Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: mobile phones

Designing better 2D electronics: Addressing anisotropic conductivity to cut contact resistance

The high-performance semiconductor devices powering smartphone displays, AI computing, EV batteries and more are increasingly incorporating 2D materials to overcome silicon’s scaling limits. To optimize these technologies, a University of Michigan Engineering team developed a precise mathematical framework that accounts for anisotropic—or unevenly spreading—conductivity and device geometry.

Accurate models of how currents move through anisotropic thin films, made of layered 2D materials, can enable the design of more reliable, high-performance nanoelectric devices. Specifically, the model can help engineers reduce current crowding and spreading resistance, essentially current traffic jams, that occur at vertical electrical contacts that connect with the top of a 2D surface. The study is published in ACS Applied Electronic Materials.

New X-ray vision for electronics lets scientists monitor working chips remotely

A team of international researchers have developed a breakthrough way to observe what is happening inside electronic chips while they are operating—without touching them, taking them apart, or switching them off. The new technique uses terahertz waves, a safe and non-ionizing form of electromagnetic radiation, to detect tiny movements of electrical charge inside fully packaged semiconductor devices. For the first time, this allows scientists and engineers to monitor electronic components as they function in the real world.

The study, published in the IEEE Journal of Microwaves, involves researchers from Adelaide University in Australia, US technology company Virginia Diodes Inc, the Hasso Plattner Institute and the University of Potsdam, Germany.

Adelaide University Group Leader of the Terahertz Engineering Laboratory (TEL), Professor Withawat Withayachumnankul, said that semiconductors underpin almost every modern technology, from smartphones and medical devices to vehicles, power grids and defense systems.

A world‑first quantum battery charges faster when it gets bigger—but it’s tiny and only lasts nanoseconds

You’re late for an important appointment. Just as you are leaving your house, you realize your phone is flat. Imagine you could charge it almost instantly by exploiting the strange rules of quantum physics. That’s the promise of quantum batteries.

My colleagues and I at CSIRO have developed the world’s first quantum battery prototypes —and the direction the technology has taken is surprising.

New “Darksword” iOS exploit used in infostealer attack on iPhones

A new exploit kit for iOS devices and delivery framework dubbed “DarkSword” has been used to steal a wide range of personal information, including data from cryptocurrency wallet apps.

DarkSword targets iPhones running iOS 18.4 through 18.7 and is linked to multiple actors, including UNC6353, suspected to be Russian, who used the Coruna exploit chain disclosed earlier this month.

Researchers at mobile security company Lookout discovered DarkSword while investigating the infrastructure used for the Coruna attacks. Google’s Threat Intelligence Group and iVerify also collaborated for a more comprehensive analysis of this previously unknown threat and the adversaries leveraging it.

New 4D vision chip can help robots track distance and speed at once

Researchers at Pointcloud GmbH in Zürich, Switzerland, have packed advanced 4D sensing technology — once too bulky for everyday use — onto a single silicon chip.

It’s a 4D imaging sensor that maps the physical world while simultaneously clocking the speed of every object it sees. It offers a low-cost, high-speed vision solution for everything from autonomous drones to future smartphones.

“This result demonstrates the capabilities of FMCW LiDAR FPA sensors as enablers of ubiquitous, low-cost, compact coherent 4D imaging cameras,” the researchers wrote in the study paper.

Apple pushes first Background Security Improvements update to fix WebKit flaw

Apple has released its first Background Security Improvements update to fix a WebKit flaw tracked as CVE-2026–20643 on iPhones, iPads, and Macs without requiring a full operating system upgrade.

The CVE-2026–20643 flaw allows malicious web content to bypass the browser’s Same Origin Policy.

Apple says the flaw is a cross-origin issue in the Navigation API that was addressed with improved input validation.

Not just spin—electron orbitals can provide new method for controlling magnetism

Research is actively underway to develop a “dream memory” that can reduce heat generation in smartphones and laptops while delivering faster performance and lower power consumption. Korean researchers propose a new possibility for controlling magnetism using the exchange interaction of electron orbitals—the motion of electrons orbiting around an atomic nucleus—rather than relying on the conventional exchange interaction of electron spin, the rotational property of electrons inside semiconductors.

A joint research team led by Professor Kyung-Jin Lee of the Department of Physics at KAIST and Professor Kyoung-Whan Kim of the Department of Physics at Yonsei University has established, for the first time in the world, a new theoretical framework enabling magnetism to be freely controlled through orbital exchange interaction, surpassing the limitations of conventional technologies that control magnetism using electric currents. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Until now, next-generation memory research has mainly focused on the spin of electrons. Spin refers to the property of electrons that rotate on their own axis like tiny spinning tops, and information can be stored by using the direction of this rotation. However, electrons simultaneously move around the atomic nucleus along paths known as orbitals.

Communication-aware neural networks could advance edge computing

Edge computing is an emerging IT architecture that enables the processing of data locally by smartphones, autonomous vehicles, local servers, and other IoT devices instead of sending it to be processed at a centralized large data center. This approach could allow artificial intelligence (AI) models and other computational systems to perform tasks rapidly, while consuming less power.

Despite the potential of this approach, typically local devices have a limited battery capacity and restricted computing capabilities. This means they often need to send data to remote cloud servers via the internet to complete complex calculations. This transmission of information via wireless communication can consume significant amounts of energy, while also slowing down the rates of transmission.

Researchers at Nanjing University recently introduced a new approach that could potentially boost the speed of communication between edge devices and cloud servers, while also reducing energy consumption. Their proposed strategy, introduced in a paper published in Nature Electronics, relies on newly developed communication-aware in-memory wireless neural networks, new computational tools that combine computing, memory, and wireless communication into a single AI-powered system.

How an acid found in grapes could help recycle battery metals

Cobalt and nickel are vital components for batteries, superalloys and catalysts, used in technologies ranging from smartphones to jet engines. But when it comes to recycling, they are notoriously difficult to separate because they are chemically nearly identical. To solve this, a team led by scientists at Johns Hopkins University in the United States has developed a cleaner and cheaper way to extract these elements. And it is thanks in part to grapes.

/* */