Industry News

November 2018
PITTSBURGH—The University of Pittsburgh’s first major commitment to renewable energy will utilize the Allegheny River as the source of clean, local and longterm electricity for the campus. Pitt has signed a letter of intent with Rye Development, LLC to purchase 100 percent of the power from a low-impac
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Date:
11/30/2018
A New Way to See Stress -- Using Supercomputers

Supercomputer simulations show that at the atomic level, material stress doesn't behave symmetrically. Molecular model of a crystal containing a dissociated dislocation, atoms are encoded with the atomic shear strain. Below, snapshots of simulation results showing the relative positions of atoms in the rectangular prism elements; each element has dimensions 2.556 Å by 2.087 Å by 2.213 Å and has one atom at the center.

It's easy to take a lot for granted. Scientists do this when they study stress, the force per unit area on an object. Scientists handle stress mathematically by assuming it to have symmetry. That means the components of stress are identical if you transform the stressed object with something like a turn or a fli
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Date:
11/30/2018
Introducing the World's First CO2 Negative Fuel

NextFuel's unique reactor that makes their fuel briquettes.

NextFuel is introducing a completely new energy solution to climate change that is CO2 negative, cheap, profitable and massively scalable. Their CO2 negative fuel briquette, made from elephant grass, is cheaper than oil and cheaper than coal in most markets.  A coal plant can, without any investments, directly re
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Date:
11/29/2018
Bourns Expands Reach with New Office in Veszprém, Hungary

Bourns expands operations in EMEA
with new office in Veszprém, Hungary.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Bourns, Inc. announced it has opened a new office in Veszprém, Hungary in response to burgeoning demand within the European market for its industry-leading electronic component solutions. The new office employs close to 90 employees with plans to add additional headcount to support current an
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Date:
11/28/2018
EPC Expands Asian Team to Unleash the Power of Innovations
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — To support its accelerating sales growth in Asia, Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) is proud to announce the expansion of the sales and FAE team in Asia Pacific to support its expanding customer base, maximize new business acquisition and capture new market opportunities. Darren Shang, Vice Presi
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Date:
11/27/2018
A Supercomputer to Accelerate UK Research for EV Batteries

The new supercomputer 'Michael' funded by the Faraday Institution and designed to speed up research on two of the UK's most important battery research projects and installed at University College London.

HARWELL, UK - A new supercomputer designed to speed up research on two of the UK's most important battery research projects has been installed at University College London (UCL). Named Michael, after the UK's most famous battery scientist, Michael Faraday, the supercomputer will reach 265 teraflops at peak performance. Michael will flex i
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Date:
11/23/2018
Electronic Glove Gives Robots a Sense of Touch

Stanford researchers developed the skin-like sensor on the fingertip of this robotic hand, and programmed it to touch the fruit without damage. One day they hope to create control systems to enable a robot to perceive the characteristics of objects and autonomously calculate how much force to apply.

Stanford engineers have developed an electronic glove containing sensors that could one day give robotic hands the sort of dexterity that humans take for granted. In a paper published Nov. 21 in Science Robotics, chemical engineer Zhenan Bao and her team demonstrated that the sensors work well enough to all
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Date:
11/23/2018
Revolutionizing Cybersecurity Through Quantum Research

Drs. Brian Kirby (left), Daniel Jones (center), and Michael Brodsky (right) pose near the Quantum Networking Testbed at the RDECOM Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland, where they are working to provide more secure and reliable communication for warfighters on the battlefield.

Scientists at the RDECOM Research Laboratory, the Army's corporate research laboratory (ARL) have found a novel way to safeguard quantum information during transmission, opening the door for more secure and reliable communication for warfighters on the battlefield. Recent advancements of cutting-edge technologi
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Date:
11/23/2018
Chile is currently undergoing a renewable energy boom. Today, it's the second largest market for renewable energies in Latin America, and in 2016 Chile was the top-scoring renewable energy producer in the Americas and second in the world, beaten only by China. Two decades ago, when this process started, this tra
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Date:
11/21/2018
Explaining the Plummeting Cost of Solar Power
The dramatic drop in the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules, which has fallen by 99 percent over the last four decades, is often touted as a major success story for renewable energy technology. But one question has never been fully addressed: What exactly accounts for that stunning drop? A new analysis
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Date:
11/20/2018
First Professorship in Clinical Neurotechnology

This is Prof. Dr. Surjo R. Soekadar.

