Archive
Archive:
08/2014
Farewell to Vandy (Clockwise direction: Newaz, Andrey, Yaqiong, Cher, Yev, Xiao, Blair, Gerilynn, me, Sok (advisor), Kirill)
An ultra-fast and ultra-small optical switch has been invented that could advance the day when photons replace electrons in the innards of consumer products ranging from cell phones to automobiles.
The new optical device can turn on and off trillions of times per second. It consists of individual switches that are only one five-hundredth the width of a human hair (200 nanometers) in diameter. This size is much smaller than the current generation of optical switches and it easily breaks one of the major technical barriers to the spread of electronic devices that detect and control light: miniaturizing the size of ultrafast optical switches.
See also at IEEE spectrum; Science daily; UAB; nanowerk; kurzweil
02/2012
Barrier to faster graphene devices identified and suppressed
Writing in the Mar. 13 issue of the journal Nature Communications, a team of Vanderbilt physicists reports that they have nailed down the source of the interference inhibiting the rapid flow of electrons through graphene-based devices and found a way to suppress it. This discovery allowed them to achieve record-levels of room-temperature electron mobility – the measure of the speed that electrons travel through a material – three times greater than those reported in previous graphene-based devices.
See also at Science Daily, nanowerk, NSF News
02/2010
Bin's Ph.D. defense (From left to right : Philippe Sautet, Jorge Iribas Cerda, Laurence Magaud, me, Joost Wintterlin, Marie-Laure Bocquet (supervisor), Dominique Vuillaume)
