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Researchers at the Gedik Lab at MIT use strong ultrafast laser pulses to stimulate changes in material, followed by a weaker probe laser pulse after some time delay to monitor the changes with femtosecond time resolution. Tungsten (W) atoms are black, and sulfur (S) atoms are yellow. Credit: Edbert Jarvis Sie =================================================================================================================================== Monolayer films of tungsten disulfide, just three atoms thick, have unique electronic valleys which can be manipulated with laser light. This finding, by MIT physics graduate student Edbert Jarvis Sie, Associate Professor Nuh Gedik, and colleagues, was significant enough to warrant placement on the cover of Nature Materials...

Rice University scientists are making small, flexible microsupercapacitors in a room-temperature process they claim shows promise for manufacturing in bulk. The technique is based on their method to burn patterns of spongy graphene into plastic sheets with a commercial laser. Credit: Tour Group/Rice University ====================================================================================================================================== Rice University researchers who pioneered the development of laser-induced graphene have configured their discovery into flexible, solid-state microsupercapacitors that rival the best available for energy storage and delivery. The devices developed in the lab of Rice chemist James Tour are geared toward electronics and apparel. They are the subject of a new paper in the...

These tungsten ditelluride crystals behave as insulators for current applied in some directions and as conductors for current applied in other directions. The researchers found that this behavior is due to a newly theorized particle, the type-II Weyl fermion. Credit: Wudi Wang and N. Phuan Ong, Princeton University --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An international team of researchers has predicted the existence of a new type of particle called the type-II Weyl fermion in metallic materials. When subjected to a magnetic field, the materials containing the particle act as insulators for current applied in some directions and as conductors for current applied in other...

I need some help. I’m a private investigator. I’m trying to build a self-contained, 12-volt surveillance camera rig that I can set up in a vehicle. I want to be able to either run it off of the vehicle’s power or off of a battery pack. [I’ve already got the battery pack set up].

HIRSCHFELD, GERMANY - Scientists in Germany have come up with a method for extracting the precious element germanium from plants. The element is a semi-conductor and was used to develop the first transistor because it is able to transport electrical charges extremely quickly. Nowadays, silicon-germanium alloy is indispensable to modern life, crucial in making computers, smartphones and fiber-optic cables. Transparent in infra-red light, germanium is also used in intelligent steering systems and parking sensors for vehicles. Yet although germanium is present in soil all over the world, it is difficult to extract, and most supplies currently come from China. Now...

One day 3D printers will be able to churn out working electronics and fully-functional machines, instead of just plastic parts. And that day is now slightly closer with MIT CSAIL’s MultiFab 3D printer that can use ten different materials to build working devices in a single print run. For 3D printers to fully realize their Star Trek ‘replicator’ potential they can’t just be one part of the manufacturing process, they need to do it all. The holy grail of 3D printing is to one day let anyone recreate any device with a simple button press. We want to be able...

There is a refurbished Slingbox for sale at a good price. Can I use that as a cable box for a tv in my house that presently doesn't have one?

They can theoretically carry charge 1,000 times faster than ordinary electrons. After 85 years of searching, researchers have confirmed the existence of a massless particle called the Weyl fermion for the first time ever. With the unique ability to behave as both matter and anti-matter inside a crystal, this strange particle can create electrons that have no mass. The discovery is huge, not just because we finally have proof that these elusive particles exist, but because it paves the way for far more efficient electronics, and new types of quantum computing. "Weyl fermions could be used to solve the traffic...

A typical computer chip includes millions of transistors connected with an extensive network of copper wires. Although chip wires are unimaginably short and thin compared to household wires both have one thing in common: in each case the copper is wrapped within a protective sheath. For years a material called tantalum nitride has formed protective layer in chip wires. Now Stanford-led experiments demonstrate that a different sheathing material, graphene, can help electrons scoot through tiny copper wires in chips more quickly. Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a strong yet thin lattice. Stanford electrical engineer H.-S....

An ultracompact beamsplitter – the smallest one in the world – has been designed and fabricated by researchers in the US. Using a newly developed algorithm, the team built the smallest integrated polarization beamsplitter to date, which could allow computers and mobile devices of the future to function millions of times faster than current machines.

University of Utah engineers have taken a step forward in creating the next generation of computers and mobile devices capable of speeds millions of times faster than current machines. The Utah engineers have developed an ultracompact beamsplitter—the smallest on record—for dividing light waves into two separate channels of information. The device brings researchers closer to producing silicon photonic chips that compute and shuttle data with light instead of electrons. Electrical and computer engineering associate professor Rajesh Menon and colleagues describe their invention today in the journal Nature Photonics. Silicon photonics could significantly increase the power and speed of machines such...

