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Category: computing – Page 6

Catching light in air: Programmable Mie voids boost light matter interaction

Atomically thin semiconductors such as tungsten disulfide (WS2) are promising materials for future photonic technologies. Despite being only a single layer of atoms thick, they host tightly bound excitons—pairs of electrons and holes that interact strongly with light—and can efficiently generate new colors of light through nonlinear optical processes such as second-harmonic generation.

These properties make them attractive for quantum optics, sensing, and on-chip light sources. At the same time, their extreme thinness imposes a basic limitation: There is very little material for light to interact with. As a result, emission and frequency conversion are often weak unless the surrounding photonic environment is carefully engineered.

A study published in Advanced Photonics introduces a new way to address this challenge by reshaping not the two-dimensional material itself, but the space beneath it. The researchers demonstrate a hybrid platform in which a monolayer of WS2 is placed on top of nanoscale air cavities, known as Mie voids, carved into a high-index crystal of bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3). The work shows that these voids can strongly enhance light emission and nonlinear optical signals, while also allowing direct visualization of localized optical modes.

A rewritable DNA hard drive may help solve the growing data storage crisis

Around the world, scientists are exploring an unexpected solution to the growing data crisis: storing digital information in synthetic DNA. The idea is simple but powerful—DNA is one of the most compact, durable information systems on Earth. But one issue has held the field back. Once data is written into DNA, it can’t be changed.

Now, researchers at the University of Missouri are helping to solve that problem by transforming DNA from a one-time medium into a rewritable digital hard drive. Their research is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

“DNA is incredible—it stores life’s blueprint in a tiny, stable package,” said Li-Qun “Andrew” Gu, a professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at Mizzou’s College of Engineering. “We wanted to see if we could store and rewrite information at the molecular level faster, simpler and more efficiently than ever before.”

Heavier hydrogen makes silicon T centers shine brighter for quantum networks

Quantum technologies, computers or other devices that operate leveraging quantum mechanical effects, rely on the precise control of light and matter. Over the past decades, quantum physicists and material scientists have been trying to identify systems that can reliably generate photons (i.e., light particles) and could thus be used to create quantum technologies.

One approach for generating photons relies on silicon color centers, such as the emerging T center. Color centers are defects or irregularities in the crystal structure of silicon characterized by a different arrangement of atoms.

The T center and other silicon color centers can emit light in the wavelength band that is already used by fiber-optic internet cables, which is desirable for the development of quantum networks and quantum communication systems.

Scientists unveil universal aging mechanism in glassy materials

“Glass” has a unique and distinct meaning in physics—one that refers not just to the transparent material we associate with window glass. Instead, it refers to any system that looks solid but is not in true equilibrium and continues to change extremely slowly over time. Examples include window glass, plastics, metallic glasses, spin glasses (i.e., magnetic systems), and even some biological and computational systems.

When a liquid is cooled very quickly—a process called quenching—it doesn’t have time to organize into a crystal but becomes stuck in a disordered state far from equilibrium. Its properties—like stiffness and structure—slowly evolve through a process called “aging.”

Now, a research team from the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed a new theoretical framework for understanding the universal aging behavior of glassy materials. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

Florida woman imprisoned for massive Microsoft license fraud scheme

A Florida woman was sentenced to 22 months in prison for running a massive years-long scheme to traffic thousands of stolen Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (COA) labels.

52-year-old Heidi Richards (also known as Heidi Hastings, Heidi Shaffer, and Heidi Williams), who operated an e-commerce business called Trinity Software Distribution, was also ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.

COA labels are small stickers that authenticate software and carry unique product key codes used to activate products distributed on physical media, such as Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Office productivity suite.

These biological computers actually use neurons

In this video we look into one of the developing areas of computing: wetware. Most specifically neuromorphic computing, a science which uses actual neurons on chips.

We talk to Cortical labs, the company that developed the pong-playing dish brain, and professor Thomas Hartung to understand what the benefits of this technology are.

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Replacing Silicon With Shape Shifting Molecules

As computing systems push beyond silicon limits, researchers seek materials that can do more than simply store and process data. Molecular electronics once promised ultra compact devices, but real world molecular behaviour proved unpredictable. In parallel, neuromorphic computing has aimed to build hardware that can learn and adapt like the brain. Yet most existing platforms rely on rigid materials that only imitate learning through complex circuitry.

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Transient Pauli Blocking for Broadband Ultrafast Optical Switching

Researchers demonstrate this novel mechanism in degenerate InN thin films, advancing photonic technology.

The transient Pauli blocking effect is a promising way to achieve ultrafast optical switching in semiconductors. Recently, a research team from Japan successfully demonstrated broadband ultrafast optical switching in InN thin films by leveraging pump-probe transient transmittance measurements with multicolor probe lasers. They also developed a theoretical model to explain the underlying mechanism. These findings might pave the way for next-generation ultrafast optical modulators, shutters, and photonic devices in optical computing or optical communication.

Reconfigurable single-walled carbon nanotube ferroelectric field-effect transistors

Rhee et al. report scalable reconfigurable carbon nanotube transistors with a ferroelectric aluminum scandium nitride gate dielectric. They show balanced ambipolar currents, strong memory retention, and enable ternary content-addressable memory with fewer devices than traditional silicon circuits.

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