Prof. Dr. Surjo Soekadar's research explores how neurotechnologies can be used in the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Having been appointed Germany's first Professor of Clinical Neurotechnology, he now took up his new position at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin. The professorship is s
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Date:
11/20/2018
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Ever watch aquatic animals jump out of the water and wonder how they manage to do it in such a streamlined and graceful way? A group of researchers who specialize in water entry and exit in nature had the same question and are exploring the specific physical conditions required for animals to
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Date:
11/20/2018
DOE Grant for Improving Process to Reduce Nuclear Fuel Waste
An $800,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy will allow Penn State researchers to investigate a new approach for removing rare-earth fission products from the molten salt baths where used nuclear fuel is electro-refined to recycle uranium and minimize nuclear waste. Hojong Kim, assistant professor of materi
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Date:
11/19/2018
Non-Viral Ocular Gene Therapy Using Laser and Nanotechnology

Gold nanoparticles, which act like "nanolenses," concentrate the energy produced by the extremely short pulse of a femtosecond laser to create a nanoscale incision on the surface of the eye's retina cells. This technology, which preserves cell integrity, can be used to effectively inject drugs or genes into specific areas of the eye, offering new hope to people with glaucoma, retinitis or macular degeneration.

In January 2009, the life of engineer Michel Meunier, a professor at Polytechnique Montréal, changed dramatically. Like others, he had observed that the extremely short pulse of a femtosecond laser (0.000000000000001 second) could make nanometre-sized holes appear in silicon when it was covered by gold nanoparticles. Bu
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Date:
11/19/2018
Computational Chemistry for new Semiconductor Technologies

Artist's rendering of organic molecules adsorbing on a silicon surface.

As new methods have become available for understanding and manipulating matter at its most fundamental levels, researchers working in the interdisciplinary field of materials science have been increasingly successful in synthesizing new kinds of materials. Often the goal of researchers in the field is to design ma
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Date:
11/19/2018
Bending Light Without Backscattering Losses

This is a schematic of the new optical waveguide device showing the input and output gratings and silicon waveguide connections.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a device that can direct photons of light around sharp corners with virtually no losses due to backscattering, a key property that will be needed if electronics are ever to be replaced with light-based devices. The result was achieved with phot
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Date:
11/19/2018
Electronic Skin Points the way North

No bulky gloves, no sophisticated camera systems -- just an ultra-thin golden foil on the middle finger. That's all the Dresden researchers need to control a virtual panda with the help of the Earth's magnetic field. When the hand swipes left, towards the magnetic north, the animal also moves in that direction (a). A swipe to the right, makes it go the opposite way (b). When the hand moves towards the middle, the panda moves back slightly towards the left (c).

While birds are able to naturally perceive the Earth's magnetic field and use it for orientation, humans have so far not come close to replicate this feat - at least, until now. Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) in Germany have developed an electronic skin (e-skin) with magnetosensitive cap
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Date:
11/15/2018
Brea, California -- Moxa Inc. and Trend Micro Incorporated announced they have executed a letter of intent relating to the formation of a joint-venture corporation-TXOne Networks-which will focus on the security needs present in the Industrial Internet of Th
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Date:
11/15/2018
Detecting Light in a Different Dimension

Research associate Mingxing Lin (sitting) and materials scientists Dmytro Nykypanchuck (left, standing) and Mircea Cotlet of Brookhaven Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials dramatically improved the light response of electronic devices made out of graphene and an electrically conducting polymer by changing the morphology of the polymer from a thin film to a "nanowire" mesh. An image of this mesh architecture--captured with an atomic force microscope, in which a small mechanical transducer called a cantilever probe scans across a material's surface--is seen on the computer screen.

UPTON, NY--Scientists from the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN)--a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory--have dramatically improved the response of graphene to light through self-assembling wire-like nanostructures that conduct electricity. Th
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Date:
11/14/2018
Quantum Science Turns Social

This is a game interface of the Alice Challenge. Players could manipulate three curves representing two laser beam intensities and the strength of a magnetic field gradient, respectively. The chosen curves were then realized in the laboratory in real-time.

