Researchers at Duke University and North Carolina State University have demonstrated the first custom semiconductor microparticles that can be steered into various configurations repeatedly while suspended in water. With an initial six custom particles that predictably interact with one another in the presence of alternating current (AC) electric fields of varying frequencies, the study presents the first steps toward realizing advanced applications such as artificial muscles and reconfigurable computer systems. The study appears online on May 3 in the journal Nature Communications. "We've engineered and encoded multiple dynamic responses in different microparticles to create a reconfigurable silicon toolbox," said Ugonna Ohiri, a recently graduated electrical engineering doctoral student from Duke and first author of the paper. "By providing a means of controllably assembling and disassembling these particles, we're bringing a new tool to the field of active matter." While previous researchers have worked to define self-assembling systems, few have worked with semiconductor particles, and none have explored the wide range of custom shapes, sizes and coatings that are available to the micro- and nanofabrication industry. Engineering particles from silicon presents the opportunity to physically realize electronic devices that can self-assemble and disassemble on demand. Customizing their shapes and sizes presents opportunities to explore a wide-ranging design space of new motile behaviors. "Most previous work performed using self-assembling particles has been done with shapes such as spheres and other off-the-shelf materials," said Nan Jokerst, the J. A. Jones Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke. "Now that we can customize whatever arbitrary shapes, electrical characteristics and patterned coatings we want with silicon, a whole new world is opening up." In the study, Jokerst and Ohiri fabricated silicon particles of various shapes, sizes and electrical properties. In collaboration with Orlin Velev, the INVISTA Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State, they characterized how these particles responded to different magnitudes and frequencies of electric fields while submerged in water. Based on these observations, the researchers then fabricated new batches of customized particles that were likely to exhibit the behaviors they were looking for, resulting in six different engineered silicon microparticle compositions that could move through water, synchronize their motions, and reversibly assemble and disassemble on demand. The thin film particles are 10-micron by 20-micron rectangles that are 3.5 microns thick. They're fabricated using Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology. Since they can be made using the same fabrication technology that produces integrated circuits, millions of identical particles could be produced at a time. "The idea is that eventually we're going to be able to make silicon computational systems that assemble, disassemble and then reassemble in a different format," said Jokerst. "That's a long way off in the future, but this work provides a sense of the capabilities that are out there and is the first demonstration of how we might achieve those sorts of devices." That is, however, only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Some of the particles were fabricated with both p-type and n-type regions to create p-n junctions -- common electrical components that allow electricity to pass in only one direction. Tiny metal patterns were also placed on the particles' surfaces to create p-n junction diodes with contacts. In the future, researchers could even engineer particles with patterns using other electrically conductive or insulating materials, complex integrated circuits, or microprocessors on or within the silicon. "This work is just a small snapshot of the tools we have to control particle dynamics," said Ohiri. "We haven't even scratched the surface of all of the behaviors that we can engineer, but we hope that this multidisciplinary study can pioneer future studies to design artificial active materials."

Magnetic materials are the backbone of modern digital information technologies, such as hard-disk storage. A University of Washington-led team has now taken this one step further by encoding information using magnets that are just a few layers of atoms in thickness. This breakthrough may revolutionize both cloud computing technologies and consumer electronics by enabling data storage at a greater density and improved energy efficiency. In a study published online May 3 in the journal Science, the researchers report that they used stacks of ultrathin materials to exert unprecedented control over the flow of electrons based on the direction of their spins -- where the electron "spins" are analogous to tiny, subatomic magnets. The materials that they used include sheets of chromium tri-iodide (CrI3), a material described in 2017 as the first ever 2-D magnetic insulator. Four sheets -- each only atoms thick -- created the thinnest system yet that can block electrons based on their spins while exerting more than 10 times stronger control than other methods. "Our work reveals the possibility to push information storage based on magnetic technologies to the atomically thin limit," said co-lead author Tiancheng Song, a UW doctoral student in physics. In related research, published April 23 in Nature Nanotechnology, the team found ways to electrically control the magnetic properties of this atomically thin magnet. "With the explosive growth of information, the challenge is how to increase the density of data storage while reducing operation energy," said corresponding author Xiaodong Xu, a UW professor of physics and of materials science and engineering, and faculty researcher at the UW Clean Energy Institute. "The combination of both works points to the possibility of engineering atomically thin magnetic memory devices with energy consumption orders of magnitude smaller than what is currently achievable." The new Science paper also looks at how this material could allow for a new type of memory storage that exploits the electron spins in each individual sheet. The researchers sandwiched two layers of CrI3 between conducting sheets of graphene. They showed that, depending on how the spins are aligned between each of the CrI¬¬3 sheets, the electrons can either flow unimpeded between the two graphene sheets or were largely blocked from flowing. These two different configurations could act as the bits -- the zeroes and ones of binary code in everyday computing -- to encode information. "The functional units of this type of memory are magnetic tunnel junctions, or MTJ, which are magnetic 'gates' that can suppress or let through electrical current depending on how the spins align in the junction," said co-lead author Xinghan Cai, a UW postdoctoral researcher in physics. "Such a gate is central to realizing this type of small-scale data storage." With up to four layers of CrI3, the team discovered the potential for "multi-bit" information storage. In two layers of CrI3, the spins between each layer are either aligned in the same direction or opposite directions, leading to two different rates that the electrons can flow through the magnetic gate. But with three and four layers, there are more combinations for spins between each layer, leading to multiple, distinct rates at which the electrons can flow through the magnetic material from one graphene sheet to the other. "Instead of your computer having just two choices to store a piece of data in, it can have a choice A, B, C, even D and beyond," said co-author Bevin Huang, a UW doctoral student in physics. "So not only would storage devices using CrI3 junctions be more efficient, but they would intrinsically store more data." The researchers' materials and approach represent a significant improvement over existing techniques under similar operating conditions using magnesium oxide, which is thicker, less effective at blocking electrons and lacks the option for multi-bit information storage. "Although our current device requires modest magnetic fields and is only functional at low temperature, infeasible for use in current technologies, the device concept and operational principle are novel and groundbreaking," said Xu. "We hope that with developed electrical control of magnetism and some ingenuity, these tunnel junctions can operate with reduced or even without the need for a magnetic field at high temperature, which could be a game changer for new memory technology."

Batteries might seem like they come in every shape and size that you can imagine. But as electronic devices become tinier and skinnier without reducing their power and energy demands, they challenge engineers to design batteries that can fit into smaller and smaller spaces without compromising on performance. Researchers in the United States have used non-traditional techniques to fashion one possible solution -- a powerful 3D lithium ion battery with a footprint on the order of one hundred grains of salt. Their work appears May 3 in the journal Joule. "For small sensors, you need to re-design the battery to be like a skyscraper in New York instead of a ranch house in California," says senior author Bruce Dunn, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "That's what a 3D battery does, and we can use semiconductor processing and a conformal electrolyte to make one that is compatible with the demands of small internet-connected devices." Even the most innovative two-dimensional batteries are limited in the shapes they can take -- the basic battery takes a slice of anode and a slice of cathode and packs an ion-conducting electrolyte between the two to complete the circuit. On the other hand, there are in principle innumerable ways to craft a 3D anode and a 3D cathode that snap together like puzzle pieces (still necessarily separated by a small amount of electrolyte). The setup chosen by Dunn's group is called a "concentric-tube" design, where an array of evenly spaced anode posts are covered uniformly by a thin layer of a photo-patternable polymer electrolyte and the region between the posts is filled with the cathode material. Despite this apparent simplicity, many researchers have only been able to build half of a 3D battery, creating anodes and cathodes that are stable on their own, but fail when trying to assemble these electrodes into one functional battery. Meanwhile, nearly all of the 3D batteries which have been assembled have not been significantly better than ordinary two-dimensional versions. Dunn and postdoctoral scholars, Janet Hur and Leland Smith, overcame these hurdles by taking methods normally used to make semiconductors and modifying them to carve silicon into a grid of precisely-spaced cylinders that they wanted for the anode. "That's something the battery world just does not do," Dunn says. To complete the battery, they applied thin layers of electrolyte to the silicon structure and poured in a standard lithium-ion cathode material, using the anode as a mold to ensure that the two halves would fit together just right. The resulting battery achieved an energy density of 5.2 milli-watt-hours per square centimeter, among the highest reported for a 3D battery, while occupying a miniscule 0.09 square centimeter footprint and withstanding 100 cycles of charging and discharging. Dunn cautions that this particular 3D battery has not yet reached its full potential, as he hopes that he and his team can boost its energy density with further tuning of battery components and assembly. "Another challenge with batteries is always the packaging," he adds. "You need to seal them up, keep them small, and make sure they function just as well in the real world as in the glovebox."

