[Image above] Credit: NIST

Boron hydride found to emit blue laser light in solution

New work demonstrates that the a boron hydride material presents efficient and degradation-resistant laser emission in the blue, a spectral region of interest in applications such as spectroscopy or materials processing, among others. Despite not being a novel material, this is the first time that the boron hydrides, or boranes, have been used to obtain laser light.

Liquids and glasses relax, too. But not like you thought

A new insight into the fundamental mechanics of the movement of molecules recently published by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology offers a surprising view of what happens when you pour a liquid out of a cup. More important, it provides a theoretical foundation for a molecular-level process that must be controlled to ensure the stability of important protein-based drugs at room temperature.

Researchers develop novel multiferroic materials and devices integrated with silicon chips

A research team led by North Carolina State University has made two advances in multiferroic materials, including the ability to integrate them on a silicon chip, which will allow the development of new electronic memory devices. The researchers have already created prototypes of the devices and are in the process of testing them.

New superconducting hybrid crystals developed at the University of Copenhagen

A new type of ‘nanowire’ crystals, developed at the University of Copenhagen, that fuses semiconducting and metallic materials on the atomic scale could lay the foundation for future semiconducting electronics. The research group has demonstrated this material has perfect contact, and the team has shown that it can make a chip with billions of identical semiconductor-metal nanowire hybrids.

3-D ‘Pop-up’ silicon structures: New process transforms planar materials into 3-D microarchitectures

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign describe a unique process for geometrically transforming 2-D micro/nanostructures into extended 3-D layouts by exploiting mechanics principles similar to those found in children’s ‘pop-up’ books. Compatibility with the most advanced materials, fabrication methods, and processing techniques from the semiconductor and photonics industries suggest many possibilities for achieving sophisticated classes of 3-D electronic, optoelectronic, and electromagnetic devices.

Zinc oxide materials tapped for tiny energy harvesting devices

A group of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology researchers are exploring how the attractive physical features of zinc oxide materials could be more effectively used to tap into abundant mechanical energy sources to power micro devices. They discovered that inserting aluminum nitride insulating layers into zinc oxide-based energy harvesting devices led to a significant improvement of the devices’ performance.

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April Gocha

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