xerox company, which has a technology that uses an inkjet printer to deposit flexible circuits onto plastic.
Covering a large surface is important to making artificial skin practical and the PARC collaboration offered that prospect.
Bao's team envisions developing different sensors to replicate, for instance, the ability to distinguish corduroy versus silk,
And the inkjet printing fabrication process suggests how a network of sensors could be deposited over a flexible layer and folded over a prosthetic hand."
#Artificial'skin'Provides Prosthetics With Sensation Using flexible organic circuits and specialized pressure sensors, researchers have created an artificial skin"that can sense the force of static objects.
A particular challenge was creating sensors that can"feel"the same range of pressure that humans can.
Thus, on the sensors, the team used carbon nanotubes molded into pyramidal microstructures, which are particularly effective at tunneling the signals from the electric field of nearby objects to the receiving electrode in a way that maximizes sensitivity.
Transferring the digital signal from the artificial skin system to the cortical neurons of mice proved to be another challenge,
and initiatives-it can be reached through low-power radios, small antennas, and computer laptops if you have the technical know-how.
#Flexible skin sensors turn your body into a digital touch panel The rise of wearable technology is inevitably leading towards our clothes becoming the next touch-enabled smart accessories,
iskin developers think theye discovered the perfect natural touch surface. urrent electronics are mostly using rigid components
co-developer Martin Weigel of Saarland University in Germany told Matthew Stock at Reuters. ut our sensor is a flexible and stretchable sensor,
we have a much larger input space than current electronics allow for. The researchers say that iskin could be used as a remote control mechanism for other sorts of digital devices,
such as answering incoming calls on a smartphone, controlling playback on a music player, or even typing
features a sensor created by sandwiching a conductive carbon black powder between two sheets of silicone.
the sensor is able to distinguish between two different pressures, with resistive (firm) and capacative (light touches potentially enabling different sorts of user control.
"The trick in getting them to be nearly transparent is in making them really thin-the electrodes are just 80 nm
"How did they make the electrodes so thin? Back in 2013, the main component of the electrolyte for the battery's positive electrode was lithium iron phosphate,
and for the electrolyte used for the negative electrode, they used lithium titanate and lithium hexafluorophosphate-both
of which are used commonly in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. For the prototype that was put on display in Tokyo last month,
they altered the transparent oxides used for the negative electrode to achieve incredibly thin, transparent electrodes.
They did this by placing electrode arrays onto a paralysed volunteer sensory cortex-a region in the brain that responsible for identifying
and pressure sensors in the arm that connect back into the sensory cortex give the wearer the sensation that they are touching something,
Loaded with highly sensitive torque sensors, the device could detect changes in pressure as they are applied to the fingers,
Not only have previous attempts at light-based computer chips turned out to be quite volatile, theye all required power to store data,
"The chip is built by placing on a small section of GST on top of a silicon nitride ridge-known as the waveguide
"Think of the waveguide as a kind of miniature fibre optic cable that can carry light: pulses of a laser can be sent down the guide,
Publishing in Nature Photonics this week, the team explained how they could send intense pulses of light through the waveguide to change the state of the GST,
a much lower intensity pulse of light is sent through the waveguide, and the amount of light that transmitted from one end to the other will depend on
including as exceptionally strong components in personal electronic devices, in space exploration vehicles, and as hydrogen storage materials in next generation batteries,"he added.
Another possible application is in sensors that measure magnetic fields l
#Watch: Paralysed man walks again via brain waves rerouted to his legs A paraplegic man who was paralysed for five years has walked again on his own two feet,
and transmitted to electrodes attached to the subject knees, triggering movement in the leg muscles.
"The technology used is called an inverter system, which has been installed at the Cloudesley Road substation on the Victoria line.
Another benefit of the inverter system is that by collecting up the energy and turning it into electricity
#Australian engineers just built a quantum logic gate in silicon for the first time For decades, researchers have been trying to build a computer that harnesses the enormous potential of quantum mechanics.
by creating a quantum logic gate in silicon-the same material that today's computer chips are made from.
which means they now have the ability to build the world's first quantum processor chip and, eventually, the first silicon-based quantum computer.
Right now, regular computer chips store information as binary bits, which are either in a 0 or 1 state.
what's known as a logic gate-a building block of all digital circuits, which takes two input values
Quantum logic gates have been built in the past, but they've all used exotic materials, which isn't compatible with today's silicon-based computer infrastructure.
