http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- A Cornell researcher has created an extremely efficient transistor made from gallium nitride, which may soon replace silicon as king of semiconductors for power applications. http://www.physorg.com/news179518616.html Physics Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:17:33 EST news179518616 Northwestern University researchers have achieved a breakthrough in quantum cascade laser output power, delivering 120 watts from a single device at room temperature. http://www.physorg.com/news178907017.html Physics Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:00:01 EST news178907017 An international team of applied scientists from Harvard, Hamamatsu Photonics, and ETH Zürich have demonstrated compact, multibeam, and multi-wavelength lasers emitting in the invisible part of the light spectrum (infrared). By contrast, typical lasers emit a single light beam of a well-defined wavelength. The innovative multibeam lasers have potential use in applications related to remote chemical sensing pollution monitoring, optical wireless, and interferometry. http://www.physorg.com/news178804893.html Physics Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:40:01 EST news178804893 (PhysOrg.com) -- While quantum dots have existed since the 1980s, only in the past decade have physicists successfully created lateral few-electron single quantum dots. These quantum dots enable physicists to manipulate quantum spins, which could be used as qubits for quantum information applications. Along these lines, a team of physicists from the National Research Council in Canada who were responsible for the original lateral few-electron single quantum dot have recently designed a new few-electron triple quantum dot circuit, and demonstrated that all three quantum dots can be tuned in resonance. http://www.physorg.com/news178789034.html Nanotechnology Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:10:01 EST news178789034 (PhysOrg.com) -- "Carbon nanotubes are exciting for fundamental physics, and for potential technological applications," Nadya Mason tells PhysOrg.com. "However, we are generally limited in the way that we can study them. Many of these limitations have to do with controlling tunneling, or the way electrons move on and off the nanotube." In order to overcome this limitation, Mason, a scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, participated in an experiment using a superconducting tunnel probe in a carbon nanotube to observe spectroscopic features. http://www.physorg.com/news177934374.html Nanotechnology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:13:55 EST news177934374 (PhysOrg.com) -- Most people would like to be able to charge their cell phones and other personal electronics quickly and not too often. A recent discovery made by UC San Diego engineers could lead to carbon nanotube-based supercapacitors that could do just this. http://www.physorg.com/news177865593.html Nanotechnology Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:07:50 EST news177865593 (PhysOrg.com) -- In 2008, scientists built a loudspeaker made of carbon nanotubes that produced sound and music based on the thermoacoustic effect. Now, a different team of scientists has built a loudspeaker made of tiny aluminum wires suspended like a bridge between two supports, producing sound in a similar way. The new wire bridge also has the advantage of being much easier to fabricate than the nanotube device, offering the potential for a wide range of audio applications. http://www.physorg.com/news176543078.html Physics Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:00:01 EST news176543078 (PhysOrg.com) -- By taking advantage of the vagaries of the natural world, Duke University engineers have developed a novel approach that they believe can more efficiently harvest electricity from the motions of everyday life. http://www.physorg.com/news175966447.html Physics Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:35:22 EST news175966447 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of physicists from the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, including graduate student David Bernstein, have made a promising discovery that a well-known synchrotron technique is applicable to free-electron lasers. http://www.physorg.com/news174589801.html Physics Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:11:29 EST news174589801 (PhysOrg.com) -- Building the super-fast computers of the future has just become much easier thanks to an advance by Australian researchers that lets them grab hold of tiny electronics components and probe their inner structure using only a beam of light. http://www.physorg.com/news173710043.html Nanotechnology Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:49:01 EST news173710043 (PhysOrg.com) -- A short circuit can be quite hairy: satellites have failed, a NASA computer centre was repeatedly paralysed and the US public heath authority recalled thousands of pacemakers - all because tin whiskers caused a short circuit in the electronic components of these devices. http://www.physorg.com/news173450615.html Physics Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:44:24 EST news173450615 (PhysOrg.com) -- Recent research into the properties of graphene nanoribbons provides two new reasons for using the material as interconnects in future computer chips. In widths as narrow as 16 nanometers, graphene has a current carrying capacity approximately a thousand times greater than copper -while providing improved thermal conductivity. http://www.physorg.com/news168103210.html Nanotechnology Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:21:00 EST news168103210 Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), in collaboration with researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), have demonstrated, for the first time, that the activation energy of impurities in semiconductor nanowires is affected by the surrounding dielectric and can be modified by the choice of the nanowire embedding medium. http://www.physorg.com/news160754028.html Nanotechnology Tue, 05 May 2009 14:54:34 EST news160754028 (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the issues hindering the development of medical electronic devices capable of being implanted in the human body is the lack of suitable materials. Most semiconducting materials are stiff and brittle, while human tissue is soft and pliable. