news 2011

Scientists have created 18-karat gold that's harder than tempered steel and virtually unscratchable.

Researchers have invented a new generation of tactile surfaces with relief effects - users can feel actual raised keys under their fingers.

Dye-sensitized Grätzel solar cells have just set a new efficiency benchmark. By changing the composition and color of the cells, an EPFL team has increased their efficiency to more than 12%.

It may soon be possible manufacture the miniscule structures that make up transistors and silicon chips rapidly and inexpensively. EPFL scientists are currently investigating the use of dynamic stencil lithography, a recent but not yet perfected method, for creating nanostructures. Faster, less expensive, and better.

Manufacturing solar cells that are one thousand times thinner than conventional cells. That is the challenge the researchers have set for themselves.

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a relatively new memory technology, known as phase-change memory (PCM), can reliably store multiple data bits per cell over extended periods of time. This significant improvement advances the development of low-cost, faster and more durable memory applications for consumer devices, including mobile phones and cloud storage, as well as high-performance applications, such as enterprise data storage.