Researchers developed a versatile remote gaming interface that allowed external experts as well as hundreds of citizen scientists all over the world through multiplayer collaboration and in real time to optimize a quantum gas experiment in a lab at Aarhus University. Surprisingly, both teams quickly used the in
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Date:
11/14/2018
When Electric Fields Make Spins Swirl

This study measured skyrmions in an ultra-thin material made of a ferromagnetic layer of strontium ruthenate (SrRuO3), overlaid with a ferroelectric layer of barium titanate (BaTiO3) and grown on a strontium titanate (SrTiO3) substrate. BaTiO3 is ferroelectric, meaning that it has a switchable and permanent electric polarization (), while SrRuO3 is ferromagnetic below 160 Kelvin (-113 Celsius). At the BaTiO3/SrRuO3 interface, the BaTiO3 ferroelectric polarization swirls the spins in SrRuO3, generating skyrmions. If the researchers flip the direction of polarization in BaTiO3, the density of the skyrmions changes.

We are reaching the limits of silicon capabilities in terms of data storage density and speed of memory devices. One of the potential next-generation data storage elements is the magnetic skyrmion. A team at the Center for Correlated Electron Systems, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea), in
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Date:
11/14/2018
Chinese Fusion Tool Pushes Past 100 Million Degrees

The extension of EAST operation scenario in 2018, with the comparion of its energy confinement enhanced factor to the ITER baseline scenario.

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), nicknamed the "Chinese artificial sun", achieved an electron temperature of over 100 million degrees in its core plasma during a four-month experiment this year. That's about seven times more than the interior of the Sun, which is about 15 million deg
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Date:
11/14/2018
Next Step on the Path Towards an Efficient Biofuel Cell

This is Julian Szczesny, Nikola Markovi?, Felipe Conzuelo, Wolfgang Schuhmann and Adrian Ruff (from the left).

Fuel cells that work with the enzyme hydrogenase are, in principle, just as efficient as those that contain the expensive precious metal platinum as a catalyst. However, the enzymes need an aqueous environment, which makes it difficult for the starting material for the reaction - hydrogen - to reach the enzyme-loaded el
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Date:
11/14/2018
An Artificial Intelligence-Guided Ultrasound Study

A Certified Medical Assistant at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital performs an echocardiogram using the Bay Labs' EchoGPS cardiac ultrasound guidance system.

Bay Labs and Northwestern Medicine announced that the first patient has been enrolled in a first-of-its-kind study. The study will evaluate the use of Bay Labs' EchoGPS cardiac ultrasound guidance software to enable certified medical assistants (CMAs) as medical professionals with no prior scanning experience to
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Date:
11/13/2018
Researchers Offer Solution in Fight Against Fake Graphene

These are researchers from the NUS Centre for Advanced 2D Materials examining the quality of graphene samples.

Ever since the isolation of graphene was first achieved in 2004, there has been an explosion in graphene-related research and development, with hundreds of business opportunists producing graphene to capitalise on this rapidly expanding industry. However, a new study by researchers from the National University of
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Date:
11/13/2018
You've flushed something valuable down the toilet today. Organic compounds in household sewage and industrial wastewater are a rich potential source of energy, bioplastics and even proteins for animal feed - but with no efficient extraction method, treatment plants discard them as contaminants. Now researcher
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Date:
11/13/2018
A Two-Atom Quantum Duet

Two magnetically coupled atoms on a surface protect the spin states from the environment. The tip of a scanning tunneling microscope is used to electrically detect and control the atoms' spin states

Researchers at the Center for Quantum Nanoscience (QNS) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) achieved a major breakthrough in shielding the quantum properties of single atoms on a surface. The scientists used the magnetism of single atoms, known as spin, as a basic building block for quantum information pr
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Date:
11/12/2018
Graphene on the way to Superconductivity

The bandstructure in a double layer of graphene was scanned by ARPES at synchrotron light source BESSY II.

