silicon

Light-bending silicon chip may make former Apple iPhone rumors true

By April Gocha / March 25, 2014

Caltech researchers report a new integrated optical phased array silicon chip that can bend light with no mechanical parts, opening up possibilities for simple projectors that can be incorporated into devices such as smartphones.

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Rice group: Silica + titania = cheap, green, improved water purification

By / January 17, 2011

Tanzania water source. Credit: Bob Metcalf I don’t have enough historical perspective to know if this is truly a eureka moment or not, but a group from Rice University reports…

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Pore-enhanced silicon used to increase capacity of Li-ion batteries

By / October 27, 2010

Top and side view of etched silicon battery material. (Credit: Rice Univ.) According to a press release, a team of Rice University and Lockheed Martin scientists has discovered a way…

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Silicon nanomesh demonstrated as thermal conductivity barrier for improving thermoelectrics

By / October 5, 2010

Top: A scanning electron microscope image shows the grid of tiny holes in the nanomesh material. Bottom: In this drawing, each sphere represents a silicon atom in the nanomesh. The…

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Materials stories that missed the cut this week

By / August 6, 2010

At the end of each week, I end up with a list of a bunch of stories I started to write about, or started to investigate or didn’t even get…

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MIT calls graphene a “material for all seasons”

By RussJordan / May 21, 2009

A recent article in MIT Tech Talk describes aspects of several exciting graphene research projects at MIT. A successor to silicon? Graphene could become the successor to silicon in a…

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Purdue cuts LED costs with silicon

By / October 17, 2008

Experts at Purdue University say the United States could cut its total energy consumption and related carbon emissions by approximately 10 percent through the broad adoption of light-emitting diode technology. Known…

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Foldable and stretchable circuits: teaching silicon new tricks

By / October 17, 2008

Researchers led by John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have developed a new form of flexible, stretchable silicon integrated circuit.…

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