April 18, 2008
OK, very quick post as just about purely B-E-A-utiful technology. Below is the newest prototype OLED screen from Sony, as recently (today) mentioned on GIZMODO.com.
STUNNING. At 0.01inches thick and a still impressive resolution of 960×540, it makes me, quite frankly, sick.
Read more at GIZMODO.
interestedinscience.com © 2008
April 18, 2008
Well, it has been rumoured for a while now and its properties as a potential silicon-replacement have been exhalted for several years, but it looks that finally the worlds smallest transistors will be graphene based.
In science yesterday a team at Manchester have reported the development of a transistor made of graphene only 1 atom thick (graphene is a flat molecule - the graphite in your pencil is many sheets of graphene) and 10 atoms long.
This is (pardon the magnitude-based pun) huge news!
Ever since Richard Feynman’s lectures on the potential for miniaturization of circuitry, nanoscience has been one of the (if not in fact THE) fastest growing areas of science. And this latest development is at the very frontier and epitomizes what I’m sure Prof Feynman was hinting at.
The paper can be read in full at the following link (if you have access). If you don’t there is a well written commentary here on the BBC website.
There is also a commentary (Science Perspective doi: 10.1126/science.1156936) on Graphene in the journal science through this link.
The paper from the Manchester group is cited below.
Ponomarenko, L.A., Schedin, F., Katsnelson, M.I., Yang, R., Hill, E.W., Novoselov, K.S., Geim, A.K. (2008). Chaotic Dirac Billiard in Graphene Quantum Dots. Science, 320(5874), 356-358. DOI: 10.1126/science.1154663
interestedinscience.com © 2008
April 12, 2008
I remember posting sometime late last year about the potential for even more memory in your iPod (160Gb just isn’t enough!?!) - Atomic Memory Storage…(01/09/2007) - but here is yet another hint at what the future has in store for us…
Published this week in Science a team at IBM have declared they have a novel way of successfully storing fast and stable memory in something called ‘racetrack’ memory. The idea is that memory is stored on nanowires, and electrons are pushed around the track, moving domains which can be charged one way of another, ultimately as 1 or 0 (binary storage) depending on which way the domain is magnetized.
The journal article is cited below, but the following link should take you to an introductory article in science which explains the science (and controversy it’s causing) with a bit more detail.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/320/5873/166?rss=1
Hayashi, M., Thomas, L., Moriya, R., Rettner, C., Parkin, S.S. (2008). Current-Controlled Magnetic Domain-Wall Nanowire Shift Register. Science, 320(5873), 209-211. DOI: 10.1126/science.1154587
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