News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Decay is relentless in the macroscopic world: broken objects do not fit themselves back together again. However, other laws are valid in the quantum world: new research shows that so-called quasiparticles can decay and reorganize themselves again and are thus become virtually immortal. These are good prospects for the development of durable data memories.

An international collaboration between researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, and South Korea has uncovered a new way how the electron spins in layered materials can interact. In their publication in the journal Nature Materials, the scientists report a hitherto unknown chiral coupling that is active over relatively long distances. As a consequence, spins in two different magnetic layers that are separated by non-magnetic materials can influence each other even though they are not adjacent.

SEARCHLIGHT project radically rethinks wireless architectures for highly scalable ultra-dense millimeter-wave networks. Millimeter-wave technology will achieve data rates previously only possible with optical fiber.

Researchers from Jülich in cooperation with partners from other institutions has developed a new method to measure the electric potentials of a sample at atomic accuracy. Using conventional methods, it was virtually impossible until now to quantitatively record the electric potentials that occur in the immediate vicinity of individual molecules or atoms. The new scanning quantum dot microscopy method could open up new opportunities for chip manufacture or the characterization of biomolecules such as DNA.

Using a new approach, Princeton University researchers detected the elusive Majorana quasiparticle, notable for being its own antiparticle and for its potential as the basis for a robust quantum computing system, in a device built from a superconductor, small magnetic elements, and a topological insulator.

UTokyo researchers have created an electronic component that demonstrates functions and abilities important to future generations of computational logic and memory devices. It is between one and two orders of magnitude more power efficient than previous attempts to create a component with the same kind of behavior. This fact could help it realize developments in the emerging field of spintronics.

Energy is transferred through the structure in a way that boosts its response to light, showing promise for solar cell applications.