Aurelia Butler

Stress enhances the properties of a promising material for future technologies.
UNSW researchers find a new exotic state of one of the most promising multiferroic materials, with exciting implications for future technologies using these enhanced properties.
Combining a careful balance of thin-film strain, distortion, and thickness, the team has stabilised a new intermediate phase in one of the few known room-temperature multiferroic materials.
The theoretical and experimental US-Australian study shows that this new phase has an electromechanical figure of merit over double its usual value, and that we can even transform between this intermediate phase to other phases easily using an electric field.
As well as providing a valuable new technique to the toolkit of all international material scientists working with multiferroics and epitaxy, the results finally shed light on how epitaxial techniques can be used to enhance functional response of materials for future application in next -generation devices.
STRESS CHANGES EVERYTHING
If 2020-21 has taught us anything, it’s that stress changes everything. Even the most ‘together’ person can struggle and change given enough stress in their life. More

In high-performance CPUs used in large servers and power semiconductors used in inverters for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), as the integration density rises and the higher the power consumption becomes, the semiconductor package is also becoming smaller. Therefore, the power consumption per area of the semiconductor increases. As a result, the heat generation density increases, and the current situation is that the heat removal limit from the device is approaching.
JST commissioned the company-led phase NexTEP-B type development project of Adaptable and Seamless Technology Transfer Program through Target-driven R&D (A-STEP*) “high-performance in-vehicle cooler with spontaneous cooling promotion mechanism” to Lotus Thermal Solutions Co., Ltd. to proceed the practical development based on the research results of Professor Kazuhisa Yuki et al. of Sanyo-Onoda City University.
In the research by Professor Yuki et al., they realized the structure hard for occurring the film boiling by engraving about 1 mm wide grooves at a regular interval on a heat conductor, such a copper, which contacts with a heating element, and combining it with a lotus metal. Lotus Thermal Solution has established a method that determines the appropriate groove cross-sectional areas and pore diameters according to the refrigerant, and developed a highly efficient boiling immersion cooler (1) using lotus metals (2). Silicon carbide (SiC), which is expected as a next-generation power semiconductor, has a heat generation density of 300 to 500 watts per square centimeter (W/cm2). Thus, to use SiC in devices, a cooler with a critical heat flux (CHF) (3) larger than this heat generation density is required. In this development, we succeeded in increasing CHF from about 200 W/cm2 of the conventional cooler to 530 W/cm2 or more by using the boiling promotion technology using lotus metals.
The boiling immersion cooler prototyped in this development has the capability to cool the inverter with Si semiconductors and SiC semiconductors and is expected as a technology to solve the heat concentration problem of in-vehicle power semiconductors with increasingly high heat generation density. Furthermore, this technology is considered as a highly efficient cooling technology for CPUs for conventional workstations and large-scale servers.
(1) Boiling immersion cooling
This is a method that a liquid refrigerant is boiled with the heat of a heat source and then cooled. The conventional cooling method uses the temperature difference for heat transfer from the heat source to the refrigerant such as water or air, and it cools by natural convection or forced convection. However boiling cooling can utilize latent heat of evaporation (heat of vaporization) when vaporizing; therefore, it is said to have cooling capacity several times that of the conventional method.
(2) Lotus metal
This is a lotus root-like porous metal in which many elongated pores are arranged in the same direction. It has cooling characteristics owing to a refrigerant flowing through the pores. When a molten metal containing hydrogen is solidified, pores are formed by hydrogen that cannot completely be dissolved in the molten metal. Utilizing this phenomenon, lotus metals can be produced at a low cost.
(3) Critical Heat Flux CHF
When the heat load increases in boiling immersion cooling, the nucleate boiling with a good heat transfer efficiency cannot be maintained at certain point, and suddenly transitions to film boiling where the heating surface is covered with a vapor film. The heat flux (heat flow per unit area, unit [W/cm2]) at the transition point is called the critical heat flux.
*A-STEP is a technology transfer support program whose aim is to put the research results by public research institutes into practical applications as important technology in the national economy, and thus to give some of their profit back to society.
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Materials provided by Japan Science and Technology Agency. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. More