For people who have hypertension and certain other conditions, eating too much salt raises blood pressure and increases the likelihood of heart complications. To help monitor salt intake, researchers have developed a flexible and stretchable wireless sensing system designed to be comfortably worn in the mouth to measure the amount of sodium a person consumes. Based on an ultrathin, breathable elastomeric membrane, the sensor integrates with a miniaturized flexible electronic system that uses Bluetooth technology to wirelessly report the sodium consumption to a smartphone or tablet. The researchers plan to further miniaturize the system -- which now resembles a dental retainer -- to the size of a tooth. "We can unobtrusively and wirelessly measure the amount of sodium that people are taking in over time," explained Woon-Hong Yeo, an assistant professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "By monitoring sodium in real-time, the device could one day help people who need to restrict sodium intake learn to change their eating habits and diet." Details of the device are reported May 7 in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The device has been tested in three adult study participants who wore the sensor system for up to a week while eating both solid and liquid foods including vegetable juice, chicken soup and potato chips. According to the American Heart Association, Americans on average eat more than 3,400 milligrams of sodium each day, far more than the limit of 1,500 milligrams per day it recommends. The association surveyed a thousand adults and found that "one-third couldn't estimate how much sodium they ate, and another 54 percent thought they were eating less than 2,000 milligrams of sodium a day." The new sodium sensing system could address that challenge by helping users better track how much salt they consume, Yeo said. "Our device could have applications for many different goals involving eating behavior for diet management or therapeutics," he added. Key to development of the intraoral sensor was replacement of traditional plastic and metal-based electronics with biocompatible and ultrathin components connected using mesh circuitry. Sodium sensors are available commercially, but Yeo and his collaborators developed a flexible micro-membrane version to be integrated with the miniaturized hybrid circuitry. "The entire sensing and electronics package was conformally integrated onto a soft material that users can tolerate," Yeo explained. "The sensor is comfortable to wear, and data from it can be transmitted to a smartphone or tablet. Eventually the information could go a doctor or other medical professional for remote monitoring." The flexible design began with computer modeling to optimize the mechanical properties of the device for use in the curved and soft oral cavity. The researchers then used their model to design the actual nanomembrane circuitry and choose components. The device can monitor sodium intake in real-time, and record daily amounts. Using an app, the system could advise users planning meals how much of their daily salt allocation they had already consumed. The device can communicate with a smartphone up to ten meters away. Next steps for the sodium sensor are to further miniaturize the device, and test it with users who have the medical conditions to address: hypertension, obesity or diabetes. The researchers would like to do away with the small battery, which must be recharged daily to keep the sensor in operation. One option would be to power the device inductively, which would replace the battery and complex circuit with a coil that could obtain power from a transmitter outside the mouth. The project grew out of a long-term goal of producing an artificial taste system that can sense sweetness, bitterness, pH and saltiness. That work began at Virginia Commonwealth University, where Yeo was an assistant professor before joining Georgia Tech.

Rubber duckies could soon be at the forefront of an electronic revolution. In ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, scientists report they have used specialized nanogenerators that gather energy from mechanical vibrations to transform squeaky bathtub companions and other conventional children's toys into 'smart' electronics. They say the finding could have broad commercial applications, leading to the development of battery-free, self-powered toys, medical sensors and other devices. Watch a video of prototype toys: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2LR-iqE5Y By age 4, virtually every child has had contact with an electronic toy or mobile device, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Keeping these devices blinking and beeping is tedious, often requiring frequent charging or battery changes. Researchers have explored alternative ways to produce and store energy for these devices without using batteries. One promising approach involves the use of triboelectric nanogenerators, or TENGs. TENGs gather electrical charges from friction, similar to the static that builds up on a balloon when it is rubbed against someone's head. TENGs amplify and convert this biomechanical energy into a usable form. However, ramping up these devices for commercial applications has been challenging, possibly because of low energy storage and conversion efficiencies. To address some of these issues, Sang-Jae Kim and colleagues at Jeju National University in South Korea sought to more effectively harness the energy from TENGs and use it to transform traditional toys into commercially viable, self-powered 'smart' toys. The researchers designed and incorporated TENGs -- made with aluminum electrodes and an eco-friendly silicone-like film between them -- into rubber ducks and clapping toys. Squeezing or shaking the toys alternatively separated and brought the electrodes into contact with film, creating an electrical charge. Once activated, the TENGs harvested enough biomechanical energy to illuminate several LED lights attached to each toy. The TENGs were durable, suggesting they could operate for substantial periods. The researchers conclude their unique approach can transform traditional toys into battery-free interactive ones, and raises the prospect of successfully using TENGs commercially in other "smart" gadgets including medical devices and wearable electronics. The authors acknowledge funding from the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea.

Researchers in UConn's Institute of Materials Science significantly improved the performance of an atomically thin semiconductor material by stretching it, an accomplishment that could prove beneficial to engineers designing the next generation of flexible electronics, nano devices, and optical sensors. In a study appearing in the research journal Nano Letters, University of Connecticut Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Michael Pettes reports that a six-atom thick bilayer of tungsten diselenide exhibited a 100-fold increase in photoluminescence when it was subjected to strain. The material had never exhibited such photoluminescence before. The findings mark the first time scientists have been able to conclusively show that the properties of atomically thin materials can be mechanically manipulated to enhance their performance, Pettes says. Such capabilities could lead to faster computer processors and more efficient sensors. The process the researchers used to achieve the outcome is also significant in that it offers a reliable new methodology for measuring the impact of strain on ultrathin materials, something that has been difficult to do and a hindrance to innovation. "Experiments involving strain are often criticized since the strain experienced by these atomically thin materials is difficult to determine and often speculated as being incorrect," says Pettes. "Our study provides a new methodology for conducting strain-dependent measurements of ultrathin materials and this is important because strain is predicted to offer orders of magnitude changes in the properties of these materials across many different scientific fields." Scientists have been intrigued by the potential of atomically thin materials ever since researchers Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov successfully cleaved a one-atom thick layer of graphene from a piece of graphite in 2004. Considered a supermaterial for its outstanding strength, flexibility, and ability to conduct electricity, two-dimensional graphene transformed the electronics industry and earned the researchers a Nobel Prize. But for all that it offers, graphene has its limitations. It is a poor semiconductor because it lacks an electron band gap in its internal structure. As a result, electrons are unimpeded and flow rapidly through it when the material is energized. The best semiconductor materials, such as silicon, have a sizable band gap that allows a flow of electrons to be turned on and off. That capability is vital for creating the strings of zeros and ones that make up the binary computing codes used in transistors and integrated circuits. Materials scientists are exploring the potential of other two-dimensional and atomically thin materials hoping to find products superior to graphene and silicon. Strain engineering has been discussed as one possible way to enhance the performance of these materials because their ultrathin structure makes them particularly susceptible to bending and stretching, unlike their larger three-dimensional bulk forms. But testing the impact of strain on materials just a few atoms thick has proven enormously difficult. In the present study, Pettes and Wei Wu, a Ph.D. student in Pettes' lab and the study's lead author, were able to successfully measure the influence of strain on a single crystalline bilayer of tungsten diselenide by first encapsulating it in a fine layer of acrylic glass and then heating it in an argon gas chamber. (Exposure to air would destroy the sample). This thermal processing strengthened the material's adhesion to a polymer substrate, allowing for a near perfect transfer of applied strain, which has been difficult to achieve in prior experiments. The group then customized a bending device that allowed them to carefully increase strain on the material while monitoring how it responded through a Horiba Multiline Raman Spectrometer at the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems, a shared user facility funded by the National Science Foundation. It was an exciting moment. "Our new method allowed us to apply around two times more strain to the 2-D material than any previous study has reported," says Pettes. "Essentially, we were in new territory." Ultimately, the researchers found that applying increasing levels of strain to the material altered its flow of electrons, which was reflected by the increased intensity in photoluminescence. Working with UConn Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Avinash Dongare, an expert in computer modeling, and former Ph.D. student Jin Wang, the team was able to show that their process could, theoretically, manipulate the band gap of tungsten diselenide and other atomically thin materials, which is extremely important for design engineers seeking faster and more efficient semiconductors and sensors. Manipulating a semiconductor with an indirect band gap very near the point of transitioning to a direct band gap could lead to extremely fast processing capabilities. "This is the first time that extrinsic control over an indirect-to-direct electron band gap transition has been conclusively reported," says Pettes. "Our findings should allow computational scientists using artificial intelligence to design new materials with extremely strain-resistant or strain-sensitive structures. That is extremely important for the next generation of high performance flexible nanoelectronics and optoelectronic devices." Joining Pettes and Wu on the research were two undergraduate students: UConn senior Nico Wright, a former McNair Scholar and participant in NSF's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program; and Danielle Leppert-Simenauer, also a former participant in NSF's REU program and currently an undergraduate majoring in physics at the University of California-San Diego. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland provided graphene films that were used to confirm the calibration standards applied by the UConn researchers to measure strain. The atomic-level thickness of the tungsten diselenide bilayer was confirmed through transmission electron microscopy in the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

