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The monolithic 3D integration of 2D molybdenum disulfide memtransistors and graphene chemitransistors can be used to create near-sensor computing chips with high interconnect density and a vertical separation between tiers of less than 50 nm.

Bioactive glasses, a filling material which can bond to tissue and improve the strength of bones and teeth, has been combined with gallium to create a potential treatment for bone cancer.

Tests in labs have found that bioactive glasses doped with the metal have a 99 percent success rate of eliminating cancerous cells and can even regenerate diseased bones.

The research was conducted by a team of Aston University scientists led by Professor Richard Martin who is based in its College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

This has never been seen before.

Physicists showed that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, revealing observational evidence of negative time.

In 2018, a discovery in materials science sent shock waves throughout the community. A team showed that stacking two layers of graphene at a precise magic angle turned it into a superconductor, says Ritesh Agarwal of the University of Pennsylvania. This sparked the field of twistronics, revealing that twisting layered materials could unlock extraordinary material properties.

Building on this concept, Agarwal, Penn theoretical physicist Eugene Mele, and collaborators have taken twistronics into new territory. In a study published in Nature (“Opto-twistronic Hall effect in a three-dimensional spiral lattice”), they investigated spirally stacked tungsten disulfide (WS 2) crystals and discovered that, by twisting these layers, light could be used to manipulate electrons. The result is analogous to the Coriolis force, which curves the paths of objects in a rotating frame, like how wind and ocean currents behave on Earth.

“What we discovered is that by simply twisting the material, we could control how electrons move,” says Agarwal, Srinivasa Ramanujan Distinguished Scholar in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. This phenomenon was particularly evident when the team shined circularly polarized light on WS 2 spirals, causing electrons to deflect in different directions based on the material’s internal twist.

New software simulates complex wave scattering for metamaterial design. Could invisibility cloaks become a reality? New research brings this science fiction concept a step closer, with a breakthrough software package that simulates how waves interact with complex materials.

A new software package developed by researchers at Macquarie University can accurately model the way waves — sound, water or light — are scattered when they meet complex configurations of particles.

This will vastly improve the ability to rapidly design metamaterials — exciting artificial materials used to amplify, block or deflect waves.

A groundbreaking study by researchers from the University of Toronto, has revealed a phenomenon where photons were seen exiting a material before they entered it. This observation, marking the first evidence of negative time, was made during an experiment involving atomic excitation. The team has been investigating this light-matter interaction for seven years.

In 2018, a discovery in materials science sent shock waves throughout the community. A team showed that stacking two layers of graphene—a honeycomb-like layer of carbon extracted from graphite—at a precise “magic angle” turned it into a superconductor, says Ritesh Agarwal of the University of Pennsylvania.

A team of engineers and materials scientists at LG Chem, Korea’s largest chemical company, has developed a material that they claim could greatly reduce the risk of thermal runaway and resulting fires in batteries. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group describes how they developed the material and how well it has worked during testing.

Over the past several years, consumers have witnessed or have heard about batteries in smartphones or cars catching on fire. These fires, it has been found, result from thermal runaway, which is where the anode and cathode inside a battery come too close together, or worse, actually touch.

The result is a short, which generates heat, and results soon thereafter in a fire. In this new effort, the team at LG has developed a thin material that, when placed between the cathode and collector, prevents thermal runaway.