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Category: engineering

Why ultrashort laser pulses could make low-power electron sources far more practical

A new theoretical study finds shorter laser pulses achieve higher quantum efficiency for photoemission from a solid surface without increasing power or intensity. Using light to knock electrons loose from a surface—known as photoemission—may soon be achievable more easily in smaller labs with smaller lasers. Shortening the length of a laser pulse can increase the emitted electrons by several orders of magnitude without increasing the laser intensity or power, according to a University of Michigan Engineering study.

The study is published in Physical Review Research.

Efficient, low-power photoemission could make particle acceleration and high-resolution imaging techniques to visualize cells and atoms more accessible. It could also help researchers develop lightwave electronics, which use light to move charge carriers, for ultrafast computing.

Quantum model explains how single electrons cause damage inside silicon chips

Researchers in the UC Santa Barbara Materials Department have uncovered the elusive quantum mechanism by which energetic electrons break chemical bonds inside microelectronic devices—a detrimental process that slowly degrades performance over time. The discovery, published as an Editors’ Suggestion in Physical Review B, explains decades-old experimental puzzles and moves scientists closer to engineering more reliable devices.

Transparent cooling film cuts car cabin temperature by 6.1°C without electricity

A transparent radiative cooling film technology that dissipates heat directly to the outside without consuming electricity has been developed to reduce vehicle overheating during summer. The technology was validated through real-vehicle experiments conducted under diverse conditions—including different countries, seasons, and both parking and driving scenarios—and demonstrated the ability to lower cabin temperatures by up to 6.1°C and reduce cooling energy consumption by more than 20%.

Seoul National University College of Engineering announced that a research team led by Prof. Seung Hwan Ko (Department of Mechanical Engineering, SNU), in collaboration with Prof. Gang Chen at MIT and research teams from Hyundai Motor Company and Kia (Materials Research & Engineering Center and Thermal Energy Total Development Group), has designed and fabricated a large-area Scalable Transparent Radiative Cooling (STRC) film applicable to vehicle windows. Through real-vehicle evaluations conducted under various climatic and driving conditions, the team demonstrated both energy-saving and carbon reduction effects.

This research was published online on February 4 in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Platinum-free catalyst splits hydrogen from water for energy, running 1,000 hours at industry standards

Using a renewable energy source has multiple benefits, including reducing harmful emissions and dependence on fossil fuels while increasing efficiency. But many renewable energy sources have a higher cost than fossil fuels due to the materials needed to make them usable, such as platinum group metals (PGMs), and the high cost of storage.

A team of researchers led by Gang Wu, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis is working to change that. The team is creating a heterostructure catalyst for an anion-exchange membrane water electrolyzer (AEMWE) that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity from renewable sources. They created the catalyst with two phosphides that gave them an efficient method to extract hydrogen, a valuable yet low-cost source of zero-emissions fuel. The study is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Wu’s team has been looking for alternatives to catalysts that use expensive platinum group metals. In this research, their idea began with using sunlight, wind or water to create electricity that they could then use to separate hydrogen from water.

Laser method unlocks 3,000-Kelvin thin-film synthesis for quantum materials

Thin films might not come up in conversation every day, but they are all around us. Take the metallic plastic films of chip bags, for example, or the anti-reflective coatings on eyeglasses. Even the coatings on pills that make them easier to swallow are thin films. Depositing extremely thin layers of materials in a consistent and uniform way is also crucial to the production of semiconductors, which are the foundation of modern electronics.

Not all materials can be easily deposited in such thin layers, such as materials with very high melting points. Now, Caltech researchers led by Austin Minnich, professor of mechanical engineering and applied physics, and deputy chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, have demonstrated a laser-based method for generating thin films of materials, such as niobium. The work could directly impact superconducting electronics used in quantum computers.

The team recently described the work in a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

Spatiotemporal light pulses could secure optical communication by masking data

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have developed a new approach to secure optical communication that hides information in the physical structure of light, making it difficult for unauthorized parties to intercept or decode. The study addresses a growing challenge: advances in quantum computing are expected to weaken many of today’s encryption methods. While most security solutions rely on complex mathematical algorithms, this research adds protection earlier in the process—during the transmission of the signal itself.

