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------------------------------------------------------------------ The ultimate defense against hackers may be just a few atoms thick   a) At monolayer thickness, this material has the optical properties of a semiconductor that emits light. At multilayer, the properties change and the material doesn't emit light. (b) Varying the thickness of each layer results in a thin film speckled with randomly occurring regions that alternately emit or block light. (c) Upon exposure to light, this pattern can be translated into a one-of-a-kind authentication key that could secure hardware components at minimal cost. Credit: NYU Tandon: Althea Labre The next generation of electronic hardware security may be at hand as researchers at New York University Tandon School of Engineering introduce a new class of unclonable cybersecurity security primitives made of a low-cost nanomaterial with the highest possible level of structural randomness. Randomness is highly desira...

------------------------------------------------ Breakthrough could launch organic electronics beyond cell phone screens A discovery by an international team of researchers from Princeton University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Humboldt University in Berlin points the way to more widespread use of an advanced technology generally known as organic electronics. The research, published Nov. 13 in the journal Nature Materials , focuses on organic semiconductors, a class of materials prized for their applications in emerging technologies such as flexible electronics, solar energy conversion, and high-quality color displays for smartphones and televisions. In the short term, the advance should particularly help with organic light-emitting diodes that operate at high energy to emit colors such as green and blue. "Organic semiconductors are ideal materials for the fabrication of mechanically flexible devices with energy-saving low temperature processes...

------------------------------------------------ New way to write magnetic info could pave the way for hardware neural networks Researchers have shown how to write any magnetic pattern desired onto nanowires, which could help computers mimic how the brain processes information. Much current computer hardware, such as hard drives, use magnetic memory devices. These rely on magnetic states -- the direction microscopic magnets are pointing -- to encode and read information. Exotic magnetic states -- such as a point where three south poles meet -- represent complex systems. These may act in a similar way to many complex systems found in nature, such as the way our brains process information. Computing systems that are designed to process information in similar ways to our brains are known as 'neural networks'. There are already powerful software-based neural networks -- for example one recently beat the human champion at the game 'Go' -- but their ef...

------------------------------------------------ Nano-watch has steady hands Summary: A new nanomechanical hand shows the time of an electronic clock, by spinning a tiny cylinder using light. A silicon nanorod, less than a thousandth of a millimetre long, can be trapped in thin air using focused laser beams, and spun to follow the ticking of a clock, losing only one-millionth of a second over four days.  Very regular clocks are essential in our everyday lives. They enable us to navigate, from the marine chronometers used to determine longitude, to GPS. Stable clocks power the Internet, defining the speed with which information can be sent and received. If your timepiece is very precise, it is easy to detect even small changes to its regularity. By measuring the motion of a physical object which is keeping time, such as the pendulum of a grandfather clock, and comparing it to an electronic reference, then we can detect disturbances, such as vibrations of the ...

------------------------------------------------  3D microprinting counterfeit protection for products, passports, and money Security features are to protect bank notes, documents, and branded products against counterfeiting. Losses caused by product forgery and counterfeiting may be enormous. According to the German Engineering Association, the damage caused in 2016 in its branch alone amounted to EUR 7.3 billion. In the Advanced Materials Technologies journal, researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the ZEISS company now propose to use printed 3D microstructures instead of 2D structures, such as holograms, to improve counterfeit protection. "Today, optical security features, such as holograms, are frequently based on two-dimensional microstructures," says Professor Martin Wegener, expert for 3D printing of microstructures at the Institute of Nanotechnology of KIT. "By using 3D-printed fluorescent microstructures, counterfeit pr...

------------------------------------------------ Strain-free epitaxy of germanium film on mica Summary: Germanium was the material of choice in the early history of electronic devices, and due to its high charge carrier mobility, it's making a comeback. It's generally grown on expensive single-crystal substrates, adding another challenge to making it sustainably viable for most applications. To address this aspect, researchers demonstrate an epitaxy method that incorporates van der Waals' forces to grow germanium on mica.  Germanium, an elemental semiconductor, was the material of choice in the early history of electronic devices, before it was largely replaced by silicon. But due to its high charge carrier mobility -- higher than silicon by threefold -- the semiconductor is making a comeback. Germanium (Ge) is generally grown on expensive single-crystal substrates, adding another challenge to making it sustainably viable for most applications. To ad...

