Lifeboat Foundation

Technology is increasingly moving towards miniaturization and energy efficiency. This also applies to electronic chips. Light, and optics more broadly, are functional in making compact and portable chips. Researchers from the Photonic Systems Laboratory, headed by Professor Camille Brès, have successfully applied a novel principle for introducing second-order optical nonlinearity into silicon nitride chips. A first reported in the journal Nature Photonics.

Different colors of light

“When using a green laser pointer for example, the laser itself is not green because these are particularly difficult to manufacture. So we change the frequency of an existing laser. It emits at a frequency which is half that of green, then we double it by using nonlinearity in a crystal which gives us green. Our study consists of integrating this functionality but on chips that can be manufactured with standard techniques developed for electronics (CMOS). Thanks to this, we will be able to efficiently generate different colors of light on a chip,” explains Camille Brès. The demonstrated approach had never been implemented before. Current photonic chips compatible with CMOS processes use standard photonic materials, such as silicon, which do not possess second-order nonlinearity and therefore are not inherently capable of transforming light in this way. “This turns out to be a barrier to the advancement of technology,” adds the professor.

Formlabs, one of the few companies to turn 3D printing into a useful, real-world tool, is here at CES to show off two new printers. The Form 3+ and 3B+ are updates to the models it launched in 2019, with these units described as its “fastest 3D printers to date.”

New for 2022 include higher-intensity lasers, new material settings and faster, more durable hardware, with a promise of 40 percent faster prints. It also comes with the Build Platform 2, an updated deck for manufacturing that makes it easier to remove prints when they’re done.

At the same time, the company is showing off ESD Resin, enabling you to build components that dissipate electrostatic discharges. This should, Formlabs hopes, open up new opportunities for prints that can be used inside the electronics industry and other high-tech operations.

Astronomers were first alerted to the star’s unusual activity 130 days before it went supernova. Bright radiation was detected in the summer of 2020 by the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS telescope on Maui’s Haleakalā.

Then, in the fall of that year, the researchers witnessed a supernova in the same spot.

They observed it using the W.M. Keck Observatory’s Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on Maunakea, Hawai’i, and named the supernova 2020tlf. Their observations revealed that there was material around the star when it exploded — the bright gas that the star violently kicked away from itself over the summer.

The process took eight days to complete.

Five thin-as-human-hair plastic sheets coated with reflective material that will protect the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have now been successfully deployed, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) said in its press release.

Ever since its launch on Christmas Day, space enthusiasts were eager to know if the sunshield on the JWST that is designed to protect the sensitive instruments on board would be deployed to perfection. To rightfully take the place of the mighty Hubble, the JWST has to overcome its 344 potential points of failure, and deploying the sunshield is a major achievement.

Invisibility devices may soon no longer be the stuff of science fiction. A new study published in the De Gruyter journal Nanophotonics by lead authors Huanyang Chen at Xiamen University, China, and Qiaoliang Bao, suggests the use of the material Molybdenum Trioxide (a-MoO3) to replace expensive and difficult to produce metamaterials in the emerging technology of novel optical devices.

The idea of an invisibility cloak may sound more like magic than science, but researchers are currently hard at work producing devices that can scatter and bend light in such a way that it creates the effect of invisibility.

Thus far these devices have relied on metamaterials – a material that has been specially engineered to possess novel properties not found in naturally occurring substances or in the individual particles of that material – but the study by Chen and co-authors suggests the use of a-MoO3 to create these invisibility devices.

Circa 2020

Flash heating of carbon-rich wastes creates graphene, which has many commercial uses.

Continue reading “Converting trash to valuable graphene in a flash” »

The “world’s first” nailable solar shingle, the Timberline Solar Energy Shingle, is being launched today by GAF Energy, the sister company of GAF, the largest roofing and waterproofing company in North America.

The Energy Shingle is combined with other standard roofing components to create the “Timberline Solar” roof system. GAF Energy claims to have the only product to integrate solar technology into existing roofing processes and materials, resulting in a full-fledged solar roof.

GAF Energy claims its Energy Shingles have comparable weatherproof performance to GAF’s roofing shingle, the Timberline HD/HDZ.

A Virginia family received the keys to their new 3D-printed home just in time for Christmas. The home is Habitat for Humanity’s first 3D-printed home in the nation, according to a Habitat news release. The 1,200-square-foot home has three bedrooms, two full baths and was built from concrete.

A large, unconventional anomalous Hall resistance in a new magnetic semiconductor in the absence of large-scale magnetic ordering has been demonstrated by Tokyo Tech materials scientists, validating a recent theoretical prediction. Their findings provide new insights into the anomalous Hall effect.

An international scientific group with outstanding Valencian participation has managed to measure for the first time oscillations in the brightness of a magnetar during its most violent moments. In just a 10th of a second, the magnetar released energy equivalent to that produced by the sun in 100,000 years. The observation was carried out without human intervention, thanks to an artificial intelligence system developed at the Image Processing Laboratory (IPL) of the University of Valencia.