2D boundaries could create electricity

There's still plenty of room at the bottom to generate piezoelectricity. Engineers at Rice University and their colleagues are showing the way.

Researchers create flow-driven rotors at the nanoscale

Researchers from TU Delft have constructed the smallest flow-driven motors in the world. Inspired by iconic Dutch windmills and biological motor proteins, they created a self-configuring, flow-driven rotor from DNA that converts ...

A zigzag blueprint for topological electronics

A collaborative study led by the University of Wollongong confirms switching mechanism for a new, proposed generation of ultra-low energy topological electronics.

What makes plants electrically excitable

Plant cells use electrical signals to process and transmit information. In 1987, as a postdoc of Erwin Neher in Göttingen, biophysicist Rainer Hedrich discovered an ion channel in the central vacuole of the plant cell, which ...

Remote high-voltage sensor unveiled

Ever since the first human placed a bare hand on an uninsulated electric line, people have refrained from personally testing energetic materials. Even meters made of metal can melt at high voltages.

Filming the thermal death of electrons in matter

It is well known that an electric current increases the temperature of the material through which it is conducted due to the so-called Joule effect. This effect, which is used daily in domestic and industrial heaters, hair ...

Ultracold transistors serve as their own memory devices

Digital transistors—assembled by the billions in today's computer chips—act as near-perfect electronic switches. In the "on" position, achieved when an above-threshold voltage is applied to the device, the transistor ...

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