Jan 15, 2024 06:32 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 16, 2024 05:36 PM by C C.)
Dirt-powered fuel cell runs forever
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1031344
About the size of a standard paperback book, the completely soil-powered technology could fuel underground sensors used in precision agriculture and green infrastructure. This potentially could offer a sustainable, renewable alternative to batteries, which hold toxic, flammable chemicals that leach into the ground, are fraught with conflict-filled supply chains and contribute to the ever-growing problem of electronic waste.
To test the new fuel cell, the researchers used it to power sensors measuring soil moisture and detecting touch, a capability that could be valuable for tracking passing animals. To enable wireless communications, the researchers also equipped the soil-powered sensor with a tiny antenna to transmit data to a neighboring base station by reflecting existing radio frequency signals.
Not only did the fuel cell work in both wet and dry conditions, but its power also outlasted similar technologies by 120%.
The research will be published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. The study authors also are releasing all designs, tutorials and simulation tools to the public, so others may use and build upon the research... (MORE - details, no ads)
Solid-state qubits: Forget about being clean, embrace mess
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1031120
INTRO: New findings debunk previous wisdom that solid-state qubits need to be super dilute in an ultra-clean material to achieve long lifetimes. Instead, cram lots of rare-earth ions into a crystal and some will form pairs that act as highly coherent qubits, shows paper in Nature Physics.
Clean lines and minimalism, or vintage shabby chic? It turns out that the same trends that occupy the world of interior design are important when it comes to designing the building blocks of quantum computers.
How to make qubits that retain their quantum information long enough to be useful is one of the major barriers to practical quantum computing. It’s widely accepted that the key to qubits with long lifetimes, or ‘coherences’, is cleanliness. Qubits lose quantum information through a process known as decoherence when they start to interact with their environment. So, conventional wisdom goes, keep them away from each other and from other disturbing influences and they’ll hopefully survive a little longer.
In practice such a ‘minimalistic’ approach to qubit design is problematic. Finding suitable ultra-pure materials is not easy. Furthermore, diluting qubits to the extreme makes scale-up of any resulting technology challenging. Now, surprising results from researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, ETH Zurich and EPFL show how qubits with long lifetimes can exist in a cluttered environment.
“In the long run, how to make it onto a chip is a question that’s universally discussed for all types of qubits. Instead of diluting more and more, we’ve demonstrated a new pathway by which we can squeeze qubits closer together,” states Gabriel Aeppli, head of the Photon Science Division at PSI and professor at ETH Zürich and EPFL, who led the study... (MORE - details, no ads)
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1031344
- New fuel cell harnesses naturally occurring microbes to generate electricity
- Soil-powered sensors to successfully monitor soil moisture and detect touch
- New tech was robust enough to withstand drier soil conditions and flooding
- Fuel cell could replace batteries in sensors used for precision agriculture
About the size of a standard paperback book, the completely soil-powered technology could fuel underground sensors used in precision agriculture and green infrastructure. This potentially could offer a sustainable, renewable alternative to batteries, which hold toxic, flammable chemicals that leach into the ground, are fraught with conflict-filled supply chains and contribute to the ever-growing problem of electronic waste.
To test the new fuel cell, the researchers used it to power sensors measuring soil moisture and detecting touch, a capability that could be valuable for tracking passing animals. To enable wireless communications, the researchers also equipped the soil-powered sensor with a tiny antenna to transmit data to a neighboring base station by reflecting existing radio frequency signals.
Not only did the fuel cell work in both wet and dry conditions, but its power also outlasted similar technologies by 120%.
The research will be published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. The study authors also are releasing all designs, tutorials and simulation tools to the public, so others may use and build upon the research... (MORE - details, no ads)
Solid-state qubits: Forget about being clean, embrace mess
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1031120
INTRO: New findings debunk previous wisdom that solid-state qubits need to be super dilute in an ultra-clean material to achieve long lifetimes. Instead, cram lots of rare-earth ions into a crystal and some will form pairs that act as highly coherent qubits, shows paper in Nature Physics.
Clean lines and minimalism, or vintage shabby chic? It turns out that the same trends that occupy the world of interior design are important when it comes to designing the building blocks of quantum computers.
How to make qubits that retain their quantum information long enough to be useful is one of the major barriers to practical quantum computing. It’s widely accepted that the key to qubits with long lifetimes, or ‘coherences’, is cleanliness. Qubits lose quantum information through a process known as decoherence when they start to interact with their environment. So, conventional wisdom goes, keep them away from each other and from other disturbing influences and they’ll hopefully survive a little longer.
In practice such a ‘minimalistic’ approach to qubit design is problematic. Finding suitable ultra-pure materials is not easy. Furthermore, diluting qubits to the extreme makes scale-up of any resulting technology challenging. Now, surprising results from researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, ETH Zurich and EPFL show how qubits with long lifetimes can exist in a cluttered environment.
“In the long run, how to make it onto a chip is a question that’s universally discussed for all types of qubits. Instead of diluting more and more, we’ve demonstrated a new pathway by which we can squeeze qubits closer together,” states Gabriel Aeppli, head of the Photon Science Division at PSI and professor at ETH Zürich and EPFL, who led the study... (MORE - details, no ads)