A novel electronic component from TU Wien (Vienna) could be an important key to the era of quantum information technology: Using a tailored manufacturing process, pure germanium is bonded with aluminium in a way that atomically sharp interfaces are created. This results in a so-called monolithic metal-semiconductor-metal heterostructure.
This structure shows unique effects that are particularly evident at low temperatures. The aluminium becomes superconducting — but not only that, this property is also transferred to the adjacent germanium semiconductor and can be specifically controlled with electric fields. This makes it excellently suited for complex applications in quantum technology, such as processing quantum bits. A particular advantage is that using this approach, it is not necessary to develop completely new fabrication technologies. Instead, well established semiconductor fabrication techniques can be used to enable germanium-based quantum electronics. The results have now been published in the journal Advanced Materials.
Germanium: difficult to form high-quality contacts
“Germanium is a material which will definitely play an important role in semiconductor technology for the development of faster and more energy-efficient components,” says Dr. Masiar Sistani from the Institute for Solid State Electronics at TU Wien. However, if it is used to produce components on a nanometre scale, major problems arise: the material makes it extremely difficult to produce high-quality electrical contacts. This is related to the high impact of even smallest impurities at the contact points that significantly alter the electrical properties. “We have therefore set ourselves the task of developing a new manufacturing method that enables reliable and reproducible contact properties,” says Masiar Sistani.
Diffusing atoms
The key is temperature: when nanometre-structured germanium and aluminium are brought into contact and heated, the atoms of both materials begin to diffuse into the neighbouring material — but to very different extents: the germanium atoms move rapidly into the aluminium, whereas aluminium hardly diffuses into the germanium at all. “Thus, if you connect two aluminium contacts to a thin germanium nanowire and raise the temperature to 350 degrees Celsius, the germanium atoms diffuse off the edge of the nanowire. This creates empty spaces into which the aluminium can then easily penetrate,” explains Masiar Sistani. “In the end, only a few nanometre area in the middle of the nanowire consists of germanium, the rest has been filled up by aluminium.”
Normally, aluminium is made up of tiny crystal grains, but this novel fabrication method forms a perfect single crystal in which the aluminium atoms are arranged in a uniform pattern. As can be seen under the transmission electron microscope, a perfectly clean and atomically sharp transition is formed between germanium and aluminium, with no disordered region in between. In contrast to conventional methods where electrical contacts are applied to a semiconductor, for example by evaporating a metal, no oxides can form at the boundary layer.
Quantum transport in Grenoble
In order to take a closer look at the properties of this monolithic metal-semiconductor heterostructure of germanium and aluminium at low temperature, we collaborated with Dr. Olivier Buisson and Dr. Cécile Naud from the quantum electronics circuits group at Néel Institute — CNRS-UGA in Grenoble. It turned out that the novel structure indeed has quite remarkable properties: “Not only were we able to demonstrate superconductivity in pure, undoped germanium for the first time, we were also able to show that this structure can be switched between quite different operating states using electric fields. Such a germanium quantum dot device can not only be superconducting but also completely insulating, or it can behave like a Josephson transistor, an important basic element of quantum electronic circuits,” explains Masiar Sistani.
This new heterostructure combines a whole range of advantages: The structure has excellent physical properties needed for quantum technologies, such as high carrier mobility and excellent manipulability with electric fields, and it has the additional advantage of fitting well with already established microelectronics technologies: Germanium is already used in current chip architectures and the temperatures required for heterostructure formation are compatible with well-established semiconductor processing schemes. The novel structures not only have theoretically interesting quantum properties, but also opens up a technologically very realistic possibility of enabling further novel and energy-saving devices.
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Materials provided by Vienna University of Technology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. More

Materials consisting of a few atomic layers display properties determined by quantum physics. In a stack of such layers, vibrations of the atoms can be triggered by infrared light. New experimental and theoretical work shows that atomic vibrations within the layers of hexagonal boron nitride, the so-called transverse optical phonons, couple directly to motions of the layers against each other. For a period of some 20 ps, the coupling results in a frequency down-shift of the optical phonons and their optical resonance. This behavior is a genuine property of the quantum material and of interest for applications in high-frequency optoelectronics.
Hexagonal boron nitride consist of layers in which covalently bonded boron and nitrogen atoms form a regular array of six-rings. Neighboring layers are coupled via the much weaker van der Waals interaction. Vibrations of boron and nitrogen atoms in the layer, the so-called transverse optical (TO) phonons, show an oscillation frequency on the order of 40 Terahertz (THz, 4×1013 vibrations per second) which is ten to hundred times higher than that of shear and breathing motions of the layers relative to each other. So far, there was nearly no insight into the lifetime of such motions after optical excitation and into their coupling.
An international collaboration of scientists from Berlin, Montpellier, Nantes, Paris and Ithaca (USA) now presents detailed experimental and theoretical results on ultrafast dynamics of coupled phonons in few-layer hexagonal boron nitride. Transverse optical (TO) phonons in a stack of 8 to 9 boron nitride layers display a lifetime of 1.2 ps (1 ps = 10-12 s), while shear and breathing modes show a decay time of 22 ps. Such lifetimes were directly measured in femtosecond pump-probe experiments and are in very good agreement with values derived from a theoretical analysis of the phonon decay channels.
Excitations of shear and breathing modes induce a characteristic spectral down-shift of the TO phonon resonance in the optical spectra . Theoretical calculations give the coupling energy between the different modes of the layer stack and show that the corresponding coupling is negligibly small in a bulk boron nitride crystal consisting of many layers. Thus, the observed coupled vibrational dynamics represent a genuine property of the quantum material.
The spectral shift of the TO phonon resonance in the optical spectra is a nonlinear optical effect which can be induced by light of moderate power. This is of interest for applications in optoelectronics and holds potential for optical modulators and switches in the giga- to terahertz frequency range.
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Materials provided by Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI). Note: Content may be edited for style and length. More

