Innovative insulating materials made of shape memory polymers are developed and tested by the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research IAP, for Chemical Technology ICT and for Building Physics IBP within the Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Programmable Materials CPM. The high-tech foams are to be used as functional materials, for example in the field of construction. The air conditioning of enclosed work, recreational and living spaces is of great social importance in industrialized countries. On average, people spend more than…

Possible pathway to fast-switching, ultra-low energy electronics based on 2D materials. Moore’s law is an empirical suggestion describing that the number of transistors doubles every few years in integrated circuits (ICs). However, Moore’s law has started to fail as transistors are now so small that the current silicon-based technologies are unable to offer further opportunities for shrinking. One possibility of overcoming Moore’s law is to resort to two-dimensional semiconductors. These two-dimensional materials are so thin that they can allow the…

Field-effect transistors are key components of sensors, electrical circuits, or data storage devices. The transistors used to date have been mainly based on inorganic semiconductors such as silicon. More recently, organic materials have emerged, with semiconducting properties that have allowed the fabrication of organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). The use of organic components as the device active layer brings promising features such as easy processing and low cost. In addition to their device functionalities, OFETs have also developed into an important…

A good ten years ago, research teams discovered the class of semi-organic halide perovskites, which are now making a rapid career as new materials for solar cells. The mixed organic-inorganic semiconductors achieved efficiencies of over 25 percent within a few years. They take their name from their basic structure, which is very similar to that of the mineral perovskite (CaTiO3), but contains other components: halide anions, lead cations and organic molecular cations. In the case of the most important compound…

If 80,000 of them were piled on top of each other, the stack would only be as high as a flat sheet of paper. Scientists from the Center for Nanointegration (CENIDE) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) and cooperation partners have developed a layer of tungsten disulfide that is just as thin as three atomic layers – and it is luminous, flexible and also withstands external influences. Several square centimeters of this layer have already been embedded in structural components,…

4 Million € for European Training Network They can emit, detect, modulate and store light to receive and process high-frequency terahertz radiation – in theory. So far, only individual components of optical chips have been developed; there still remain some challenges before complete circuits based on photons will be available. These challenges are now being met by the European Training Network TERAOPTICS, coordinated by engineers from the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE). The EU provides four million euros in funding for…

Manufacturing safer, more powerful batteries that use geopolitically stable resources requires solid electrolytes and replacing lithium with sodium. A chemical solution is now being offered to battery developers. The lithium batteries that power our electronic devices and electric vehicles have a number of drawbacks. The electrolyte – the medium that enables electrons and positive charges to move between the electrodes – is a flammable liquid. What’s more, the lithium they’re made of is a limited resource that is the focus…

Dyeing process gives textiles electronic properties Whether in fitness, medicine or in the entertainment industry, IT devices worn on the body, such as smart watches, are becoming increasingly popular. Such wearables benefit from the input device fitting as naturally as possible to the body – for example as electro-sensitive fabrics, so-called e-textiles. Computer scientists at Saarland University show how these special textiles can be produced in a comparatively easy way, thus opening up new use cases. “Our goal was to…

Martensitic chromium steels are one of the steel grades with a future, steels that are ideal for automotive applications since they are both lightweight and corrosion resistant. These materials are particularly in demand for the design of collision-safe battery boxes for electric cars. For this reason, the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen uses these sophisticated components as demonstration components for laser welding and heat treatment. As part of the AiF research project FAAM, supported by FOSTA –…

New method generates precisely controlled graphene microbubbles with perfectly spherical curvature for lenses. Tiny bubbles can solve large problems. Microbubbles–around 1-50 micrometers in diameter–have widespread applications. They’re used for drug delivery, membrane cleaning, biofilm control, and water treatment. They’ve been applied as actuators in lab-on-a-chip devices for microfluidic mixing, ink-jet printing, and logic circuitry, and in photonics lithography and optical resonators. And they’ve contributed remarkably to biomedical imaging and applications like DNA trapping and manipulation. Given the broad range of…

Although deep learning algorithms are righteously handled as one of the key aspects of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI), the conclusions of the methods do not offer a high degree of security. Many areas with potential for AI application bear too many risks to be controlled by systems that are not verifiable. The two Bremen-based research departments of the DFKI are working on a new method for system control, combining the advantages of fast self-learning and reliable verification via symbolical models….

Researchers from Osaka University mechanically reprocess silk into a biologically compatible component of bioinks that improves the structural fidelity of 3D-printed hydrogels containing cells for use in drug development and regrowing lost or damaged body. How do you test, in early-stage research, whether a potential pharmaceutical effectively targets a human tumor, organ, or some other part of the body? How do you grow a new hand or some other body part? Researchers are in the early stages of using 3D…

The precisely controlled photon source, made from an atomically thin semiconducting material, could aid the development of advanced quantum communication. Secure telecommunications networks and rapid information processing make much of modern life possible. To provide more secure, faster, and higher-performance information sharing than is currently possible, scientists and engineers are designing next-generation devices that harness the rules of quantum physics. Those designs rely on single photons to encode and transmit information across quantum networks and between quantum chips. However, tools…

HKU Engineering team develops novel miniaturised organic semiconductor, an important breakthrough essential for future flexible electronic devices. Field Effect Transistors (FET) are the core building blocks of modern electronics such as integrated circuits, computer CPUs and display backplanes. Organic Field Effect Transistors (OFETs), which use organic semiconductor as a channel for current flows, have the advantage of being flexible when compared with their inorganic counterparts like silicon. OFETs, given their high sensitivity, mechanical flexibility, biocompatibility, property tunability and low-cost fabrication,…

The powerful electronics packed inside the latest smartphones can be a significant challenge to keep cool. KAUST researchers have developed a fast and efficient way to make a carbon material that could be ideally suited to dissipating heat in electronic devices. This versatile material could also have additional uses ranging from gas sensors to solar cells. Many electronic devices use graphite films to draw away and dissipate the heat generated by their electronic components. Although graphite is a naturally occurring…

Similar to batteries, supercapacitors are suitable for the repeated storage of electrical energy. TU Graz researchers have presented a particularly safe and sustainable variant of such a supercapacitor in Nature Communications. Limited safety, sustainability and recyclability are key drawbacks of today’s lithium-ion battery technology, along with restricted availability of starting materials (e.g. cobalt). In the search for alternative electrochemical energy storage systems for use in e-mobility and for storing energy from renewable sources, a combination of battery and capacitor is…