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), appear to have taken a key step forward in implantable electronics research. http://www.physorg.com/news160652779.html Nanotechnology Mon, 04 May 2009 10:48:24 EST news160652779 Applied scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) in collaboration with researchers from Hamamatsu Photonics in Hamamatsu City, Japan, have demonstrated, for the first time, lasers in which the direction of oscillation of the emitted radiation, known as polarization, can be designed and controlled at will. The innovation opens the door to a wide range of applications in photonics and communications. Harvard University has filed a broad patent on the invention. http://www.physorg.com/news158814118.html Physics Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:02:48 EST news158814118 It is a completely transparent and flexible energy conversion and storage device that you can bend and twist like a poker card. http://www.physorg.com/news157721337.html Nanotechnology Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:29:27 EST news157721337 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the University of Illinois have successfully demonstrated a microwave signal mixer made from a tunnel-junction transistor laser. Development of the device brings researchers a big step closer to higher speed electronics and higher performance electrical and optical integrated circuits. http://www.physorg.com/news156712542.html Physics Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:16:31 EST news156712542 (PhysOrg.com) -- Up until now, George Grüner tells PhysOrg.com, most of the studies regarding the properties - and uses - of carbon nanotubes have been restricted to the visible spectral range. `We, however, were interested in the properties in infrared range, in the window of the electromagnetic spectrum that is gaining increased prominence.` http://www.physorg.com/news155816845.html Nanotechnology Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:28:22 EST news155816845 (PhysOrg.com) -- `People are interested in the mid-infrared,` Dan Wasserman tells PhysOrg.com. Infrared light has a wavelength longer than visible light, and many molecules have numerous very strong optical resonances in the midinfrared. `Because of this, the midinfrared is an important wavelength range for trace gas sensing applications.` In addition the midinfrared is also of interest for applications such as thermal imaging, countermeasures, and even free space communication. http://www.physorg.com/news154609081.html Physics Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:59:14 EST news154609081 (PhysOrg.com) -- Integrated photonic devices represent the wave of future technology. These devices will be extremely small, making use of photons on the nanoscale, and (hopefully) be very efficient in terms of power use. The development of integrated photonic devices in tomorrow`s technology is taking place today at Peking University in Beijing, China, where a group of scientists has manufactured and tested a nanocomposite material that could be used in integrated photonic devices. http://www.physorg.com/news153406819.html Nanotechnology Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:02:26 EST news153406819 (PhysOrg.com) -- Since 1970, scientists have been working with `optical tweezers` - lasers that move microscopic amounts of matter using forces originating from the light matter interaction. Now, for the first time, researchers have demonstrated that light-induced forces can move macroscopic amounts of matter, as well. http://www.physorg.com/news152456596.html Physics Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:04:04 EST news152456596 In the race to develop the next generation of storage and recording media, a major hurdle has been the difficulty of studying the tiny magnetic structures that will serve as their building blocks. Now a team of physicists at the University of California, Davis, has developed a technique to capture the magnetic "fingerprints" of certain nanostructures - even when they are buried within the boards and junctions of an electronic device. http://www.physorg.com/news152453882.html Physics Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:18:41 EST news152453882 Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered a new method for controlling the nature of graphene, bringing academia and industry potentially one step closer to realizing the mass production of graphene-based nanoelectronics. http://www.physorg.com/news151760486.html Nanotechnology Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:42:37 EST news151760486 (PhysOrg.com) -- `In photonic crystals, the ability to control the structure of a material in full three dimensional space, allows you to control the way that light flows through it,` John Rogers tells PhysOrg.com. `This approach to photonic materials can be useful in applications ranging from communications to lasers to optical waveguides.` http://www.physorg.com/news151758574.html Physics Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:10:25 EST news151758574 Many hopes are pinned on spintronics. In the future it could replace electronics, which in the race to produce increasingly rapid computer components, must at sometime reach its limits. Different from electronics, where whole electrons are moved (the digital "one" means "an electron is present on the component", zero means "no electron present"), here it is a matter of manipulating a certain property of the electron, its spin. For this reason, components are needed in which electrons can be injected successively, and one must be able to manipulate the spin of the single electrons, e.g. with the aid of magnetic fields. Both are possible with a single electron pump, as scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have, together with colleagues from Latvia, now shown. They will present their results in the current issue of Applied Physics Letters. http://www.physorg.com/news151234998.html Physics Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:43:18 EST news151234998 (PhysOrg.com) -- Distorted cell-phone photos and big, clunky telephoto lenses could be things of the past. UW-Madison Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma and colleagues have developed a flexible light-sensitive material that could revolutionize photography and other imaging technologies. http://www.physorg.com/news151079814.html Physics Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:36:54 EST news151079814 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed and demonstrated a new type of light emitting diode (LED) with significantly improved lighting performance and energy efficiency. http://www.physorg.com/news151003742.html Physics Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:29:02 EST news151003742