The research was led by Dr. Judith Kupferman and Prof. Shlomi Arnon from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The findings were published in Optical and Quantum Electronics.

The researchers propose a communication method based on specially shaped light pulses, known as spatiotemporal optical vortices. These light beams are designed so that their key features are not visible in standard measurements.

Implantable islet cells could control diabetes without insulin injections

Most diabetes patients must carefully monitor their blood sugar levels and inject insulin multiple times per day, to help keep their blood sugar from getting too high. As a possible alternative to those injections, MIT researchers are developing an implantable device that contains insulin-producing cells. The device encapsulates the cells, protecting them from immune rejection, and it also carries an onboard oxygen generator to keep the cells healthy.

This device, the researchers hope, could offer a way to achieve long-term control of type 1 diabetes. In a new study, they showed that these encapsulated pancreatic islet cells could survive in the body for at least 90 days. In mice that received the implants, the cells remained functional and produced enough insulin to control the animals’ blood sugar levels.

“Islet cell therapy can be a transformative treatment for patients. However, current methods also require immune suppression, which for some people can be really debilitating,” says Daniel Anderson, a professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. “Our goal is to find a way to give patients the benefit of cell therapy without the need for immune suppression.”

Low-frequency wireless sensor tracks artery stiffening in real time with less interference

Wireless sensors used in wearable smart devices and medical equipment must be capable of detecting minute changes while maintaining high operational stability. However, existing technologies often utilize excessively high frequencies, leading to electromagnetic interference (EMI) or potential health risks to the human body. To address these fundamental issues, a Korean research team has developed a low-frequency-based wireless sensor technology.

A joint research team, led by Professor Seungyoung Ahn from the KAIST Cho Chun Shik Graduate School of Mobility and Professor Do Hwan Kim from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Hanyang University, has developed the “WiLECS” (Wireless Ionic-Electronic Coupling System), a low-frequency wireless electrochemical sensing platform that combines ion-based materials with wireless power transfer technology. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Conventional wireless sensors suffer from low capacitance (the ability to store electrical charge), requiring high frequencies in the megahertz (MHz) range to compensate. However, these high-frequency methods can cause tissue heating or signal instability, limiting their practical application in clinical medical settings.

Unlocking unusual superconductivity in a lightweight element

Superconductors—materials that can conduct electricity without energy loss—are crucial for next-generation high-efficiency, ultrafast electronics. However, most superconductors share a critical limitation: they lose their superconducting properties in strong magnetic fields. In contrast, a class of superconductors containing heavy elements can sustain an unusual type of superconductivity in magnetic fields beyond the conventional limit. Now, new research has demonstrated that this limitation can be overcome by sandwiching atomically thin films of a lightweight element called gallium between two other materials to engineer quantum interactions at the interfaces between the layers.

A paper describing the research, led by an interdisciplinary team at Penn State’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) for Nanoscale Science, was published in the journal Nature Materials. The team showed that when just three atomic layers of gallium are layered between graphene and a silicon carbide substrate, the resulting structure maintains superconductivity in magnetic fields that are parallel to the surface of the material, or in-plane, well above the expected limit.

“This discovery highlights the strength of collaborative, cross-disciplinary research fostered by the Penn State MRSEC,” said Cui-Zu Chang, professor of physics at Penn State Eberly College of Science and leader of the research team. “By bringing together expertise in materials synthesis, quantum transport and theoretical modeling, we were able to uncover a phenomenon that would have been difficult to realize within a single research group.”

Universal surface-growth law confirmed in two dimensions after 40 years

Crystals, bacterial colonies, flame fronts: the growth of surfaces was first described in the 1980s by the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation. Since then, it has been regarded as a fundamental model in physics, with implications for mathematics, biology, and computer science.

Now—40 years later—a Würzburg-based research team from the Cluster of Excellence ctd.qmat has achieved the first experimental demonstration of KPZ behavior on 2D surfaces in space and time.

This was made possible by sophisticated materials engineering and a bold experimental approach: researchers injected polaritons—hybrid particles composed of light and matter—into the material. The results have been published in Science.

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