Latest Electron Stories

Pocar, Kumar and the team of 60 scientists using an instrument called the EXO-200 detector, succeeded in setting a new lower limit for the half-life of this ephemeral nuclear decay; though no one has yet seen it, important progress was made Physicists Andrea Pocar and Krishna Kumar of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, part of an international research team, recently reported results of an experiment conducted at the Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO), located in a salt mine one-half...

Scientists from the UK's National Physical Laboratory have developed a nano-device which could change the way we define electrical current A team of scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and University of Cambridge has made a significant advance in using nano-devices to create accurate electrical currents. Electrical current is composed of billions and billions of tiny particles called electrons. NPL scientists have developed an electron pump – a nano-device – which...

Researchers who are studying a new magnetic effect that converts heat to electricity have discovered how to amplify it a thousand times over - a first step in making the technology more practical. In the so-called spin Seebeck effect, the spin of electrons creates a current in magnetic materials, which is detected as a voltage in an adjacent metal. Ohio State University researchers have figured out how to create a similar effect in a non-magnetic semiconductor while producing more...

Polymer power Researchers have discovered yet another way to harvest small amounts of electricity from motion in the world around us – this time by capturing the electrical charge produced when two different kinds of plastic materials rub against one another. Based on flexible polymer materials, this "triboelectric" generator could provide alternating current (AC) from activities such as walking. The triboelectric generator could supplement power produced by nanogenerators that use...

A newly published article in Physical Review Letters eliminates one of the top unsolved theoretical problems in chemical physics as ranked by the National Research Council in 1995. Scientists now can more accurately predict the dynamic behavior of electrons in atoms and molecules in chemical reactions that govern a wide range of phenomena, including the fuel efficiency of combustion engines and the depletion of the atmospheric ozone. The paper by David Mazziotti, professor in chemistry at...

Pitt nanoscientists suggest the use of vacuums to overcome the limits of conventional silicon-based semiconductor electronics With the advent of semiconductor transistors—invented in 1947 as a replacement for bulky and inefficient vacuum tubes—has come the consistent demand for faster, more energy-efficient technologies. To fill this need, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are proposing a new spin on an old method: a switch from the use of silicon electronics back to vacuums...

In an important step towards more practical quantum information processing, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of California, San Diego; and the Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy, have demonstrated the first heralded single photon source made from silicon. This source complements two other recently developed silicon-based technologies—interferometers for manipulating the entanglement of photons and single photon detectors—needed...

For the first time, Lawrence Livermore researchers and international collaborators have peered into the makeup of complex airborne particulate matter so small that it can be transported into human lungs -- usually without a trace. The structure of micron-size particulate matter is important in a wide range of fields from toxicology to climate science (tobacco smoke and oil smoke particles are typically one micron in size). However, its properties are surprisingly difficult to measure in...

"For the first time we can actually see the structure of individual aerosol particles floating in air, their 'native habitat'," said DESY scientist Henry Chapman from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) in Hamburg. "This will have important implications for various fields from climate modelling to human health." CFEL is a joint venture of Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, the German Max Planck Society and the University of Hamburg. Aerosol particles like soot play...

Laser technique developed by CCNY and Berkeley researchers brings ultrafast computing closer to reality The promise of ultrafast quantum computing has moved a step closer to reality with a technique to create rewritable computer chips using a beam of light. Researchers from The City College of New York (CCNY) and the University of California Berkeley (UCB) used light to control the spin of an atom's nucleus in order to encode information. The technique could pave the way for quantum...