A silicon quantum logic gate was the last physical building block remaining to be built in order to create a silicon-based quantum computer."
"Because we use essentially the same device technology as existing computer chips, we believe it will be much easier to manufacture a full-scale processor chip than for any of the leading designs,
which rely on more exotic technologies, "project leader Andrew Dzurak said in a press release.""This makes the building of a quantum computer much more feasible,
"The challenge in building quantum logic gates is the fact that, in order to get two qubits to'talk'to each other,
The team overcame this by effectively copying the setup of traditional chips. In that setup, binary bits are defined by tiny semiconductor devices known as transistors.
About 1 billion of these transistors has been packed onto each silicon chip in your smartphone or computer.
Quantum bits, on the other hand are defined by the spin of a single electron. But by reconfiguring traditional transistors to only be associated with one electron,
Dzurak and his team were able to have them define qubits instead. ee morphed those silicon transistors into quantum bits by ensuring that each has only one electron associated with it.
We then store the binary code of 0 or 1 on the'spin'of the electron,
The team then showed that they could use metal electrodes on these transistors to control the qubits
creating a functioning logic gate. The researchers have patented already a design"for a full-scale quantum computer chip that would allow for millions of our qubits,
Once we have a silicon quantum chip, we'll then be able to build a functioning quantum computer,
#New electronic sensor can detect ovarian cancer in your breath Your breath says more about you than you might think-not just how inebriated you are or
A new type of sensor that can'sniff out'traces of ovarian cancer in a patient's breath has been developed by researchers in Israel,
The sensors in the breathalyser are looking for volatile organic compounds (VOCS) in the breath samples:
By applying electrodes and a voltage to the resulting film, patterns can be identified, which are matched then up to various diseases."
She also says there's still room for improvement in making the sensors smaller and more sensitive before they're ready for clinical use.
and smartphones, was reached by using a'fluffy'carbon electrode made from graphene. What's more, by changing the chemical mix from earlier versions of lithium-air batteries,
In 2014, researchers in South korea at IBS Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics along with Samsung Advanced Institute of technology, the Department of Nano Applied Engineering at Kangwon National University, the Department of energy Science
as electrical vehicles and personal electronic devices become more ubiquitous in our daily lives, it is becoming increasingly necessary to have more efficient systems for localized electrical power generation and effective cooling mechanisms.
which has traditionally been used for applications including transistors and solar cells. With the use of lithium ions as dopant, researchers found it offered significant electronic conductivity
and see widespread applications, especially in energy-related ones such as batteries, supercapacitors and thermoelectrics.""The basic polymer used in the work was discovered in 2009;
. Although naphthalene-bithiophene has been used for transistors and other applications since its discovery, this is the first time it has been converted for use in energy storage.
The paper sensor emerges from the printer ready to use, like ph paper. The implications are significant,
#Future electronics based on carbon nanotubes First of all they are tiny--on the atomic scale and perhaps near the physical limit of how small you can shrink a single electronic switch.
Like silicon, they can be semiconducting in nature, a fact that is essential for circuit boards, and they can undergo fast and highly controllable electrical switching.
But a big barrier to building useful electronics with carbon nanotubes has always been the fact that
a certain portion of them will act more like metals than semiconductors--an unforgiving flaw that fouls the film,
shorts the circuit and throws a wrench into the gears of any potential electronic device. In fact, according to University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign professor John Rogers, the purity needs to exceed 99.999 percent--meaning even one bad tube in 100,000 is enough to kill an electronic device."
"If you have lower purity than that, "he said, "that class of materials will not work for semiconducting circuits."
but fell far short of the level of purification necessary to make useful electronic components. Very recent approaches offer the right level of purification
They tested it by building arrays of transistors he said.""You end up with a device that can switch on and off as expected, based on purely semiconducting character,
Low temperature plasmas are formed by applying a high electric field across a gas using an electrode, which breaks down the gas to form plasma.
a single chip can provide enough data for a statistical analysis of how the cells respond in an experiment.
#New understanding of electromagnetism could enable'antennas on a chip'A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have unravelled one of the mysteries of electromagnetism,
which could enable the design of antennas small enough to be integrated into an electronic chip.
These ultra-small antennas--the so-called'last frontier'of semiconductor design--would be a massive leap forward for wireless communications.
