Credit: TU Wien
If the CO2 content of the atmosphere is not to increase any further, carbon dioxide must be converted into something else. However, as CO2 is a very stable molecule, this can only be done with the help of special catalysts. The main problem with such catalysts has so far been their lack of stability: after a certain time, many materials lose their catalytic properties.
At TU Wien, research is being conducted on a special class of minerals - the perovskites, which have so far been used for solar cells, as anode materials or electronic components rather than for their catalytic properties. Now scientists at TU Wien have succeeded in producing a special perovskite that is excellently suited as a catalyst for converting CO2 into other useful substances, such as synthetic fuels. The new perovskite catalyst is very stable and also relatively cheap, so it would be suitable for industrial use.
E-Mail
IMAGE: a, Schematic of a spin-decoupled metasurface that merges the geometric phase and dynamic phase for simultaneous SAM and OAM sorting via PMTs. Vortex beams with different spins are transformed into. view more
Credit: by Yinghui Guo, Shicong Zhang, Mingbo Pu, Qiong He, Jinjin Jin, Mingfeng Xu, Yaxin Zhang, Ping Gao, Xiangang Luo
With inherent orthogonality, both SAMs and OAMs of light have been utilized to expand the dimensions of optical communications and signal processing, wherein unambiguous SAM and OAM identification is one of the significant topics. Conventional sorting approaches suffer from complicated optical setups, multiple bulky devices, repeated projection measurements, and cannot simultaneously distinguish SAM and OAM.
Credit: Matt Allinson, Aalto University
Researchers at Aalto University have developed a new device for spintronics. The results have been published in the journal
Nature Communications, and mark a step towards the goal of using spintronics to make computer chips and devices for data processing and communication technology that are small and powerful.
Traditional electronics uses electrical charge to carry out computations that power most of our day-to-day technology. However, engineers are unable to make electronics do calculations faster, as moving charge creates heat, and we re at the limits of how small and fast chips can get before overheating. Because electronics can t be made smaller, there are concerns that computers won t be able to get more powerful and cheaper at the same rate they have been for the past 7 decades. This is where spintronics comes in.
E-Mail
IMAGE: Arrangement of the spins in a triangular lattice: Two spins each form a pair, whereby their magnetic moments cancel each other out when viewed from the outside. view more
Credit: University of Stuttgart, PI1
When temperatures drop below zero degrees Celsius, water turns to ice. But does everything actually freeze if you just cool it down enough? In the classical picture, matter inherently becomes solid at low temperatures. Quantum mechanics can, however, break this rule. Therefore, helium gas, for example, can become liquid at -270 degrees, but never solid under atmospheric pressure: There is no helium ice.
The same is true for the magnetic properties of materials: at sufficiently low temperatures, the magnetic moments known as spins , for example, arrange themselves in such a way that they are oriented opposite/antiparallel to their respective neighbors. One can think of this as arrows pointing alternating up and down along a chain or in a checkerbo
Credit: POSTECH
Gas accidents such as toxic gas leakage in factories, carbon monoxide leakage of boilers, or toxic gas suffocation during manhole cleaning continue to claim lives and cause injuries. Developing a sensor that can quickly detect toxic gases or biochemicals is still an important issue in public health, environmental monitoring, and military sectors. Recently, a research team at POSTECH has developed an inexpensive, ultra-compact wearable hologram sensor that immediately notifies the user of volatile gas detection.
A joint research team led by Professor Junsuk Rho of departments of mechanical and chemical engineering and Dr. Inki Kim of Department of Mechanical Engineering with Professor Young-Ki Kim and Ph.D. candidate Won-Sik Kim of Department of Chemical Engineering at POSTECH has integrated metasurface with gas-reactive liquid crystal optical modulator to develop a sensor that provides an immediate visual holographic alarm when harmful gases are detected. The findin