As suggested by their name, Möbius molecules have a twisted loop structure, a special characteristic with many potential applications. A Japanese research team has revealed the properties of a type of Möbius aromatic molecule that expresses magnetism and retains high energy levels when exposed to light. These characteristics could potentially be applied in organic solar batteries, lights, and conductive materials. The findings were made by a research team led by Professor Yasuhiro Kobori (Kobe University), Professor Atsuhiro Osuka (Kyoto University), Professor Kazunobu Sato and Project Professor Takeji Takui (Osaka City University), and the study was published on May 10 in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Möbius aromatic molecules have drawn attention because they can be energized by light. When this happens, in their electronically excited state they display "antiaromaticity," characterized by high energy levels and high instability. This excited state could be used in the development of ecofriendly organic devices, such as organic thin-film solar cells and electroluminescent elements. However, the details behind the electronic character of this state and its antiaromatic properties remained unclear. In this study, the group applied a time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance method that uses microwaves and electromagnets to detect the magnetic properties of a reactive intermediate. They observed the excited triplet state of a Möbius aromatic molecule [28] hexaphyrin. Illuminating this hexaphyrin with laser pulses, they detected the resonance between the microwave and the electron spins linked to the magnetism of the excited triplet state and to the external magnetic field as a snapshot with an accuracy of 10 million parts a second after each laser pulse. They also changed the angle of the polarization of the laser pulse relative to the direction of the external magnetic field. This allowed them to clarify the 3-dimensional location of the triplet spin, as well as taking 10 million "snapshots" a second of the deactivation process on sub-levels of the triplet. Their analysis revealed that twisted ring molecules possess a "charge-transfer" character that releases and localizes the charge at right angles between the orbitals. The charge transfer blocks the stabilizing effect caused by the exchange interaction between the electrons, thus contributing to the higher energy to provide the source of the molecule's strong antiaromatic properties. The electron distributions in the present triplet state are very different from those in the excited singlet state species which does not exhibit magnetism. This study demonstrated that each electron distribution is localized in one part of the molecule's ring framework. They also showed that changing the orbital angular momentum between the localized orbitals in the triplet state leads to a quick deactivation of one sub-level to the ground state. These orthogonal orbital angle relations only appear in the twisted Möbius topology, meaning that the deactivation process could offer new tools for indexing antiaromatic character and for analyzing the excited state geometry. Professor Kobori comments, "The special electronic properties of this highly active excited state could be applied in electronic functional materials, such as organic solar cells and electric conductors, and could potentially contribute to the solution of energy and environmental issues." Story Source:

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London, University of Cambridge and Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have discovered how a pinch of salt can be used to drastically improve the performance of batteries. They found that adding salt to the inside of a supermolecular sponge and then baking it at a high temperature transformed the sponge into a carbon-based structure. Surprisingly, the salt reacted with the sponge in special ways and turned it from a homogeneous mass to an intricate structure with fibres, struts, pillars and webs. This kind of 3D hierarchically organised carbon structure has proven very difficult to grow in a laboratory but is crucial in providing unimpeded ion transport to active sites in a battery. In the study, published in JACS (Journal of the American Chemical Society), the researchers demonstrate that the use of these materials in Lithium-ion batteries not only enables the batteries to be charged-up rapidly, but also at one of the highest capacities. Due to their intricate architecture the researchers have termed these structures 'nano-diatoms', and believe they could also be used in energy storage and conversion, for example as electrocatalysts for hydrogen production. Lead author and project leader Dr Stoyan Smoukov, from Queen Mary's School of Engineering and Materials Science, said: "This metamorphosis only happens when we heat the compounds to 800 degrees centigrade and was as unexpected as hatching fire-born dragons instead of getting baked eggs in the Game of Thrones. It is very satisfying that after the initial surprise, we have also discovered how to control the transformations with chemical composition." Carbon, including graphene and carbon nanotubes, is a family of the most versatile materials in nature, used in catalysis and electronics because of its conductivity and chemical and thermal stability. 3D carbon-based nanostructures with multiple levels of hierarchy not only can retain useful physical properties like good electronic conductivity but also can have unique properties. These 3D carbon-based materials can exhibit improved wettability (to facilitate ion infiltration), high strength per unit weight, and directional pathways for fluid transport. It is, however, very challenging to make carbon-based multilevel hierarchical structures, particularly via simple chemical routes, yet these structures would be useful if such materials are to be made in large quantities for industry. The supermolecular sponge used in the study is also known as a metal organic framework (MOF) material. These MOFs are attractive, molecularly designed porous materials with many promising applications such as gas storage and separation. The retention of high surface area after carbonisation -- or baking at a high temperature -- makes them interesting as electrode materials for batteries. However, so far carbonising MOFs has preserved the structure of the initial particles like that of a dense carbon foam. By adding salts to these MOF sponges and carbonising them, the researchers discovered a series of carbon-based materials with multiple levels of hierarchy. Dr R. Vasant Kumar, a collaborator on the study from University of Cambridge, commented: "This work pushes the use of the MOFs to a new level. The strategy for structuring carbon materials could be important not only in energy storage but also in energy conversion, and sensing." Lead author, Tiesheng Wang, from University of Cambridge, said: "Potentially, we could design nano-diatoms with desired structures and active sites incorporated in the carbon as there are thousands of MOFs and salts for us to select."