A new study from UCLA finds a visit from human-controlled robot encourages a positive outlook and improves medical interactions for hospitalized children.
Robin is a social companion robot that stands at about 4 feet tall and has the capabilities to move, talk and play with others while being remotely controlled by humans. Specialists from UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital’s Chase Child Life Program conducted hour-long video visits with young patients using Robin, comparing it to interactions using a standard tablet, from October 2020 to April 2021. At the conclusion of the study period, children and their parents were interviewed about their experiences and child life specialists provided feedback in a focus group. Researchers then used a transcript of the discussion to identify recurrent and salient themes.
Ninety percent of parents who had a visit with Robin indicated they were “extremely likely” to request another visit, compared to 60% of parents whose children interacted with the tablet. Children reported a 29% increase in positive affect — described as the tendency to experience the world in a positive way, including emotions, interactions with others and with life’s challenges — after a visit with Robin and a 33% decrease in negative affect. Children who had a tablet visit reported a 43% decrease in positive affect and a 33% decrease in negative affect.
Parents whose children had a visit from Robin reported their children had no change in positive affect and a 75% decrease in negative affect. Parents whose children had a tablet visit reported their children had a 16% increase in positive affect and no change in negative affect.
The study is being presented on October 11 at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference.
Child life specialists who oversaw visits with Robin reported benefits that included a greater display of intimacy and interactivity during play, increased control over their hospital experience and the formation of a new, trusting friendship.
“Our team has demonstrated that a social companion robot can go beyond video chats on a tablet to give us a more imaginative and profound way to make the hospital less stressful,” said Justin Wagner, MD, a pediatric surgeon at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital and senior author of the study. “As the pandemic continues, our patients are still feeling anxious and vulnerable in a variety of ways, so it’s critical that we be as creative as possible to make their experiences easier when they need our help.”
“We saw the positive effect in children, their families and healthcare workers,” adds Wagner. The analysis also suggests benefits to staff, including an increased sense of intimacy with and focus on the patient, increased staff engagement in social care and relative ease in maintaining infection control practices.
In the study, child life specialists also reported the challenges of limited time for patient encounters and a learning curve for operating Robin.
The authors say the evidence illustrates benefits for young patients and supports the incorporation of a social robot like Robin in an inpatient pediatric multidisciplinary care setting.
The study’s other authors are Dr. Gabriel Oland, Joseph Wertz, W. Scott Comulada, Valentina Ogaryan, Megan Pike, and Dr. Shant Shekherdimian of UCLA. More

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators have devised and tested a new, highly sensitive method of detecting and counting defects in transistors — a matter of urgent concern to the semiconductor industry as it develops new materials for next-generation devices. These defects limit transistor and circuit performance and can affect product reliability.
A typical transistor is, for most uses, basically a switch. When it’s on, current flows from one side of a semiconductor to the other; switching it off stops the current. Those actions respectively create the binary 1s and 0s of digital information.
Transistor performance critically depends on how reliably a designated amount of current will flow. Defects in the transistor material, such as unwanted “impurity” regions or broken chemical bonds, interrupt and destabilize the flow. These defects can manifest themselves immediately or over a period of time while the device is operating.
Over many years, scientists have found numerous ways to classify and minimize those effects.
But defects become harder to identify as transistor dimensions become almost unimaginably small and switching speeds very high. For some promising semiconductor materials in development — such as silicon carbide (SiC) instead of silicon (Si) alone for novel high-energy, high-temperature devices — there has been no simple and straightforward way to characterize defects in detail.
“The method we developed works with both traditional Si and SiC, allowing us for the first time to identify not only the type of defect but the number of them in a given space with a simple DC measurement,” said NIST’s James Ashton, who conducted the research with colleagues at NIST and Pennsylvania State University. They published their results on October 6 in the Journal of Applied Physics. The research focuses on interactions between the two kinds of electrical charge carriers in a transistor: negatively charged electrons and positively charged “holes,” which are spaces where an electron is missing from the local atomic structure. More

