IBM researchers have succeeded in guiding visible light through a silicon wire efficiently, an important milestone in the exploration towards a new breed of faster, more efficient logic circuits.
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IMAGE: 3D-printed miniature spectrometer. a, wave-optical simulation of the spectrometer. b, microscope image of the fabricated spectrometer overlayed with the intensity distribution from a. c, array of fabricated spectrometers. view more
Credit: by Andrea Toulouse, Johannes Drozella, Simon Thiele, Harald Giessen, and Alois Herkommer
Femtosecond direct laser writing as a 3D printing technology has been one of the key building blocks for miniaturization in modern times. It has transformed the field of complex microoptics since the early 2000s. Especially medical engineering and consumer electronics as vastly growing fields benefit from these developments. It is now possible to create robust, monolithic and nearly perfectly aligned freeform optical systems on almost arbitrary substrates such as image sensors or optical fibers.
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Credit: TU Wien
In certain materials, electrical and mechanical effects are closely linked: for example, the material may change its shape when an electrical field is applied or, conversely, an electrical field may be created when the material is deformed. Such electromechanically active materials are very important for many technical applications.
Usually, such materials are special, inorganic crystals, which are hard and brittle. For this reason, so-called ferroelectric polymers are now being used. They are characterised by the fact that their polymer chains exist simultaneously in two different microstructures: some areas are strongly ordered (crystalline), while disordered (amorphous) areas form in between. These semicrystalline composites are electromechanically active and therefore combine electrical and mechanical effects, but at the same time they are also flexible and soft. At TU Wien, such materials have now been studied in detail - with surprising results: abo
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Credit: Credit: Craig S. Day (ICIQ)
Negishi cross-coupling reactions have been widely used to form C-C bonds since the 1970s and are often perceived as the result of two metals (i.e zinc and palladium/nickel) working in synergy. But like all relationships, there is more under the surface than what we first expected. PhD student Craig Day and Dr. Rosie Somerville from the Martin group at ICIQ have delved into the Negishi cross-coupling of aryl esters using nickel catalysis to understand how this reaction works at the molecular level and how to improve it. The results have been published in
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IMAGE: A rearrangement event in a monodisperse foam. Note how bubbles move in the same direction along the same row, or in exactly the opposite direction in adjacent rows over long. view more
Credit: Tokyo Metropolitan University
Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University studied the dynamics of foams. When a drop of water was added to a foam raft, the bubbles rearranged themselves to reach a new stable state. The team found that bubble movement was qualitatively different depending on the range of bubble sizes present. Along with analogies with soft-jammed materials, these findings may inspire the design of new foam materials for industry.