Natural Sciences - Materials Science

Let information flow faster - with light instead of electricity

Either 1 or 0. Either current flows or it does not. In electronics, everything is controlled via the binary system. Electrons already generate information quite fast and well, pass them on and take over various switching functions. But it can be done even faster. Paul Herrmann and Sebastian Klimmer from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena have proven that. To this end, the two doctoral students at the Institute of Solid State Physics have experimented with monocrystalline 2D materials and laser light. They combined the well-known physical method of frequency doubling of light with a special material property, valleypolarization, and achieved astonishing results.

Physics - May 22

ToCoTronics Extended

The Collaborative Research Centre ToCoTronics in condensed matter physics will be extended for four more years. The German Research Foundation is funding it with 12 million euros.

Materials Science - May 12

New glass from the computer

Glass is a very special material: it can be produced in almost unlimited variety from compounds of almost all elements of the periodic table.

Materials Science - May 19

Specially coated titanium reduces risk of clots on prostheses

Around 25,000 artificial heart valves are implanted in Germany per year because the original heart valve is damaged, for example, by an infection.

Physics - Apr 28

More power from waste heat

When fossil fuels, but also biofuels, are burned, large amounts of the energy are lost as waste heat. Thermoelectric materials could convert this heat into electricity, but they are not yet efficient enough for technical application. A team from the Max Planck Institut für Eisenforschung has now increased the efficiency of a thermoelectric material by elucidating the influence of the microstructure on the material and optimizing the material's properties by adding titanium.

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