Black phosphorus nanoribbons (BPNRs), thin and narrow ribbon-like strips of black phosphorus, are known to exhibit highly advantageous electronic properties, including a tunable bandgap. This essentially means that the energy difference between the region where electrons are bound together (i.e., valence band) and that where electrons move freely (i.e., conduction band) can be easily controlled by adjusting the width of the nanoribbons.
A tunable bandgap is essential for the development of transistors, the components that control the flow of electrical current through electronic devices.
While several past studies have highlighted the promise of BPNRs for the development of electronics, strategies that could enable their reliable fabrication on a large scale are still lacking.
High Resolution Neutron Spectrometer (HRNS) is one of the essential plasma diagnostics of ITER, whose operational role is the neutronic measurement of the n t/nd ratio in a plasma core. Coexisting with the other ITER diagnostics makes it a powerful tool for efficient and precise plasma diagnostics. The main goal of this work is to present the operating principles and key challenges associated with the High Resolution Neutron Spectrometer in ITER, with a particular focus on the Thin-Foil Proton Recoil (TPR) Spectrometer. The complexity of ITER tokamak brings with it many variables that had not been considered of primary importance until now, such as the magnetic field or high temperature in the detector region.
Researchers have used the centuries-old idea of pinhole imaging to create a high-performance mid-infrared imaging system without lenses. The new camera can capture extremely clear pictures over a large range of distances and in low light, making it useful for situations that are challenging for traditional cameras.
“Many useful signals are in the mid-infrared, such as heat and molecular fingerprints, but cameras working at these wavelengths are often noisy, expensive or require cooling,” said research team leader Heping Zeng from East China Normal University. “Moreover, traditional lens-based setups have a limited depth of field and need careful design to minimize optical distortions. We developed a high-sensitivity, lens-free approach that delivers a much larger depth of field and field of view than other systems.”
Writing in Optica, the researchers describe how they use light to form a tiny “optical pinhole” inside a nonlinear crystal, which also turns the infrared image into a visible one. Using this setup, they acquired clear mid-infrared images with a depth of field of over 35 cm and a field of view of more than 6 cm. They were also able to use the system to acquire 3D images.
Whether you’re an artist, advertising specialist, or just looking to spruce up your home, turning everyday objects into dynamic displays is a great way to make them more visually engaging. For example, you could turn a kids’ book into a handheld cartoon of sorts, making the reading experience more immersive and memorable for a child.
But now, thanks to MIT researchers, it’s also possible to make dynamic displays without using electronics, using barrier-grid animations (or scanimations), which use printed materials instead. This visual trick involves sliding a patterned sheet across an image to create the illusion of a moving image.
The secret of barrier-grid animations lies in its name: An overlay called a barrier (or grid) often resembling a picket fence moves across, rotates around, or tilts toward an image to reveal frames in an animated sequence. That underlying picture is a combination of each still, sliced and interwoven to present a different snapshot depending on the overlay’s position.
A NIMS research team has developed a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) featuring a tunnel barrier made of a high-entropy oxide composed of multiple metallic elements. This MTJ simultaneously demonstrated stronger perpendicular magnetization, a higher tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) ratio (i.e., the relative change in electrical resistance when the magnetization directions of the two ferromagnetic layers switch between parallel and antiparallel alignments) and lower electrical resistance.
These properties may contribute to the development of smaller, higher-capacity and higher-performance hard disk drives (HDDs) and magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM).
This research is published in Materials Today.
A research team has developed a direct optical lithography (DOL) technology that patterns quantum dots (QDs) at ultra-high resolution using only light, without photoresist. Through this, they also provided guidelines for selecting cross-linkers essential for fabricating high-performance QLEDs. This achievement is regarded as a core fundamental technology that can be applied to a wide range of optoelectronic devices, including micro-QLEDs, ultra-high-resolution displays, transparent electronic devices, and next-generation image sensors.
It doesn’t take an expert photographer to know that the steadier the camera, the sharper the shot. But that conventional wisdom isn’t always true, according to new research led by Brown University engineers.
The researchers showed that with the help of a clever algorithm, a camera in motion can produce higher-resolution images than a camera held completely still. The new image processing technique could enable gigapixel-quality images from run-of-the-mill camera hardware, as well as sharper imaging for scientific or archival photography.
“We all know that when you shake a camera, you get a blurry picture,” said Pedro Felzenszwalb, a professor of engineering and computer science at Brown. “But what we show is that an image captured by a moving camera actually contains additional information that we can use to increase image resolution.”