Standard General LP, which bought 1,700 RadioShack Corp. store leases in March, said it prevailed this week in an auction for the bankrupt electronics retailer’s brand name. The winning bid was $26.2 million, a spokesman for the hedge fund said Wednesday. That price also covers a trove of customer data. RadioShack entered bankruptcy in February with a plan to have a Standard General affiliate take over as many as half its approximately 4,000 stores in a co-branding arrangement with Sprint Corp. Standard General was declared the winner of the store auction with a bid worth about $145.5 million. The latest...

“You can’t really understand what is going on now without understanding what came before.” Steve Jobs is explaining why, as a young man, he spent so much time with the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs a generation older, men like Robert Noyce, Andy Grove, and Regis McKenna. It’s a beautiful Saturday morning in May, 2003, and I’m sitting next to Jobs on his living room sofa, interviewing him for a book I’m writing. I ask him to tell me more about why he wanted, as he put it, “to smell that second wonderful era of the valley, the semiconductor companies leading into...

On Tuesday, microcontrollers and touch-technology developer Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) released samples of a new type of super-low power, ARM-based family of microcontrollers (MCUs). Many are already saying that the SMART SAM L21 family of MCUs has the potential to revolutionize the way the Internet of Things (IoT) works. 411 On These Chips Made by Atmel and based on ARM Holdings plc (ADR) (NASDAQ: ARMH) technology, these chips can last for over 10 years on a single battery charge. According to Atmel, this family of MCUs delivers power consumption down to 35 microamps per megahertz in active mode and to...

Quad High-Definition. That's a phrase you're likely to see more and more of this year, as Seoul, Korea-based LG Display announced Friday it is launching a 5.5-inch QHD LCD panel for smartphones. So what? This launch, said LG Display, happens to represent "a quantum jump" in color gamut, brightness and contrast ratio, touch function, power consumption and thinness. The company's high color gamut technology can provide more accurate colors in red and green; LG Display reported a 20 percent improvement in color gamut with this technology. The display provides a 120 percent color gamut, exceeding the 100 percent gamut offered...

Caltech's David Boyd has done what scientists have been struggling to do for years: He says he's figured out a cheap, easy way to make graphene, and to make a lot of it. The kicker? He's using technology from the 1960s. Cooking up graphene Graphene was a wonder material first theorized in 1947 and not actually proven in the real world until years later, when scientists did it in the strangest of ways in 2003: by rubbing a pencil across some Scotch tape. Made of sheets of carbon just one atom thick, the stuff is tough, durable, and conductible. It's...

Once upon a time, Radio Shack was saved from bankruptcy — in the 1960s. The British Tandy corporation, at that time a leather goods retailer, bought the company in a resulting merger called Tandy Radio Shack & Leather. In 1977, Radio Shack's 3,000 stores started selling the TRS-80 (Tandy/Radio Shack, Z-80 microprocessor). Largely forgotten by the general public, the TRS-80 was, with Apple and Commodore's products, one of the pioneering personal computers of the late 1970s, and a key machine in the personal computer revolution. Byte magazine described the "1977 Trinity" of computers: Apple, Commodore and Tandy. In 1981, the...

Graphene, a material formed of a mesh of hexagonal carbon atoms, has, according to ExtremeTech author Ryan Whitwam, “many fantastic properties that could change the course of human civilization. It’s chemically stable, highly conductive, and incredibly strong.” In a recent New Yorker article, John Colapinto stated graphene “may be the most remarkable substance ever discovered.” One thing graphene is not, however, is magnetic. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have developed a way to induce magnetism in graphene while preserving its electronic properties. The research team did this by bringing a single sheet of graphene into close proximity to...

The 3D printing industry is still very much in its infancy. But that could change if the CIA has its way. The intelligence agency's venture capital firm just invested in Voxel8, the company behind the first multi-material, 3D electronics printer. What does the CIA want with 3D printing? We can only guess at this point, but we may hear stories one day of how some futuristic James Bond 3D-printed his own gadgets in the field. What's the potential impact for consumers? The move might just jumpstart a field that has so far been struggling to find its footing. Voxel8 says...

It might actually be that something like this would be possible with today's technology or it may be more like five or ten years out, but this is the computer I'd like to have. The thing would look like two Iphones held together face to face with magnets or snaps of some sort and fit in a shirt pocket. You'd take it out of your pocket, take the two halves of the thing apart, and set the one half on any flat surface to be the mouse. The other half would sit on the same surface and somehow generate a...