The future of electronic devices lies partly within the "internet of things" -- the network of devices, vehicles and appliances embedded within electronics to enable connectivity and data exchange. University of Illinois engineers are helping realize this future by minimizing the size of one notoriously large element of integrated circuits used for wireless communication -- the transformer. Three-dimensional rolled-up radio frequency transformers take 10 to 100 times less space, perform better when the power transfer ratio increases and have a simpler fabrication process than their 2-D progenitors, according to a paper detailing their design and performance in the journal Nature Electronics. "Transformers are one of the largest and heaviest elements on any circuit board," said principal investigator Xiuling Li, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. "When you pick up an LED light bulb, it feels heavy for its size and that is in part because of the bulky transformer inside. The size of these transformers may become a key obstacle to overcome in the future for wireless communication and IoT." Transformers use coiled wires to convert input signals to specific output signals for use in devices like microchips. Previous researchers have developed some radio frequency transformers using a stacked conducting material to solve the space problem, but these have limited performance potential. This limited performance is due to inefficient magnetic coupling between coils when they have a high turns ratio, meaning that the primary coil is much longer than the secondary coil, or vice versa, Li said. These stacked transformers need to be made using special materials and are difficult to fabricate, bulky and unbendable -- things that are far from ideal for internet of things devices. The new transformer design uses techniques Li's group previously developed for making rolled inductors. "We are making 3-D structures using 2-D processing," Li said. The team deposits carefully patterned metal wires onto stretched 2-D thin films. Once they release the tension, the 2-D films self-roll into tiny tubes, allowing the primary and secondary wires to coil and nest perfectly inside each other into a much smaller area for optimum magnetic induction and coupling. The nested 3-D architecture leads to high turns ratio coils, Li said. "A high turns ratio transformer can be used as an impedance transformer to improve the sensitivity of extremely low power receivers, which are expected to be a key enabler for IoT wireless front ends," said electrical and computer engineering professor and co-author Songbin Gong. Rolled transformers can also receive and process higher frequency signals than the larger devices. "Wireless communication will be faster and use higher-frequency signals in the future. The current generation of radio frequency transformers simply cannot keep up with the miniaturization requirements and high-frequency operation of the future," said lead author and postdoctoral researcher Wen Huang. "Smaller transformers with more turns allow for better reception of faster, high-frequency wireless signals, as well as high-level integration in IoT applications." The new transformers have a robust fabrication process -- stable beyond standard foundry temperatures and compatible with industry-standard materials. This study used gold wire, but the team has successfully demonstrated the fabrication of their rolled devices using industry-standard copper. "The next step will be to use thinner and more-conductive metal such as graphene, allowing these devices to be made even smaller and more flexible. This advancement may make it possible for the devices to be woven into the fabrics of high-tech wearables," Li said.

Wireless microsensors have enabled new ways to monitor our environment by allowing users to measure spaces previously off limits to research, such as toxic areas, vehicle components, or remote areas in the human body. Researchers, however, have been stymied by limited improvements in the quality of data and sensitivity of these devices stemming from challenges associated with the environments they operate in and the need for sensors with extremely small footprints. A new paper published today in Nature Electronics by researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, Wayne State University, and Michigan Technological University, explains how new devices with capabilities far beyond those of conventional sensors can be built by borrowing concepts from quantum mechanics. The team, led by Andrea Alù, director of the ASRC's Photonics Initiative and Einstein Professor of Physics at The Graduate Center, and Pai-Yen Chen, professor at Wayne State University, developed a new technique for designing microsensors that allows for significantly enhanced sensitivity and a very small footprint. Their method involves using isospectral parity-time-reciprocal scaling, or PTX symmetry, to design the electronic circuits. A 'reader' is paired with a passive microsensor that meets this PTX symmetry. The pair achieves highly sensitive radio-frequency readings. "In the push to miniaturize the sensors to improve their resolution and enable large-scale networks of sensing devices, improving the sensitivity of microsensors is crucial," Alù said. "Our approach addresses this need by introducing a generalized symmetry condition that enables high-quality readings in a miniaturized footprint." The work builds on recent advances in the area of quantum mechanics and optics, which have shown that systems symmetric under space and time inversion, or parity-time (PT) symmetric, may offer advantages for sensor design. The paper generalizes this property to a wider class of devices that satisfy a more general form of symmetry -- PTX-symmetry. This type of symmetry, is particularly well-suited to maintain high sensitivity, while drastically reducing the footprint. The researchers were able to show this phenomenon in a telemetric sensor system based on a radio-frequency electronic circuit, which exhibited drastically improved resolution and sensitivity compared to conventional sensors. The microelectromechanical (MEMS)-based wireless pressure sensors share the sensitivity advantages of previous PT-symmetric devices, but crucially the generalized symmetry condition allows both for device miniaturization and enables an efficient realization at low frequencies within a compact electronic circuit. This new approach may allow researchers to overcome the current challenges in deploying ubiquitous networks of long-lasting, unobtrusive microsensors to monitor large areas. In the age of the internet of things and big data, such networks are useful for wireless health, smart cities, and cyber-physical systems that dynamically gather and store large amounts of information for eventual analysis. "Development of wireless microsensors with high sensitivity is one of the major challenging issues for practical uses in bioimplants, wearable electronics, internet-of-things, and cyber-physical systems," Chen said. "While there has been continuous progress in miniature micro-machined sensors, the basics of telemetric readout technique remains essentially unchanged since its invention. This new telemetry approach will make possible the long-sought goal of successfully detecting tiny physical or chemical actuation from contactless microsensors."

Researchers at MIT's Little Devices Lab have developed a set of modular blocks that can be put together in different ways to produce diagnostic devices. These "plug-and-play" devices, which require little expertise to assemble, can test blood glucose levels in diabetic patients or detect viral infection, among other functions. "Our long-term motivation is to enable small, low-resources laboratories to generate their own libraries of plug-and-play diagnostics to treat their local patient populations independently," says Anna Young, co-director of MIT's Little Devices Lab, lecturer at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and one of the lead authors of the paper. Using this system, called Ampli blocks, the MIT team is working on devices to detect cancer, as well as Zika virus and other infectious diseases. The blocks are inexpensive, costing about 6 cents for four blocks, and they do not require refrigeration or special handling, making them appealing for use in the developing world. "We see these construction kits as a way of lowering the barriers to making medical technology," says Jose Gomez-Marquez, co-director of the Little Devices Lab and the senior author of the paper. Elizabeth Phillips '13, a graduate student at Purdue University, is also a lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials on May 16. Other authors include Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli, an associate professor of engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a visiting scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering; Nikolas Albarran, a senior engineer in the Little Devices Lab; Jonah Butler, an MIT junior; and Kaira Lujan, a former visiting student in the Little Devices Lab. Customized diagnostics Over the past decade, many researchers have been working on small, portable diagnostic devices based on chemical reactions that occur on paper strips. Many of these tests make use of lateral flow technology, which is the same approach used in home pregnancy tests. Despite these efforts, such tests have not been widely deployed. One obstacle, says Gomez-Marquez, is that many of these devices are not designed with large-scale manufacturability in mind. Another is that companies may not be interested in mass-producing a diagnostic for a disease that doesn't affect a large number of people. The Little Devices Lab researchers realized that they could get these diagnostics into the hands of many more people if they created a kit of modular components that can be put together to generate exactly what the user needs. To that end, they have created about 40 different building blocks that lab workers around the world could easily assemble on their own, just as people began assembling their own radios and other electronic devices from commercially available electronic "breadboards" in the 1970s. "When the electronic breadboard came out, that meant people didn't have to worry about building their own resistors or capacitors. They could worry about what they actually wanted to use electronics for, which is to make the entire circuit," Gomez-Marquez says. In this case, the components consist of a sheet of paper or glass fiber sandwiched between a plastic or metal block and a glass cover. The blocks, which are about half an inch on each edge, can snap together along any edge. Some of the blocks contain channels for samples to flow straight through, some have turns, and some can receive a sample from a pipette or mix multiple reagents together. The blocks can also perform different biochemical functions. Many contain antibodies that can detect a specific molecule in a blood or urine sample. Those antibodies are attached to nanoparticles that change color when the target molecule is present, indicating a positive result. These blocks can be aligned in different ways, allowing the user to create diagnostics based on one reaction or a series of reactions. In one example, the researchers combined blocks that detect three different molecules to create a test for isonicotinic acid, which can reveal whether tuberculosis patients are taking their medication. The blocks are color-coded by function, making it easier to assemble predesigned devices using instructions that the researchers plan to put online. They also hope that users will develop and contribute their own specifications to the online guide. Better performance The researchers also showed that in some ways, these blocks can outperform previous versions of paper diagnostic devices. For example, they found that they could run a sample back and forth over a test strip multiple times, enhancing the signal. This could make it easier to get reliable results from urine and saliva samples, which are usually more dilute than blood samples, but are easier to obtain from patients. "These are things that cannot be done with standard lateral flow tests, because those are not modular -- you only get to run those once," says Hamad-Schifferli. The team is now working on tests for human papilloma virus, malaria, and Lyme disease, among others. They are also working on blocks that can synthesize useful compounds, including drugs, as well as blocks that incorporate electrical components such as LEDs. The ultimate goal is to get the technology into the hands of small labs in both industrialized and developing countries, so they can create their own diagnostics. The MIT team has already sent them to labs in Chile and Nicaragua, where they have been used to develop devices to monitor patient adherence to TB treatment and to test for a genetic variant that makes malaria more difficult to treat. The researchers are now investigating large-scale manufacturing techniques, and they hope to launch a company to manufacture and distribute the kits around the world. "We are excited to open the platform to other researchers so they can use the blocks and generate their own reactions," Young says. The research was funded by a gift from Autodesk and the U.S. Public Health Service.