The purpose of any antenna, whether in a communications tower or a mobile phone, is to launch energy into free space in the form of electromagnetic or radio waves,
One of the biggest problems in modern electronics, however, is that antennas are still quite big and incompatible with electronic circuits
--which are ultra-small and getting smaller all the time.""Antennas, or aerials, are one of the limiting factors
when trying to make smaller and smaller systems, since below a certain size, the losses become too great,
dielectric resonators are used already as antennas in mobile phones, for example.""In dielectric aerials, the medium has high permittivity,
"Working with researchers from the National Physical Laboratory and Cambridge-based dielectric antenna company Antenova Ltd, the Cambridge team used thin films of piezoelectric materials, a type of insulator
'which leads to a pattern of electric field lines radiating out from a transmitter, such as a two wire system in which the parallel geometry is broken,
The electromagnetic radiation emitted from dielectric materials is due to accelerating electrons on the metallic electrodes attached to them
ubiquitous computing where almost everything in our homes and offices, from toasters to thermostats, is connected to the internet.
and the ability to fit an ultra-small aerial on an electronic chip would be a massive leap forward.
Piezoelectric materials can be made in thin film forms using materials such as lithium niobate, gallium nitride and gallium arsenide.
Gallium arsenide-based amplifiers and filters are already available on the market and this new discovery opens up new ways of integrating antennas on a chip along with other components."
"It's actually a very simple thing, when you boil it down, "said Sinha.""We've achieved a real application breakthrough,
to adhere to the metal electrodes. Initially working with Lew Meixler on a federal Cooperative Research and development Agreement in the Plasma Surface Laboratory, she solved the problem by treating the metal (steel or titanium) with a plasma.
"A study about the device will appear in an upcoming issue of the scientific journal Sensors,
Unlike conventional computers that store data on transistors and hard drives, quantum computers encode data in the quantum states of microscopic objects called qubits.
Here, the'knob'is applied the voltage to a small electrode placed above the atom.""The findings suggest that it would be possible to locally control individual qubits with electric fields in a large-scale quantum computer using only inexpensive voltage generators, rather than the expensive high-frequency microwave sources.
and published April 10 in the inaugural volume of the new AAAS journal Science Advances, found that the sensors in smartphones
the GPS (Global positioning system) receivers in a smartphone can detect the permanent ground movement (displacement) caused by fault motion in a large earthquake.
The authors found that the sensors in smartphones and similar devices could be used to issue earthquake warnings for earthquakes of approximately magnitude 7 or larger,
but consumer electronics are increasingly common, crowd-sourced EEW has significant potential.""The U s. earthquake early warning system is being built on our high-quality scientific earthquake networks,
to test a pilot hybrid earthquake warning system comprising stand-alone smartphone sensors and scientific-grade sensors along the Chilean coast."
"The use of mobile phone fleets as a distributed sensor network--and the statistical insight that many imprecise instruments can contribute to the creation of more precise measurements--has broad applicability including great potential to benefit communities where there isn't an existing
Flexible electronics have come into the market and are enabling new technologies like flexible displays in mobile phone, wearable electronics,
and the Internet of things (Iots). However, is the degree of flexibility enough for most applications? For many flexible devices, elasticity is a very important issue.
For example, wearable/biomedical devices and electronic skins (e skins) should stretch to conform to arbitrarily curved surfaces and moving body parts such as joints, diaphragms, and tendons.
Although several researchers have explored diverse stretchable electronics, due to the absence of the appropriate device structures and correspondingly electrodes,
and hyper-stretchable elastic-composite generator (SEG) using very long silver nanowire-based stretchable electrodes. Their stretchable piezoelectric generator can harvest mechanical energy to produce high power output (4 V) with large elasticity (250%)and excellent durability (over 104 cycles.
These noteworthy results were achieved by the non-destructive stress-relaxation ability of the unique electrodes as well as the good piezoelectricity of the device components.
It can open avenues for power supplies in universal wearable and biomedical applications as well as self-powered ultra-stretchable electronics
such an experiment represents a two-dimensional analog of a classical problem of scattering from a homogeneous sphere (Mie scattering), the solution to
For instance, invisible rods could be used as supports for a miniature antenna complex connecting two optical chips.
but lacking both led to catastrophic deficiencies.""We now have clear evidence that these genes cooperate to develop a healthy blood system,
and placed the film over a square of Cycom 5320-1. They connected electrodes to the film,
open a new pathway towards ultra-fast optoelectronic conversion. As Prof. Koppens comments,"Graphene photodetectors keep showing fascinating performances addressing a wide range of applications
"These analogs can bind to the wrong base partners and therefore lead to genetic mutations,"said the study's lead author, Sam Peng,
"By combining electrodes, such as those used to treat Parkinson's disease, with this micropump, it may be possible to use this technology to treat patients with epilepsy who are resistant to conventional treatments,
and the possibility of combining this high-technology system with the microchip they previously developed in 2013.
