Lifeboat Foundation

A team of researchers at The University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute (NGI) and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has demonstrated that slightly twisted 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) display room-temperature ferroelectricity.

This characteristic, combined with TMDs’ outstanding optical properties, can be used to build multi-functional optoelectronic devices such as transistors and LEDs with built-in memory functions on nanometre length scale.

Ferroelectrics are materials with two or more electrically polarisable states that can be reversibly switched with the application of an external electric field. This material property is ideal for applications such as non-volatile memory, microwave devices, sensors and transistors. Until recently, out-of-plane switchable ferroelectricity at room temperature had been achieved only in films thicker than 3 nanometres.

There’s a key aspect of quantum computing you may not have thought about before. Called ‘quantum non-demolition measurements’, they refer to observing certain quantum states without destroying them in the process.

If we want to put together a functioning quantum computer, not having it break down every second while calculations are made would obviously be helpful. Now, scientists have described a new technique for recording quantum non-demolition measurements that shows a lot of promise.

Continue reading “Scientists Just Measured a Mechanical Quantum System Without Destroying It” »

Cutting-edge computer technology designed to mimic the human brain is being used by hackers to create lifelike videos of celebrities and politicians. But now, bad actors are using this readily available tech to target everyday social media users in cryptocurrency scams.

Networks (connectivity) and dynamics are two key pillars of network neuroscience – an emerging field dedicated to understanding structure and function of neural systems across scales, from neurons to circuits to the whole brain. In this presentation I will review current themes and future directions, including structure/function relationships, use of computational models to map information flow and communication dynamics, and a novel edge-centric approach to map functional connectivity at fine temporal scales. I will argue that network neuroscience represents a promising theoretical framework for understanding the complex structure and functioning of nervous systems.

This video is part of the SNAC seminar series organized by Mac Shine, Joe Lizier, and Ben Fulcher (The University of Sydney).

Simulating complex scientific models on the computer or processing large volumes of data such as editing video material takes considerable computing power and time. Researchers from the Chair of Laser Physics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and a team from the University of Rochester in New York have demonstrated how the speed of fundamental computing operations could be increased in the future to up to a million times faster using laser pulses. Their findings were published on May 11, 2022, in the journal Nature.

The computing speed of today’s computer and smartphone processors is given by field-effect transistors. In the competition to produce faster devices, the size of these transistors is constantly decreased to fit as many together as possible onto chips. Modern computers already operate at the breathtaking speed of several gigahertz, which translates to several billion computing operations per second. The latest transistors measure only 5 nanometers (0.000005 millimeters) in size, the equivalent of not much more than a few atoms. There are limits to how far chip manufacturers can go and at a certain point, it won’t be possible to make transistors any smaller.

Physicists are working hard to control electronics with light waves. The oscillation of a light wave takes approximately one femtosecond, which is one-millionth of one billionth of a second. Controlling electrical signals with light could make the computers of the future over a million times faster, which is the aim of petahertz signal processing or light wave electronics.

A “forever battery” is much smaller and more energy-dense than lithium-ion. They’ll change the world and unlock a trillion-dollar revolution.

In this week’s episode, Aaron and I discuss what could be the “holy grail” of energy: the solid-state — or forever battery. Obviously, lithium-ion cells are the status quo of today. And they power pretty much everything, like your smartphone, laptop and electric vehicle.

Continue reading “Forever Battery: QuantumScape’s Holy Grail of Energy” »

Last Christmas, Philip Martin sat down at his computer to check his cryptocurrency balance. Before he knew what was happening, hackers stole his life savings.

Researchers have developed a new kind of logic gate, the fundamental building block from which computers are made. Depending on the kind of logic gate and its rules, two inputs of any combination of 0 and 1 result in an output of either a 1 or 0. A single chip used in creating electronic components like processors and memory modules can contain billions of logic gates.

The newly developed logic gate, which demonstrates the viability of “lightwave electronics,” works orders of magnitudes faster than traditional logic gates. Ordinary logic gates have an input processing delay on the order of nanoseconds, but the new logic gates process inputs in only femtoseconds, a million times shorter than nanoseconds.

The new gates comprise two gold electrodes connected with a graphene wire, which is then zapped with laser pulses, adjusting the pulse’s phase to produce outputs of either a one or a 0. The shortened processing time for the new logic gates means that computers built on the technology would have their processing speeds measured on Petahertz (PHz) scale compared to the current Gigahertz (GHz).

Water scarcity is a growing problem around the world. Desalination of seawater is an established method to produce drinkable water but comes with huge energy costs. For the first time, researchers use fluorine-based nanostructures to successfully filter salt from water. Compared to current desalination methods, these fluorous nanochannels work faster, require less pressure and less energy, and are a more effective filter.

If you’ve ever cooked with a nonstick Teflon-coated frying pan, then you’ve probably seen the way that wet ingredients slide around it easily. This happens because the key component of Teflon is fluorine, a lightweight element that is naturally water repelling, or hydrophobic. Teflon can also be used to line pipes to improve the flow of water. Such behavior caught the attention of Associate Professor Yoshimitsu Itoh from the Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology at the University of Tokyo and his team. It inspired them to explore how pipes or channels made from fluorine might operate on a very different scale, the nanoscale.

“We were curious to see how effective a fluorous nanochannel might be at selectively filtering different compounds, in particular, water and salt. And, after running some complex computer simulations, we decided it was worth the time and effort to create a working sample,” said Itoh. “There are two main ways to desalinate water currently: thermally, using heat to evaporate seawater so it condenses as pure water, or by reverse osmosis, which uses pressure to force water through a membrane that blocks salt. Both methods require a lot of energy, but our tests suggest fluorous nanochannels require little energy, and have other benefits too.”