------------------------------------------------  Breakthrough could launch organic electronics beyond cell phone screens A discovery by an international team of researchers from Princeton University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Humboldt University in Berlin points the way to more widespread use of an advanced technology generally known as organic electronics. The research, published Nov. 13 in the journal Nature Materials , focuses on organic semiconductors, a class of materials prized for their applications in emerging technologies such as flexible electronics, solar energy conversion, and high-quality color displays for smartphones and televisions. In the short term, the advance should particularly help with organic light-emitting diodes that operate at high energy to emit colors such as green and blue. "Organic semiconductors are ideal materials for the fabrication of mechanically flexible devices with energy-saving low temperature processe...

------------------------------------------------ Pulling iron out of waste printer toner   Someday, left-over toner in discarded printer cartridges could have a second life as bridge or building components instead of as trash, wasting away in landfills and potentially harming the environment. One group reports in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering that they have devised a method to recycle the residual powder in "empty" cartridges into iron using temperatures that are compatible with existing industrial processes. Electronic waste is a broad category that encompasses everything from computers and televisions to ink cartridges and refrigerators. According to the European Toner and Inkjet Remanufacturers Association, 500 million cartridges out of the estimated 1.1 billion sold each year end up in landfills around the world. These "empty" cartridges can contain up to 8 percent of unused residual powder by weight and could ...

------------------------------------------------   Quantum computing with molecules for a quicker search of unsorted databases Grover's quantum algorithm successfully implemented -- superposition manipulated and read out electrically   Summary: Scrapbooks or social networks are collections of mostly unsorted data. The search for single elements in very large data volumes, i.e. for the needle in the data haystack, is extremely complex for classical computers. Scientists have now quantum mechanically implemented and successfully executed Grover's algorithm, a process for the quick finding of a search element in unsorted databases.  A universal quantum computer still is a vision. Special quantum systems that promise to solve certain tasks more quickly than a classical computer, however, are already playing an important role in science. To reliably find a certain element in unsorted data, a conventional computer has to run through all search element...

------------------------------------------------ Essential quantum computer component downsized by two orders of magnitude Researchers have built compact photon directional devices   Summary: Qubits, the key building blocks at the heart of every quantum computer, are extremely sensitive to interference and need to be shielded from unwanted signals, for example by using so-called nonreciprocal devices. But until now these devices were huge and produced unwanted magnetic fields themselves. Now, scientists have developed a new nonreciprocal device that is only a tenth of a millimeter wide, and -- maybe even more importantly -- is not magnetic.  Qubits, or quantum bits, are the key building blocks that lie at the heart of every quantum computer. In order to perform a computation, signals need to be directed to and from qubits. At the same time, these qubits are extremely sensitive to interference from their environment, and need to be shielded from unwante...

------------------------------------------------ Transfer technique produces wearable gallium nitride gas sensors A transfer technique based on thin sacrificial layers of boron nitride could allow high-performance gallium nitride gas sensors to be grown on sapphire substrates and then transferred to metallic or flexible polymer support materials. The technique could facilitate the production of low-cost wearable, mobile and disposable sensing devices for a wide range of environmental applications. Transferring the gallium nitride sensors to metallic foils and flexible polymers doubles their sensitivity to nitrogen dioxide gas, and boosts response time by a factor of six. The simple production steps, based on metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE), could also lower the cost of producing the sensors and other optoelectronic devices. Sensors produced with the new process can detect ammonia at parts-per-billion levels and differentiate between nitrogen-contain...

------------------------------------------------ When electronics, photonics meet on a standard chip Electronics and light don't go well together on a standard 'CMOS' chip. Researcher Satadal Dutta of the University of Twente succeeded in introducing a light connection into the heart of a semiconductor chip. In this way, two circuits can communicate. Or: the worlds of electronics and photonics are connected. What is particularly attractive about Dutta's solution is that no special materials or manufacturing processes are needed: the light comes from silicon. The light source, detector and the light channel can be made using the technology that is used to make the electronic circuits. Fully optical circuits are available nowadays, but they use materials like indium phosphide and gallium arsenide, which can't easily be combined with the CMOS chip processes used for semiconductor chips you'll find in today's smartphones, for example. Ava...

When electronics, photonics meet on a standard chip Summary: Electronics and light don't go well together on a standard 'CMOS' chip. Researchers have succeeded in introducing a light connection into the heart of a semiconductor chip. In this way, two circuits can communicate. Or: the worlds of electronics and photonics are connected.   What is particularly attractive about Dutta's solution is that no special materials or manufacturing processes are needed: the light comes from silicon. The light source, detector and the light channel can be made using the technology that is used to make the electronic circuits. Fully optical circuits are available nowadays, but they use materials like indium phosphide and gallium arsenide, which can't easily be combined with the CMOS chip processes used for semiconductor chips you'll find in today's smartphones, for example. Avalanche LED The alternative would be: make a LED out of silicon. And that...