Glass is a familiar concept for most: a dependable substance known and used for thousands of years. However, there is more to glass than meets the eye. Glass is actually an amorphous material with arguably as much in common with a liquid as with the solid most would consider it to be. Glass contains atoms locked into place in a random arrangement and to those more familiar with considering the atomic level, "a glass" is the term for any substance in a state that fits this description, leading to a surprisingly broad scope. The tendency for materials to show glassy behavior is known as "glass-forming ability" and given the undeniable success of the familiar silicon-based material, it is easy to understand why some researchers take acquiring a better understanding of such behavior seriously. A trio of researchers centered at the Institute of Industrial Science at The University of Tokyo recently investigated glass-forming behavior by simulating two model systems whose glass-forming ability could be tuned by a single external parameter. Their wide-reaching findings were published in Physical Review X. "Glass-forming ability is often influenced by competing effects that suppress the local order that would lead to crystal formation," study corresponding author Hajime Tanaka says. "Our findings show that this behavior is governed by a single parameter that we called the 'thermodynamic interface penalty'." When a material is a mixture of different components, the competition between the different systems trying to behave in their natural way during cooling can lead to formation of a glass. By looking at two general systems, the team were able to decouple some of the contributing factors in this process to gain a fundamental understanding of what is occurring. "Our work may provide a general physical principle for controlling glass-forming behavior," lead author John Russo says. "The findings could extend to understanding glassy behavior in a variety of systems with competing ordering. This could include structural, magnetic, electronic, charge, or dipolar ordering, which would clearly translate to a very broad range of potential applications down the line." The possibility of using the fundamental findings to control the synthesis and processing of materials such as metallic alloys and phase-change materials, paves the way for physics-driven design in numerous areas of materials science.

A Columbia University-led international team of researchers has developed a technique to manipulate the electrical conductivity of graphene with compression, bringing the material one step closer to being a viable semiconductor for use in today's electronic devices. "Graphene is the best electrical conductor that we know of on Earth," said Matthew Yankowitz, a postdoctoral research scientist in Columbia's physics department and first author on the study. "The problem is that it's too good at conducting electricity, and we don't know how to stop it effectively. Our work establishes for the first time a route to realizing a technologically relevant band gap in graphene without compromising its quality. Additionally, if applied to other interesting combinations of 2D materials, the technique we used may lead to new emergent phenomena, such as magnetism, superconductivity, and more." The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, appears in the May 17 issue of Nature. The unusual electronic properties of graphene, a two-dimensional (2D) material comprised of hexagonally-bonded carbon atoms, have excited the physics community since its discovery more than a decade ago. Graphene is the strongest, thinnest material known to exist. It also happens to be a superior conductor of electricity -- the unique atomic arrangement of the carbon atoms in graphene allows its electrons to easily travel at extremely high velocity without the significant chance of scattering, saving precious energy typically lost in other conductors. But turning off the transmission of electrons through the material without altering or sacrificing the favorable qualities of graphene has proven unsuccessful to-date. "One of the grand goals in graphene research is to figure out a way to keep all the good things about graphene but also create a band gap -- an electrical on-off switch," said Cory Dean, assistant professor of physics at Columbia University and the study's principal investigator. He explained that past efforts to modify graphene to create such a band gap have degraded the intrinsically good properties of graphene, rendering it much less useful. One superstructure does show promise, however. When graphene is sandwiched between layers of boron nitride (BN), an atomically-thin electrical insulator, and the two materials are rotationally aligned, the BN has been shown to modify the electronic structure of the graphene, creating a band gap that allows the material to behave as a semiconductor -- that is, both as an electrical conductor and an insulator. The band gap created by this layering alone, however, is not large enough to be useful in the operation of electrical transistor devices at room temperature. In an effort to enhance this band gap, Yankowitz, Dean, and their colleagues at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the University of Seoul in Korea, and the National University of Singapore, compressed the layers of the BN-graphene structure and found that applying pressure substantially increased the size of the band gap, more effectively blocking the flow of electricity through the graphene. "As we squeeze and apply pressure, the band gap grows," Yankowitz said. "It's still not a big enough gap -- a strong enough switch -- to be used in transistor devices at room temperature, but we have gained a fundamentally better understanding of why this band gap exists in the first place, how it can be tuned, and how we may target it in the future. Transistors are ubiquitous in our modern electronic devices, so if we can find a way to use graphene as a transistor it would have widespread applications." Yankowitz added that scientists have been conducting experiments at high pressures in conventional three-dimensional materials for years, but no one had yet figured out a way to do them with 2D materials. Now, researchers will be able to test how applying various degrees of pressure changes the properties of a vast range of combinations of stacked 2D materials. "Any emergent property that results from the combination of 2D materials should grow stronger as the materials are compressed," Yankowitz said. "We can take any of these arbitrary structures now and squeeze them and the strength of the resulting effect is tunable. We've added a new experimental tool to the toolbox we use to manipulate 2D materials and that tool opens boundless possibilities for creating devices with designer properties."

