Materials R&D

Imec has developed the industry’s first integrated graphene optical electro-absorption modulator (EAM) capable of 10Gbit/s modulation speed which combines low insertion loss, low drive voltage, high thermal stability, broadband operation and compact footprint.

Graphene NanoChem, the Malaysia-based graphene company, has announced a product development agreement with Sync R&D for graphene-enhanced lithium-ion batteries for use in electric buses As part of the Electric Bus 1 Malaysia programme, the Graphene NanoChem and Sync R&D will jointly develop a graphene-enhanced Li-on battery for a prototype electric shuttle bus in Malaysia designed and developed by Sync R&D. Graphene ...

Research into colour display technology, which can be finely tuned, could provide clues about developing camouflaging metamaterials that can “see” colours and automatically blend into the background, as seen in nature with animals like squids. Scientists at Rice University’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) in Houston, Texas set out in 2010 to create metamaterials capable of mimicking the camouflage abilities of ...

Researchers from the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) claim they have discovered a potential challenger to graphene.

A transistor made by the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) achieves a reversible change in electrical resistance of eight orders of magnitude using a quantum material – a correlated oxide.

BASF Venture Capital has invested €1m in SmartKem, the Wales-based developer of organic semiconductor inks. SmartKem’s inks are used in printed thin film transistors (TFTs), which are used as the driver transistors in flexible OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) displays. The two companies will work together in the chemistry research for flexible displays and circuits. “The future belongs to flexible displays. Our investment in SmartKem and ...

Scientists at a Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory say research they have completed shows that bilayer graphene could replace silicon transistors in electronic circuits. Graphene is pure carbon in the form of a very thin, almost transparent sheet, one atom thick.  It is has high strength and high efficiency in conducting heat and electricity. In its ...

A team of scientists at the University of Sheffield are the first to fabricate perovskite solar cells using a spray-painting process – a discovery that could help cut the cost of solar electricity.

Research led by University of Cambridge engineers claim to have made a breakthrough in superconductor science by harnessing the equivalent of three tonnes of force inside a golf ball-sized sample of material that is normally as brittle as fine china. The research team said what is significant about this discovery is that it demonstrates the potential of high-temperature superconductors for applications ...

Researchers from the University of Cambridge say they have made a big step in developing new high-temperature superconducting materials which could be used in lossless electrical grids, next-generation supercomputers and levitating trains. The researchers have found that ripples of electrons, known as charge density waves or charge order, create twisted ‘pockets’ of electrons in these materials, from which superconductivity emerges. ...