The chip would be used to detect the imminent occurrence of a seizure in order to activate the pump to inject the drug at just the right moment.
Light-controlled molecule switching Dr. Artur Erbe, physicist at the HZDR, is convinced that in the future molecular electronics will open the door for novel and increasingly smaller--while also more energy efficient--components or sensors:"
The diarylethene needs to be attached at the end of the nanowires to electrodes so that the current can flow."
which is why I believe that we have succeeded in making an important step toward a genuine molecular electronic component."
billion-euro manufacturing plants that are necessary for manufacturing today's microelectronics could be a thing of the past.
Nanoparticles have also been tested in the manufacture of magnetic inks and inks that conduct electricity in printed electronics.
which can be used in the manufacture of magnetic field sensors. VTT's third application trial involved the prevention of microwave reflection.
Some implications of this research are obvious--like using portable electronic devices for longer before charging
#Innovation boosts Wi-fi bandwidth tenfold Researchers have invented a new technology that can increase the bandwidth of Wi-fi systems by 10 times,
using LED LIGHTS to transmit information. It could be integrated with existing Wi-fi systems to reduce bandwidth problems in crowded locations, such as airport terminals or coffee shops,
and in homes where several people have multiple Wi-fi devices. Researchers at Oregon State university have invented a new technology that can increase the bandwidth of Wifi systems by 10 times,
using LED LIGHTS to transmit information. The technology could be integrated with existing Wifi systems to reduce bandwidth problems in crowded locations
such as airport terminals or coffee shops, and in homes where several people have multiple Wifi devices. Experts say that recent advances in LED TECHNOLOGY have made it possible to modulate the LED light more rapidly,
opening the possibility of using light for wireless transmission in a"free space optical communication system.""In addition to improving the experience for users,
the two big advantages of this system are that it uses inexpensive components, and it integrates with existing Wifi systems,
The prototype, called Wifo, uses LEDS that are beyond the visual spectrum for humans and creates an invisible cone of light about one meter square in
the researchers created a hybrid system that can switch between several LED transmitters installed on a ceiling,
Although some current Wifi systems have similar bandwidth, it has to be divided by the number of devices,
increased bandwidth would eliminate problems like video streaming that stalls and buffers. The receivers are small photodiodes that cost less than a dollar each
and could be connected through a USB port for current systems, or incorporated into the next generation of laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
The most immediate application of this printing capacity is in wearable electronics as it allows for the production of fast, low-power and flexible transistors at a remarkably low cost.
Ishihara believes the future of the project, which involves improving the production process of the thin-film transistors to include additional non-silicon layers,
"The process can be expanded to biomedical sensor and solar-cell areas, "Ishihara said, "and will also realize stretchable--and even edible--electronics
#Frequent genomic alteration is identified in a rare subset of breast cancer Genomic profiling identifies genomic mutations in a gene associated with a rare subset of breast cancer,
lithium goes from being a metallic conductor to a somewhat resistant semiconductor under around 790,000 times normal atmospheric pressure (80 gigapascals)
Further, these new metamaterials could allow integration of terahertz optoelectronics with high-speed telecommunications. DOE Office of Science, Basic energy Sciences (experiments.
#Ultra-sensitive sensor detects individual electrons In the same Cambridge laboratory in the United kingdom where The british physicist J. J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897,
European scientists have developed just a new ultra-sensitive electrical-charge sensor capable of detecting the movement of individual electrons."
and its authors predict that these types of sensors, dubbed'gate sensors, 'will be used in quantum computers of the future to read information stored in the charge or spin of a single electron."
"We have called it a gate sensor because, as well as detecting the movement of individual electrons, the device is able to control its flow
as if it were an electronic gate which opens and closes, "explains Gonzlez Zalba. The researchers have demonstrated the possibility of detecting the charge of an electron with their device in approximately one nanosecond,
This has been achieved by coupling a gate sensor to a silicon nanotransistor where the electrons flow individually.
However, this is not the case of the latest cutting-edge devices such as ultra-precise biosensors, single electron transistors, molecular circuits and quantum computers.
a field in which the new gate sensor can offer its advantages s
#Researchers add a new wrinkle to cell culture Using a technique that introduces tiny wrinkles into sheets of graphene,
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