Wearable sensors to monitor everything from step count to heart rate are nearly ubiquitous. But for scenarios such as measuring the onset of frailty in older adults, promptly diagnosing deadly diseases, testing the efficacy of new drugs or tracking the performance of professional athletes, medical-grade devices are needed.
University of Arizona engineers have developed a type of wearable they call a “biosymbiotic device,” which has several unprecedented benefits. Not only are the devices custom 3D-printed and based on body scans of wearers, but they can operate continuously using a combination of wireless power transfer and compact energy storage. The team, led by Philipp Gutruf, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and Craig M. Berge Faculty Fellow in the College of Engineering, published its findings today in the journal Science Advances.
“There’s nothing like this out there,” said Gutruf, a member of the university’s BIO5 Institute. “We introduce a completely new concept of tailoring a device directly to a person and using wireless power casting to allow the device to operate 24/7 without ever needing to recharge.”
Custom Fit Enables Precise Monitoring
Current wearable sensors face various limitations. Smartwatches, for example, need to be charged, and they can only gather limited amounts of data due to their placement on the wrist. By using 3D scans of a wearer’s body, which can be gathered via methods including MRIs, CT scans and even carefully combined smartphone images, Gutruf and his team can 3D-print custom-fitted devices that wrap around various body parts. Think a virtually unnoticeable, lightweight, breathable, mesh cuff designed specifically for your bicep, calf or torso. The ability to specialize sensor placement allows researchers to measure physiological parameters they otherwise couldn’t.
“If you want something close to core body temperature continuously, for example, you’d want to place the sensor in the armpit. Or, if you want to measure the way your bicep deforms during exercise, we can place a sensor in the devices that can accomplish that,” said Tucker Stuart, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering and first author on the paper. “Because of the way we fabricate the device and attach it to the body, we’re able to use it to gather data a traditional, wrist-mounted wearable device wouldn’t be able to collect.”
Because these biosymbiotic devices are custom fitted to the wearer, they’re also highly sensitive. Gutruf’s team tested the device’s ability to monitor parameters including temperature and strain while a person jumped, walked on a treadmill and used a rowing machine. In the rowing machine test, subjects wore multiple devices, tracking exercise intensity and the way muscles deformed with fine detail. The devices were accurate enough to detect body temperature changes induced by walking up a single flight of stairs. More

As the popularity of fitness trackers has increased, so have the opportunities to use such devices to not only track fitness goals but also increase the motivation to meet those goals. Researchers in the College of Engineering and the College of Health and Human Development at Penn State have teamed up to use control systems engineering tools to tailor motivational messages sent to individual device users.
The results of their study were published today (Oct. 7) in Health Psychology.
“One of the really exciting advances of the last 15 years has been the advent of wearable and portable consumer technology that can be used to help promote physical activity,” said David Conroy, professor of kinesiology and human development and family studies, and co-principal investigator on the paper. “You can get real-time feedback from these devices and monitor your goals, and you can even push people messages, depending on what their goals are and what their behavior is. We know that those messages work well for improving behavior on average. But nobody is average, and we don’t know how to make sure each individual consistently gets the greatest benefit from a limited number of messages.”
Conroy said that researchers have tried several strategies, including messages that are specific to certain population segments; messages based on recent behavior — for example, sending one of two different messages depending on if a user did or did not meet their goals the previous day; and customizing the messages by putting in a person’s name or something they might like. So far, none of these approaches has proven to be consistently effective in improving the messages’ effects.
The new messaging approach developed by Conroy and Constantino Lagoa, co-principal investigator and professor of electrical engineering, applies tools used regularly in controlled systems engineering to behavior science.
“Essentially, we’re using the same mathematical tools that people in control engineering usually use to model behaviors as differential equations,” Lagoa said. “We’re using those models to design feedback controllers that take into account the current state of the person and together with the model decide what is the best time to send the messages.”
Conroy emphasized that establishing the correct dosing — meaning the type of message and its timing, frequency and context — is a critical part to this approach. More