Pure quartz glass is highly transparent and resistant to thermal, physical, and chemical impacts. These are optimum prerequisites for use in optics, data technology or medical engineering. For efficient, high-quality machining, however, adequate processes are lacking. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a forming technology to structure quartz glass like a polymer. This innovation is reported in the journal Advanced Materials. "It has always been a big challenge to combine highly pure quartz glass and its excellent properties with a simple structuring technology," says Dr. Bastian E. Rapp, Head of the NeptunLab interdisciplinary research group of KIT's Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT). Rapp and his team develop new processes for industrial glass processing. "Instead of heating glass up to 800 °C for forming or structuring parts of glass blocks by laser processing or etching, we start with the smallest glass particles," says the mechanical engineer. The scientists mix glass particles of 40 nanometers in size with a liquid polymer, form the mix like a sponge cake, and harden it to a solid by heating or light exposure. The resulting solid consists of glass particles in a matrix at a ratio of 60 to 40 vol%. The polymers act like a bonding agent that retains the glass particles at the right locations and, hence, maintains the shape. This "Glassomer" can be milled, turned, laser-machined or processed in CNC machines just like a conventional polymer. "The entire range of polymer forming technologies is now opened for glass," Rapp emphasizes. For fabricating high-performance lenses that are used in smartphones among others, the scientists produce a Glassomer rod, from which the lenses are cut. For highly pure quartz glass, the polymers in the composite have to be removed. For doing so, the lenses are heated in a furnace at 500 to 600 °C and the polymer is burned fully to CO2. To close the resulting gaps in the material, the lenses are sintered at 1300 °C. During this process, the remaining glass particles are densified to pore-free glass. This forming technology enables production of highly pure glass materials for any applications, for which only polymers have been suited so far. This opens up new opportunities for the glass processing industry as well as for the optical industry, microelectronics, biotechnology, and medical engineering. "Our process is suited for mass production. Production and use of quartz glass are much cheaper, more sustainable, and more energy-efficient than those of a special polymer," Rapp explains. This is the third innovation for the processing of quartz glass that has been developed by NeptunLab on the basis of a liquid glass-polymer mixture. In 2016, the scientists already succeeded in using this mixture for molding. In 2017, they applied the mixture for 3D printing and demonstrate its suitability for additive manufacture. Within the framework of the "NanomatFutur" competition for early-stage researchers, the team was funded with EUR 2.8 million by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2014 to 2018. A spinoff now plans to commercialize Glassomer.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory made the first observations of waves of atomic rearrangements, known as phasons, propagating supersonically through a vibrating crystal lattice -- a discovery that may dramatically improve heat transport in insulators and enable new strategies for heat management in future electronics devices. "The discovery gives you a different way to control the flow of heat," said lead author Michael Manley of the paper published in Nature Communications. "It provides a shortcut through the material -- a way to send the energy of pure atomic motion at a speed that's higher than you can with phonons [atomic vibrations]. This shortcut may open possibilities in heat management of nanoscale materials. Imagine the possibility of a thermal circuit breaker, for example." The scientists used neutron scattering to measure phasons with velocities about 2.8 times and about 4.3 times faster than the natural "speed limits" of longitudinal and transverse acoustic waves, respectively. "We didn't expect them to be going that fast without [fading]," Manley said. Insulators are necessary in electronic devices to prevent short circuits; but without free electrons, thermal transport is limited to the energy of atomic motion. Hence, understanding the transport of heat by atomic motion in insulators is important. The researchers scattered neutrons in fresnoite, a crystalline mineral so named because it was first found in Fresno, California. It is promising for sensor applications through its piezoelectric property, which allows it to turn mechanical stress into electrical fields. Fresnoite has a flexible framework structure that develops a competing order in the structure that does not match the underlying crystal order, like an overlay of mismatched tiles. Phasons are excitations associated with atomic rearrangements in the crystal that change the phase of waves describing the mismatch in the structure. Phase differences accumulate in a lattice of wrinkles -- called solitons. Solitons are solitary waves that propagate with little loss of energy and retain their shape. They can also warp the local environment in a way that allows them to travel faster than sound. "The soliton is a very deformed region in the crystal where the displacements of the atoms are large and the force-displacement relationship is no longer linear," Manley said. "The material stiffness is locally enhanced within the soliton, leading to a faster energy transfer." Raffi Sahul of Meggitt Sensing Systems of Irvine, California, grew a single crystal of fresnoite and sent it to ORNL for neutron scattering experiments that Manley conceived to characterize how energy moved through the crystal. "Neutrons are the best way to study this because their wavelengths and energies are in a sense matched to the atomic vibrations," Manley said. Manley performed measurements with Paul Stonaha, Doug Abernathy and John Budai using time-of-flight neutron scattering at the Spallation Neutron Source, and with Stonaha, Songxue Chi, and Raphael Hermann using triple-axis neutron scattering at the High Flux Isotope Reactor. At SNS, the scientists started with a pulsed source of neutrons of different energies and used the ARCS instrument, which selects neutrons in a narrow energy range and scatters them off a sample so detectors can map the energy and momentum transfer over a wide range. "The large measurement area was important to this study because the features weren't where you would normally expect them to be," said Abernathy. "This gives the neutron measurements a great chance to determine the velocities of the propagating phasons, calculated from the slope of their dispersion curves." Dispersion is the relationship between the wavelength and the energy that characterizes a propagating wave. "Once the SNS measurements told us where to look, we used triple-axis spectrometry at HFIR, which provided a constant flux of neutrons, to focus on that one point," Manley said. "A unique thing about Oak Ridge National Laboratory is that we have both a world-class spallation source and a world-class reactor source for neutron research. We can go back and forth between facilities and really get a comprehensive view of things." Next the researchers will explore other crystals that, like fresnoite, can rotate phasons. Strain applied with an electric field may be able to change the rotation. Changes in temperature may vary properties too.

A 10-fold increase in the ability to harvest mechanical and thermal energy over standard piezoelectric composites may be possible using a piezoelectric ceramic foam supported by a flexible polymer support, according to Penn State researchers. In the search for ways to harvest small amounts of energy to run mobile electronic devices or sensors for health monitoring, researchers typically add hard ceramic nanoparticles or nanowires to a soft, flexible polymer support. The polymer provides the flexibility, while the piezo nanoparticles convert the mechanical energy into electrical voltage. But these materials are relatively inefficient, because upon mechanical loading the mechanical energy is largely absorbed by the bulk of the polymer, with a very small fraction transferred to the piezo nanoparticles. While adding more ceramic would increase the energy efficiency, it comes with the tradeoff of less flexibility. "The hard ceramics in the soft polymer is like stones in water," said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering, Penn State. "You can slap the surface of the water, but little force is transferred to the stones. We call that strain-transfer capability." Almost three decades ago, the late Penn State materials scientist Bob Newnham came up with the concept that the connectivity of the piezo filler determined the efficiency of the piezoelectric effect. A three-dimensional material would be more efficient than what he classified as zero-dimensional nanoparticles, one-dimensional nanowires or two-dimensional films, because the mechanical energy would be transported directly through the three-dimensional material instead of dissipating into the polymer matrix. "Bob Newnham was a legend in the field of piezoelectrics," said Wang. "so everybody in the ceramic community knew of his approach, but how to achieve that 3-D structure with a well-defined microstructure remained a mystery." The secret ingredient to solve the mystery turned out to be a cheap polyurethane foam dusting sheet that can be purchased at any home improvement store. The small uniform protrusions on the sheet act as a template for forming the microstructure of the piezoelectric ceramic. The researchers applied the ceramic to the polyurethane sheet in the form of suspended nanoparticles in solution. When the template and solution are heated to a high enough temperature, the sheet burns out and the solution crystalizes into a solid 3-D microform foam with uniform holes. They then fill the holes in the ceramic foam with polymer. "We see that this 3-D composite has a much higher energy output under different modes," said Wang. "We can stretch it, bend it, press it. And at the same time, it can be used as a pyroelectric energy harvester if there is a temperature gradient of at least a few degrees." Sulin Zhang, professor of engineering science and mechanics, Penn State is the other corresponding author on the paper that appears in Energy and Environmental Science. Zhang and his students were responsible for extensive computational work simulating the piezoelectric performance of the 3-D composite. "We were able to show theoretically that the piezoelectric performance of nanoparticle/nanowire composites is critically limited by the large disparity in stiffness of the polymer matrix and piezoceramics, but the 3-D composite foam is not limited by stiffness," said Zhang. "This is the fundamental difference between these composite materials, which speaks to the innovation of this new 3-D composite. Our extensive simulations further demonstrate this idea." Currently, Wang and his collaborators are working with lead-free and more environmentally friendly alternatives to the current lead-zirconium-titanate ceramic. "This is a very general method," said Wang. "This is to demonstrate the concept, based on Bob Newnham's work. It is good to continue the work of a Penn State legend and to advance this field." Additional authors on the article, "Flexible three-dimensional interconnected piezoelectric ceramic foam based composites for highly efficient concurrent mechanical and thermal energy harvesting," are co-lead authors Guangzu Zhang, formerly in Wang's group and now at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China; and Peng Zhao, a doctoral student in Zhang's group. Other contributors are Xiaoshin Zhang, Kuo Han, Tiankai Zhao, Yong Zhang, Chang Kyu Jeong and Shenglin Jiang. Support for this work was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Science Foundation of China, and the National Key Research and Development Program of China