Carbon atoms have diverse possibilities to form bonds. Pure carbon can therefore occur in many forms, as diamond, graphite, as nanotubes, football molecules or as a honeycomb-net with hexagonal meshes, graphene. This exotic, strictly two-dimensional material conducts electricity excellently, but is not a superconductor. Bu
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Date:
11/12/2018
An Opportunity for Energy Transition

Meeting to incorporate the renewable energy cooperative Som Energia.

The transition from fossil to renewable energy sources is a necessary condition for the sustainability of human societies. There are movements in societies seeking to make this transition "not merely technological but also designed to exploit the capacity for social transformation they offer, given the po
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Date:
11/12/2018
PSMA Energy Mgmt. Technical Committee Leadership Opportunity

Click image to enlarge

PSMA Energy Management Technical Committee Leadership Opportunity

The PSMA Board of Directors is seeking one or more volunteers interested in providing leadership for the Energy Management Technical Committee. The membership in all the PSMA Technical Committees is comprised of individual volunteers from both Member and non-Member Companies who have a technical, business or pers
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Date:
11/10/2018
CITE 2019 will be held in Shenzhen on April 2019

Click on image to enlarge

CITE 2019 Press Conference

On November 8, 2018, the Organizing Committee of the 7th China Electronic Information Exposition (hereinafter referred to as "CITE 2019") held a press conference in Beijing, announcing that the 7th China Electronic Information Exposition will be held in Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center from Ap
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Date:
11/08/2018
Batteryless Smart Devices Closer to Reality

An RFID tag is modified by cutting out a small part its antenna (silver ribbon) and placing a small light-sensing phototransistor or temperature-responsive resistor (thermistor) on it.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have taken a huge step towards making smart devices that do not use batteries or require charging. These battery-free objects, which feature an IP address for internet connectivity, are known as Internet of Things (IoT) devices. If an IoT device can operate without a
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Date:
11/08/2018
Autonomous Vehicles Could Shape the Future of Urban Tourism
In the first study of its kind, published in the Annals of Tourism Research, academics from the University of Surrey and the University of Oxford have examined how Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) may have a substantial impact on the future of urban tourism. When we think of automated vehicles it seems to be a topi
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Date:
11/08/2018
A Burst of 'Synchronous' Light

Superlattices under the microscope (white light illumination). This sandwich structures of nanocrystals act as quantum light source.

Some materials spontaneously emit light if they are excited by an external source, for instance a laser. This phenomenon is known as fluorescence. However, in several gases and quantum systems a much stronger emission of light can occur, when the emitters within an ensemble spontaneously synchronize their quantum me
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Date:
11/08/2018
Filtering Liquids With Liquids Saves Electricity
Filtering and treating water, both for human consumption and to clean industrial and municipal wastewater, accounts for about 13% of all electricity consumed in the US every year and releases about 290 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually - roughly equivalent to the combined weight of every huma
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Date:
11/07/2018
Artificial Sensor Mimics Human Sense of Touch
A team of researchers have developed an artificial tactile sensor that mimics the ability of human skin to detect surface information, such as shapes, patterns and structures. This may be one step closer to making electronic devices and robots that can perceive sensations such as roughness and smoothness. "Mimicking the human
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Date:
11/07/2018
A Bionic Mushroom That Generates Electricity

An electrode network (branched pattern) and cyanobacteria (spiral pattern) were 3D printed on a mushroom to produce bio-electricity.

In the quest to replace fossil fuels, scientists are always on the lookout for alternative, environmentally friendly sources of energy. But who could have imagined a bionic mushroom that produces electricity? It sounds like something straight out of Alice in Wonderland, but researchers have now generated mushrooms
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Date:
11/07/2018
A Path Forward for Better use of Landfill gas as Energy

Schematic of the experimental setup of siloxane removal from a carrier gas by application of dielectric barrier discharge plasma

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Methane gas released from landfills has long been a topic of interest for alternative energy. One issue, however, is that landfill gases contain numerous contaminants, such as volatile methyl siloxanes, whose silica deposits put extra wear and tear on the natural gas generators when they co
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Date:
11/06/2018
Children's Sleep not Significantly Affected by Screen Time
Screen-time has little impact on the quality of children's sleep, according to new Oxford University research. Screens are now a fixture of modern childhood. And as young people spend an increasing amount of time on electronic devices, the effects of these digital activities has become a prevalent concern am
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Date:
11/05/2018
Great Honor for Research on Vehicle Emissions

