One-step, etch- free patterning enables clean, low-resistance graphene electrodes for transparent and flexible devices.
Category: materials
Moore’s law: the famous rule of computing has reached the end of the road, so what comes next?
That sense of certainty and predictability has now gone, and not because innovation has stopped, but because the physical assumptions that once underpinned it no longer hold.
So what replaces the old model of automatic speed increases? The answer is not a single breakthrough, but several overlapping strategies.
One involves new materials and transistor designs. Engineers are refining how transistors are built to reduce wasted energy and unwanted electrical leakage. These changes deliver smaller, more incremental improvements than in the past, but they help keep power use under control.
A strange in-between state of matter is finally observed
When materials become just one atom thick, melting no longer follows the familiar rules. Instead of jumping straight from solid to liquid, an unusual in-between state emerges, where atomic positions loosen like a liquid but still keep some solid-like order. Scientists at the University of Vienna have now captured this elusive “hexatic” phase in real time by filming an ultra-thin silver iodide crystal as it melted inside a protective graphene sandwich.
A white dwarf’s cosmic feeding frenzy revealed by NASA
Using NASA’s IXPE, astronomers captured an unprecedented view of a white dwarf star actively feeding on material from a companion. The data revealed giant columns of ultra-hot gas shaped by the star’s magnetic field and glowing in intense X-rays. These features are far too small to image directly, but X-ray polarization allowed scientists to map them with surprising precision. The results open new doors for understanding extreme binary star systems.
Scientists have, for the first time, used NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer) to investigate a white dwarf star. The mission’s ability to measure the polarization of X-rays allowed astronomers to closely examine EX Hydrae, a type of system known as an intermediate polar. These observations provided new insight into the physical structure and behavior of powerful binary star systems.
During 2024, IXPE spent nearly a full week observing EX Hydrae. This white dwarf system lies about 200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra. The results of the study were published in the Astrophysical Journal. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge led the work, with additional contributors from the University of Iowa, East Tennessee State University, the University of Liége, and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.
From fleeting to stable: Scientists uncover recipe for new carbon dioxide-based energetic materials
When materials are compressed, their atoms are forced into unusual arrangements that do not normally exist under everyday conditions. These configurations are often fleeting: when the pressure is released, the atoms typically relax back to a stable low-pressure state. Only a few very specific materials, like diamond, retain their high-pressure structure after returning to room temperature and atmospheric pressure.
But locking those atomic arrangements in place under ambient conditions could create new classes of useful materials with a wide range of potential applications. One particularly compelling example is energetic materials, which are useful for propellants and explosives.
In a study published in Communications Chemistry, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) identified a first-of-its-kind carbon dioxide-equivalent polymer that can be recovered from high-pressure conditions.
Researchers develop high-performance fluoroborate crystals for deep-ultraviolet lasers
Deep-ultraviolet (DUV, λ < 200 nm) all-solid-state lasers, essential to modern scientific research and industrial manufacturing, are widely applied in fields from material analysis to lithography. Their commercialization depends heavily on high-performance nonlinear optical (NLO) crystals, but developing such crystals is hampered by strict requirements: They must simultaneously possess large second harmonic generation (SHG) responses, moderate birefringence, and wide bandgaps.
Borates have long been a research focus for their exceptional DUV transmission properties. Though materials like β-BBO and LBO have been developed, most cannot achieve DUV phase matching via direct frequency doubling. Fluoroborate systems have emerged as leading candidates due to structural diversity and superior performance, yet existing ones such as KBBF suffer from layered growth habits and toxic raw materials.
Moreover, DUV NLO crystals with chain-like polymerized [BO3]3- units are scarce. Thus, designing structural strategies to realize an ordered arrangement of functional units has become key to breaking the performance bottlenecks of DUV NLO materials.
Hydrogen’s role in generating free electrons in silicon finally explained
Researchers announced that they have achieved the world’s first elucidation of how hydrogen produces free electrons through the interaction with certain defects in silicon. The achievement has the potential to improve how insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are designed and manufactured, making them more efficient and reducing their power loss. It is also expected to open up possibilities for future devices using ultra-wide bandgap (UWBG) materials.
In the global drive toward carbon neutrality, efforts to make power electronics more efficient and energy-saving are accelerating worldwide. IGBTs are key components responsible for power conversion, so improving their efficiency is a major priority. While hydrogen ion implantation has been used for about half a century to control electron concentration in silicon, the underlying mechanism has remained unclear until now.
In 2023, Mitsubishi Electric and University of Tsukuba jointly discovered a defect complex in silicon that contributes to increasing electron concentration. They confirmed that this complex is formed when an interstitial silicon pair and hydrogen bind, but the reason why free electrons are newly generated in this process was still unclear.
Chiral phonons create orbital current via their own magnetism
In a new study, an international group of researchers has found that chiral phonons can create orbital current without needing magnetic elements—in part because chiral phonons have their own magnetic moments. Additionally, this effect can be achieved in common crystal materials. The work has potential for the development of less expensive, energy-efficient orbitronic devices for use in a wide array of electronics.
All electronic devices are based upon the charge of an electron, and electrons have three intrinsic properties: spin, charge and orbital angular momentum. While researchers have long explored the use of spin as a more efficient way to create current, the field of orbitronics —based upon using an electron’s orbital angular momentum, rather than its spin, to create a current flow—is still relatively new.
“Traditionally it has been technically challenging to generate orbital current,” says Dali Sun, co-corresponding author on the study published in Nature Physics. Sun is a professor of physics and member of the Organic and Carbon Electronics Lab (ORaCEL) at North Carolina State University.