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology created the first thermally stable organic molecular nanowire devices using a single 4.5-nm-long molecule placed inside electroless gold-plated nanogap electrodes. The traditional methods and materials used for the fabrication of modern integrated circuits are close to reaching (or have probably already reached) their ultimate physical limitations regarding the size of the final product. In other words, further miniaturization of electronic devices is nearly impossible without delving into other types of materials and technology, such as organic molecular electronic devices. However, this class of devices generally operates properly only at extremely low temperatures because of the thermal fluctuations of both the organic molecules and the metal electrodes. While special electroless gold-plated nanogap electrodes, called ELGP electrodes, have demonstrated exceptional thermal stability at their gap, new classes of molecular wires have to be developed to address the aforementioned issue. Because of this, a team of scientists, including Professor Yutaka Majima from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), focused on a 4.5-nm-long molecule called disulfanyl carbon-bridged oligo-(phenylenevinylene), or COPV6(SH)2 for short. This molecule has a rigid rod-like pi-conjugated system, which is electronically and spatially isolated from its surrounding by four 4-octylphenyl groups. The molecule has two sulfhydryl terminals, which may or may not bind chemically with the opposing gold surfaces of an ELGP nanogap. Interestingly, the research team found that when the COPV6(SH)2 molecule binds with gold surfaces in a specific way, called SAuSH, the resulting device shows the characteristic behavior of coherent resonant electron-tunneling devices, which have an array of potential applications in electronics and nanotechnological fields. Most importantly, the resulting device was thermally stable, showing similar current vs. voltage curves both at 9 and 300 K. This had not been achieved before using flexible organic molecular wires. However there are multiple ways in which the COPV6(SH)2 molecule can bind at the ELGP nanogap, and the team currently has no way to control the type of device they will get. Despite that, they measured the electrical characteristics of the devices they obtained in order to explain in detail the underlying quantum mechanisms that determine their behavior. In addition, they verified their findings with theoretically derived values and, by doing this, they further reinforced their knowledge on the operating principle of the SAuSH device and the other possible configurations. The next challenge is to obtain a better yield of the SAuSH device, because their yield was less than 1 %. The team believes that the rigidity and high molecular weight of the molecule, as well as the stability of ELGP electrodes, would be responsible for the high stability of the resulting device and its low yield. Given the many possible variations of the COPVn class of molecules and the various ELGP nanogap configurations, the yield problem may be resolved via adjustments in the methods and the characteristics of the molecules and gaps used. The data reported in this work will provide a foundation for future molecular-scale electronic research.

I deside to close this thread, so please admin to close it.

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Done; I totally forgot to add this in description.

Taylor Swift has reportedly fallen out with her backing dancer Kim 'Toshi' Davidson for allegedly posting sexist memes on social media. The Shake It Off singer hired Toshi for her 1989 tour back in 2014, but he was noticeably absent from her performance at BBC Music's Biggest Weekend last weekend (26-27May18) after they reportedly had a confrontation about his Instagram posts. "Taylor is livid and seriously disappointed with Toshi's social media posts," a source told Britain's The Sun newspaper. "She has considered him one her closest friends on the road after recruiting him for her 1989 tour back in 2014. And she even donated thousands to his nephew Ayden, who sadly lost his life, to help with cancer treatment. "But she feels his posts were absolutely unacceptable, especially in the current climate of the #MeToo movement... She feels she simply cannot endorse this behaviour and to do so would be setting a bad example to her fans." The dancer reportedly shared a meme on his Instagram Story which mocked the Australia women's soccer team, telling them to go back to the kitchen, and another which featured the words "every girls weakness" above pictures of chloroform, a van, and the woods. The account has since been made private. Taylor and Toshi were reportedly close friends and their confrontation has led to tensions backstage on her tour. The Bad Blood singer's eagle-eyed fans were quick to notice Toshi wasn't by her side as she performed at the festival in Swansea over the weekend, during a break in her Reputation World Tour. On Friday, she performed in Denver, Colorado and made one fan's day by meeting her backstage after her mum Andrea spotted paramedics treating a 10-year-old girl named Alexis who had suffered a seizure. Alexis was taken backstage after the concert to meet Swift, who handed her a treasure trove of tour memorabilia, including the sweater she rehearsed in before the show and the blanket from her dressing room. "I'm thankful for Taylor's parents for being so concerned for her when they didn't have to (be)," Alexis' mother Karen told Just Jared. "I'm thankful for Taylor wanting to take the time to meet her and give her a hug." Taylor's representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Music-News.com is proud to host the exclusive world premiere of 'Burn Me Down' by Christopher Shayne. https://youtu.be/VgbaYuRsct8 When divulging into a new sonic voyage, most artists are told to pick a lane and stick to it. Arizona byproduct Christopher Shayne wanted to take a different route when deciding to embark on a sonic journey of his own. Shayne’s rebellious and outlaw-like nature shines through in his latest single “Burn Me Down.” Christopher Shayne is no stranger to the desperado way of life. He's always stuck true to the ideology of doing what you want, whenever you want, wherever you want, while sticking it to the man. As the former driving force behind Phoenix based band Whiskey Six, Shayne was able to seamlessly perfect his songwriting and guide the band to embrace their unique take on southwestern rock music. After a successful run with Whiskey Six, Shayne had a desire to create something new, and construct his desired blend of classic southern and blues influenced rock, complete with modern tones and contemporary twists. Wanting to stay true to his band, Christopher Shayne composed a 12-track record with former Whiskey Six lead guitar-slinger Dave Lansing entitled Turning Stones. Shayne's latest rocker is “Burn Me Down,” an explosive toe-curler that encapsulates everything he's about. Featuring Matt Sorum (Guns and Roses, Velvet Revolver, and The Cult) on drums, Chris Chaney (Jane's Addiction) on bass, and Railo (Ozzy) on keys, "Burn Me Down" tells the story of the general dissatisfaction with growing up and the harsh reality of how the world really is. No matter your social status, you will always face this hard and cold truth at some point of your life, need to be ready to do battle, and happily step down onto the elbow thrashing level of reality. He goes a step further to call out the music industry and share his personal story of what artists and musicians go through daily to fight their good fight. Shayne has never been afraid of pushing the envelope, in fact, he literally shreds it. An intense illustration of personal moments of hardship, rebellion, and triumph is what viewers can expect upon their first viewing of the “Burn Me Down” music video. Entering real life scenarios that people far and wide face, bring to fruition the disillusion of life that many people have. The personal rebellion against expectation increases as the video progresses, and our protagonists become more and more defiant of today's societal norms. Although “Burn Me Down” highlights many negatives and hardships that life can bring you, Shayne wants to emphasize that working through your tough times with a carefree spirit will make everything worthwhile. Before your solo project you played in the band Whiskey Six. What have been the biggest differences between writing music as Christopher Shayne and when you were writing music for Whiskey Six? Whiskey Six was geared for a heavier audience towards the end of the project. As the band grew and started to find itself, it started to get darker and heavier. My writing partner, Dave Lansing, and I wanted to break away those chains and write where that project started. Christopher Shayne and Whiskey Six as a whole share the same influences, but look at them from different angles. There’s still a little darkness in some Christopher Shayne songs, and I don’t think we’ll ever get away from that as it’s just my point of view at this point; but, we’re also able to express songs with less aggression and tackle themes that just wouldn’t have worked in what Whiskey Six turned into. So Christopher Shayne is Dave and I writing for us, the way we want, and able to say the things we otherwise couldn’t. It’s been a great, freeing experience! You've just released the music video for "Burn Me Down"; what was the inspiration for the song? The song has a couple different themes. The verses are cynical looks at the world at large bordering on political at times; while the chorus takes those themes and transfers them into a self-discovery. Not to borrow a motif from the song, but a sort of “rising from the ashes” idea. The verses are about growing up today and realizing the promises the generation before you instilled… just aren’t there. Instead we’re left with narcissism and over-medication, while our entertainment and media are pushing safe ideas without risk. The chorus is more personal, in that it internalizes those views and comes out the other side stronger by being destroyed and rebuilt time and time and again. How is "Burn Me Down" different from the songs featured on your album Turning Stones? Previously, before we even knew Christopher Shayne would turn into the thing it has now become, I was afraid to explore some more direct and darker tones. Turning Stones was an experiment for us in what worked and what didn’t. I’ve learned a lot since that record’s release and this song (and the ones to follow) is a continuation of honing Dave’s and my point of view. This is song in particular is us finally combining our deep blues background, a little country twang, and our edgy rock to deliver something new. In your own words, what is the story of the "Burn Me Down" video? This video continues the music theme of “self-empowerment through destruction” and highlights a handful of personal rebellion. The video goes through everyone’s own personal struggle and their middle fingers to those that would otherwise keep them down. From our office hero who goes all out, to the bullied finally getting a reprieve from the day; everyone has some way to rebel and this video honors them and those who relate. The song features Matt Sorum (Guns and Roses, Velvet Revolvet, and The Cult) on drums, Chris Chaney (Jane's Addiction) on bass, and Railo (Ozzy) on keys; what was it like working with all these accomplished musicians? Such a blast! It was very cool hearing the different perspectives and being in a room making new sounds with people who have such esteemed backgrounds. It’s definitely one thing to hear the stories from the people themselves (and there were some GREAT stories I’m not allowed to share), but it’s another to sit a comb through creative ideas to make something on the other. You can really hear the history of each player in this track and others, and it was an absolute blast to see how their muscles flexed when the song allowed them to! It’s also pretty cool to hear such legendary people actually like what you’re working on! Hahahaha. For more info on Christopher Shayne please visit: www.ChristopherShayneMusic.com www.Facebook.com/ChristopherShayneMusic www.Twitter.com/ChrisShayneBand www.instagram.com/ChristopherShayneMusic