Hazardous chemicals in exhaust gas

Gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines are sold in growing numbers worldwide. In Europe around 50 million GDI cars are expected to be on the road by 2020. The technology owes its success to a significant increase in engine power, even in small engines. This year's winner of the Swiss Aerosol Award, Maria Muñoz fro
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Date:
11/05/2018
Inside job: A new Technique to Cool a Fusion Reactor

This is visible imaging of (a) shell pellet hitting low-field-side boundary of plasma, (b) continuing through plasma toward core, (c) ablating and releasing boron dust in core. (d) Expanded view of (c), highlighting shell and dust. (e) Plasma cross-section with red dot indicating pellet location at time of dust release in (c). Injection velocity ? 230 m/s.

PORTLAND, Ore.-- Fusion offers the potential of near limitless energy by heating a gas trapped in a magnetic field to incredibly high temperatures where atoms are so energetic that they fuse together when they collide. But if that hot gas, called a plasma, breaks free from the magnetic field, it must be safely pu
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Date:
11/05/2018
Enhanced Soldier Systems Through Quantum Research

Dr. Elizabeth Goldschmidt, U.S. Army Research Laboratory

Researchers at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the Joint Quantum Institute have created a pristine quantum light source that has the potential to lead to more secure communications and enhanced sensing capabilities for Soldiers. ARL's Dr. Elizabeth Goldschmidt and JQI's Dr. Sunil Mittal and Prof. Moham
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Date:
11/02/2018
Improving Additive Manufacturing for Space Missions

A laser interacts with Inconel powder inside the EOS DMLS M290 at the Swanson School's ANSYS Additive Manufacturing Research Lab.

PITTSBURGH ... Additive manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing, presents a game-changing opportunity for the space industry to produce complex components with greater efficiency at a lower cost. However, the trial-and-error method currently used to create such parts with limited materials is not suited for components th
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Date:
11/02/2018
Atomic Path From Insulator to Metal Messier Than Thought

A simulation shows how atoms in vanadium dioxide shift during the brief time of an ultrafast laser pulse.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers have peeked behind the curtain of the ultrafast phase transition of vanadium dioxide and found its atomic theatrics are much more complicated than they thought. It's a material that has fascinated scientists for decades for its ability to shift from being an electrical insulator to a c
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Date:
11/02/2018
A team of scientists from Siberian Federal University (SibFU) together with foreign colleagues described the structural and physical properties of a group of two-dimensional materials based on polycyclic molecules called circulenes. The possibility of flexible design and variable properties of these materials ma
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Date:
11/02/2018
TI’s TPS650861 Multi-Rail PMICs, Now Shipping at Mouser
The TPS650861 configurable power management integrated circuit (PMIC) offers flexible power solutions for multiprocessor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs) and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The TI TPS650861 PMIC, available from Mouser Electronics, features three variable-output voltage synchronous step-down
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Date:
11/01/2018
COSEL announces new R&D Innovation center in Toyama Japan
In a brand new, purpose built building with a floor space of 8,200 square meters, 250 R&D employees will have access to the most advanced equipment and technologies to design high quality power solutions with a reduced time-to-market. Looking towards future requirements and in order to respond rapidly to ma
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Date:
11/01/2018
Atom-Thick Platforms for Energy and Computing Research
Chestnut Hill, Mass. -- Two-dimensional magnetism has long intrigued and motivated researchers for its potential to unleash new states of matter and utility in nano-devices. In part the excitement is driven by predictions that the magnetic moments of electrons - known as "spins" - would no longer
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Date:
11/01/2018
High-Tech Film Blocks Electromagnetic Interference
BROOKLYN, New York - Electromagnetic interference (EMI), which can harm smartphones, tablets, chips, drones, wearables, and even aircraft and human health, is increasing with the explosive proliferation of devices that generate it. The market for EM-blocking solutions, which employ conductive or magnetic materials, is
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Date:
11/01/2018
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