News 2019

Researchers at EPFL have developed an ultra-light robotic insect that uses its soft artificial muscles to move at 3 cm per second across different types of terrain. It can be folded or crushed and yet continue to move. Imagine swarms of robotic insects moving around us as they perform various tasks.

After decades of miniaturization, the electronic components we've relied on for computers and modern technologies are now starting to reach fundamental limits. Faced with this challenge, engineers and scientists around the world are turning toward a radically new paradigm: quantum information technologies.

Band structure map exposes iron selenide's enigmatic electronic signature Using a clever technique that causes unruly crystals of iron selenide to snap into alignment, Rice University physicists have drawn a detailed map that reveals the "rules of the road” for electrons both in normal conditions and in the critical moments just before the material transforms into a superconductor.

Smaller, faster, more energy-efficient - this is the goal that developers of electronic devices have been working towards for years. In order to be able to miniaturize individual components of mobile phones or computers for example, magnetic waves are currently regarded as promising alternatives to conventional data transmission functioning by means of electric currents.

On behalf of the ESA, UCLouvain has developed antennas for the LaRa instrument that will go to Mars in 2020 to study the red planet's habitability.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have developed a glue which can unstick when placed in a magnetic field, meaning products otherwise destined for landfill, could now be dismantled and recycled at the end of their life. Currently, items like mobile phones, microwaves and car dashboards are assembled using adhesives.

An international team headed by physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has, for the first time ever, experimentally implemented secure quantum communication in the microwave band in a local quantum network. The new architecture represents a crucial step on the road to distributed quantum computing.

The continuously growing need for higher data rates as well as globally available broadband internet requires innovative technology developments and the exploitation of a new electromagnetic spectrum. In the scope of R&D projects funded by the German Aerospace Center, researchers at the University of Stuttgart have developed a high-performance technology platform to exploit the frequency spectrum in the so-called E-band at 71-86 GHz.

Excitons are quasiparticles made from the excited state of electrons and - according to research being carried out EPFL - have the potential to boost the energy efficiency of our everyday devices. It's a whole new way of thinking about electronics. Excitons - or quasiparticles formed when electrons absorb light - stand to revolutionize the building blocks of circuits.

The U.S. energy system has seen sweeping changes in the past two decades. Natural gas replaced coal as the dominant fossil source of power generation, and wind and solar energy now contribute roughly 9% of the nation's electricity, compared to almost none 20 years ago. Because of these changes, less carbon is being emitted by the power sector per unit of electricity produced.

From warehouses to hospitals, soft robots are used in different places to assist humans in moving items, treating patients and gathering information. As interests in these robots keep growing, Carnegie Mellon University scientists are developing ways to give them the kind of sensing capabilities found in natural soft tissue.

When frost forms on the ground overnight even when temperatures are well above freezing, or water droplets appear on car windshields even on a clear night, the cause is often a phenomenon called radiative sky cooling. In a paper published in the journal Joule, researchers led by a UCLA materials scientist report that they have leveraged the principles behind radiative sky cooling to develop an innovative way to produce renewable energy at night.

Switzerland is proud of its strongly developed use of hydropower. This covers almost 60% of the country's electricity needs. The production of around 36 terawatt hours (TWh) per year is now to be increased by a further 3 TWh by 2050 as part of the energy strategy. Eawag, the water research institute, is today presenting internal and external experts at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne on the challenges this poses for water bodies and the approaches society can take to meet these challenges.

Technology developed at the University of Birmingham could protect the UK and other countries from national electricity blackouts. Britain has high-voltage, direct-current (HVDC) transmission links with neighbouring countries, including France, Ireland, Holland and Norway - an efficient way of transporting electricity, but vulnerable to alternating-current (AC) faults.

Atomically thin materials developed by Stanford researchers could create heat-shields for cell phones or laptops that would protect people and temperature-sensitive components and make future electronic gadgets even more compact. Excess heat given off by smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices can be annoying, but beyond that it contributes to malfunctions and, in extreme cases, can even cause lithium batteries to explode.

The rapidly changing climate in the Arctic is not only linked to melting glaciers and declining sea ice, but also to thinning ice on lakes. The presence of lake ice can be easily monitored by imaging sensors and standard satellite observations, but now adding to its list of achievements, CryoSat can be used to measure the thickness of lake ice - another indicator of climate change.

Physicists were stunned when two twisted sheets of graphene showed signs of superconductivity. Now Stanford scientists have shown that the wonder material also generates a type of magnetism once only dreamed of theoretically. Sometimes the best discoveries happen when scientists least expect it. While trying to replicate another team's finding, Stanford physicists recently stumbled upon a novel form of magnetism, predicted but never seen before, that is generated when two honeycomb-shaped lattices of carbon are carefully stacked and rotated to a special angle.

Carbon nanotube films created at Rice University enable method to recycle waste heat The ever-more-humble carbon nanotube may be just the device to make solar panels - and anything else that loses energy through heat - far more efficient. Rice University scientists are designing arrays of aligned single-wall carbon nanotubes to channel mid-infrared radiation (aka heat) and greatly raise the efficiency of solar energy systems.

Researchers from the University of Geneva and the University of Manchester have confirmed experimentally the theory of very strong magneto-optical resonance in graphene. The ability to control infrared and terahertz waves using magnetic or electric fields is one of the great challenges in physics that could revolutionise opto-electronics, telecommunications and medical diagnostics.

Venus flytraps are capable of detecting the movements of even the smallest insects. This mechanism protects the plant against starving from hyperactivity as a new study conducted by scientists from Würzburg and Cambridge reveals. Physically bound to a specific location, plants have to devise special ways to secure their supply of vital nutrients.