Latest Transparency and translucency Stories
Findings explain unusual properties, but complicate search for universal theory Over the last quarter century, scientists have discovered a handful of materials that can be converted from magnetic insulators or metals into "superconductors" able to carry electrical current with no energy loss-an enormously promising idea for new types of zero-resistance electronics and energy-storage and transmission systems. At present, a key step to achieving superconductivity (in addition to keeping the...
Optical Materials Express paper details new laser technique with applications in sensing, photovoltaics, optical switches Silica microwires are the tiny and as-yet underutilized cousins of optical fibers. If precisely manufactured, however, these hair-like slivers of silica could enable applications and technology not currently possible with comparatively bulky optical fiber. By carefully controlling the shape of water droplets with an ultraviolet laser, a team of researchers from...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Like a fine wine or aged cheese, ultrastable glass takes a long time to make, needs special conditions and is considered quite valuable. Unfortunately, manufacturers who want to take advantage of the strengths of ultrastable glass don’t have the luxury of waiting hundreds of years for it to develop. While exploring ways to create this valuable material on a shorter timetable, researchers from the University of Wisconson-Madison have...
NEWARK, Del., Dec. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Tom Zelibor, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lightwave Logic, Inc. (OTC: LWLG), a technology company focused on the development of a Next Generation Non Linear Optical Polymer Materials Platform for applications in high speed fiber-optic data communications and optical computing, provided the following comprehensive year-end update to shareholders: 2012 has been a key turnaround year for Lightwave Logic. As we enter 2013, we...
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne [ Watch The Video ] EPFL scientists have developed an algorithm to control light patterns called "caustics" and organize them into coherent images It's a simple, transparent acrylic plate – nothing embedded within it and nothing printed on its surface. Place it at a certain angle between a white wall and a light source, and a clear, coherent image appears of the face of Alan Turing, the famous British mathematician and father of modern...
Quantum dots are nanostructures of semiconducting materials that behave a lot like single atoms and are very easy to produce. Given their special properties, researchers see huge potential for quantum dots in technological applications. Before this can happen, however, we need a better understanding of how the electrons “trapped” inside them behave. Dresden physicists have recently observed how electrons in individual quantum dots absorb energy and emit it again as light. Their results...
Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues have successfully probed the effects of light at the atomic scale by mixing x-ray and optical light waves at the Linac Coherent Light Source Light changes matter in ways that shape our world. Photons trigger changes in proteins in the eye to enable vision; sunlight splits water into hydrogen and oxygen and creates chemicals through photosynthesis; light causes electrons to flow in the semiconductors that make up solar cells; and new devices for...