Jurassic Park star Jeff Goldblum has landed a major record deal with Decca at the age of 65. The actor and his jazz band, The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, have become regulars at festivals around the U.S. in recent years, and Jeff regularly performs at venues in Los Angeles as well as at the fabled Cafe Carlyle in New York City. But it was his performance with Gregory Porter on the BBC’s Graham Norton Show last year (17) that prompted interest from Decca bosses in the U.K., who flew to Los Angeles to meet with him.? "I’m so happy to be in cahoots with the wonderful people at Decca, one of the coolest and most prestigious labels of all time," Goldblum tells WENN. The movie star began playing the piano when he was a child and he took classical lessons but quickly switched to jazz. As a teenager he was playing in cocktail lounges in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When he’s not working on location, Goldblum hosts a weekly jazz variety show at Los Angeles’ Rockwell Table and Stage, where he’s been playing for the last few years. Tom Lewis, the director of A&R for Decca, insists the actor has a very bright future as a jazz artist: "As far as I can tell, everyone loves Jeff Goldblum. It’s like a universal truth. We are delighted to welcome him to Decca. "He’s a fantastic jazz pianist, a great band leader and just about the loveliest man in the world. His love of jazz is infectious and whenever he plays he makes you feel very happy. If we can take Jeff’s music into people’s homes then we will be helping, in our own small way, to make the world a happier place."

Pusha T has accused Drake of having a secret son in a new diss track. The rapper stepped up his feud with the Hotline Bling star by releasing the new diss track The Story of Adidon, which is mixed over the beat for Jay-Z's The Story of O.J., in which he takes shots at Drake's childhood and claims he's "hiding a child" named Adonis. "Since you name-dropped my fiancee, Let ‘em know who you chose as your Beyonce, Sophie knows better, ask your baby mother, Cleaned her up for IG, but the stench is on her," Pusha raps. "A baby’s involved, it’s deeper than rap, We talkin’ character, let me keep with the facts, You are hiding a child, let that boy come home, Deadbeat motherf**ker playin’ border patrol, ooh. "Adonis is your son, And he deserves more than an Adidas press run, that’s real, Love that baby, respect that girl, Forget she’s a porn star, let her be your world." Pusha refers to former adult film star Sophie Brussaux, who alleged Drake got her pregnant. The Canadian star's representatives denied the claims in a statement last year. "This woman has a very questionable background. She has admitted to having multiple relationships. We understand she may have problems getting into the United States. She's one of many women claiming he (Drake) got them pregnant," the statement read. "If it is in fact Drake's child, which he does not believe, he would do the right thing by the child." In addition to the lovechild accusation, Pusha also name drops both Drake's parents and references Drake’s father’s absence when he was a child. The artwork accompanying the diss track shows a younger Drake with his face covered in black paint. Their feud began last week when Pusha accused Drake of not writing his own lyrics on Infrared, a track from new album Daytona, which was produced by Kanye West, and Drake responded by taking aim at them both on Duppy Freestyle.

Ozzy Osbourne - The Prince Of Darkness and one of the most iconic names in rock music - is to be honoured as 2018’s Golden God at The Metal Hammer Golden God Awards 2018 in association with Monster Energy. This is the evening’s most prestigious accolade that honours the most inspirational, important and groundbreaking artists in rock and metal history. The award ceremony will take place at Indigo at The O2, London, on Monday, June 11, capping off what is always the UK's biggest weekend in rock and metal. This is an award ceremony all about the fans and tickets are on sale now for just £15. As well as the award ceremony there will be live performances from Baroness, with an incredible headliner to be announced imminently. Tickets are available at http://bit.ly/2KTqpLX. With a career dating back almost five decades, Ozzy Osbourne’s status sees him rightly revered as one of the most important - and, at times - infamous figureheads in all of rock and metal. In 1969 he founded the legendary Black Sabbath alongside Tony, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward, with the four men going on to invent and popularise the genre of music that’d come to be known as heavy metal. Ozzy’s original tenure with the band produced some of the greatest albums in metal’s long history, initially fronting the band for ten years and eight albums. After being kicked out of Sabbath in 1979, he released his debut solo album The Blizzard of Ozz, which was met with global critical and commercial acclaim. In all, Ozzy has released 11 solo records and nine with Black Sabbath - including the band’s 2013 reunion album, 13 - resulting in sales of over 100 million. His touring schedule has been unrelenting, playing sold out shows in stadiums and arenas around the world for almost 50 years solid, and it shows no signs of waning, with him currently in the middle of The No More Tours 2 Tour that will see him headline Download Festival on 10 June. Previous recipients of the Golden God Award include Motorhead legend Lemmy, Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine and Rob Zombie amongst others. “It just doesn’t get any bigger than this,” says Metal Hammer Editor, Merlin Alderslade. “The Prince Of Darkness, the most iconic name in heavy metal, a man without whom these very awards, this very magazine - hell, our very culture - would quite simply not exist. Seeing Ozzy walk out on that stage at the Indigo on June 11 is going to be unmissable. We can’t wait to share what will be a very special moment with you all. All aboard!” Metal Hammer is the biggest and best heavy metal magazine on the planet, and Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta will host this, their 16th annual Metal Hammer Golden God Awards in association with Monster Energy ceremony. Metal Hammer put on this show for the people who truly matter – the fans. As well as the awards that are a combination of reader-voted and editorially chosen, there will be live music from Meshuggah, Baroness, Carpenter Brut, Myrkur and the show’s headliners, who will be announced June 1. In previous years, there have been headline sets from Motörhead, Mastodon, Anthrax, Steel Panther and many more.