The synthesis of carbyne, a one-dimensional chain of carbon atoms, has long been a challenge due to its extreme instability. However, an international team of researchers has finally found a solution by enclosing it within single-walled carbon nanotubes. This breakthrough opens up new possibilities for using carbyne in next-generation electronics.

The researchers used a special precursor, ammonium cholate, to grow carbyne at low temperatures. They also employed single-walled carbon nanotubes as a protective shell around the carbyne, which helps keep it stable. The new synthesis method produces more carbyne than before, making it easier for scientists to study its properties and explore its potential applications.

The unique properties of carbyne make it an attractive material for next-generation electronics. Unlike graphene, carbyne has a built-in semiconductor gap, allowing it to act as a switch for electrical current. This property makes carbyne-based electronics potentially faster and more efficient than today’s silicon-based technology.

The research team also made an unexpected discovery during the study. They found that a common solvent, cholate, can transform into carbyne chains without additional complex steps. This finding shows how familiar materials can take on new roles in advanced chemistry.

While many questions about carbyne remain unanswered, this breakthrough is a significant step forward. With a stable way to produce carbyne in larger quantities, researchers can now explore its potential more deeply and potentially unlock new technologies in the field of next-generation electronics.

A groundbreaking study has successfully created three-dimensional superconducting nanostructures, akin to a nanoscale “3D printer.” This achievement opens doors to unprecedented control over the superconducting state, enabling researchers to switch it on and off in different parts of the structure by rotating it in a magnetic field.

The research team, led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, has demonstrated the creation of complex 3D geometries at the nanoscale, a feat that was previously considered impossible. This breakthrough has significant implications for the development of new superconducting technologies and devices.

Superconductors are materials that can exhibit zero electrical resistance and expel magnetic fields. The formation of Cooper pairs – bound pairs of electrons that move coherently through the material without scattering – is responsible for this striking behavior. However, controlling this state at the nanoscale has proven to be a significant challenge, hindering the exploration of novel effects and future technological developments.

The researchers involved in this study have successfully localized control over the superconducting state by patterning superconductors in 3D nanogeometries. This achievement has enabled them to create reconfigurable superconducting devices that can switch on and off in different parts of the structure, simply by rotating it in a magnetic field.

The implications of this breakthrough are far-reaching, offering a new platform for building adaptive or multi-purpose superconducting components. The ability to propagate defects of the superconducting state also opens the door to complex superconducting logic and neuromorphic architectures, setting the stage for a new generation of reconfigurable superconducting technologies.

This study has been published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials and represents a significant step forward in the field of nanotechnology. The researchers involved have demonstrated their ability to push the boundaries of what was previously thought possible, paving the way for further innovations and discoveries.

The collaboration between trailblazing engineers and industry professionals has led to a groundbreaking technique called Skia, which may transform the future of computing efficiency for modern data centers.

In data centers, large computers process massive amounts of data, but often struggle to keep up due to taxing workloads. This results in slower performance, causing search engines to generate answers more slowly or not at all. To address this issue, researchers at Texas A&M University have developed Skia in collaboration with Intel, AheadComputing, and Princeton.

The team includes Dr. Paul V. Gratz, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Dr. Daniel A. Jiménez, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and Chrysanthos Pepi, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Processing instructions has become a major bottleneck in modern processor design,” Gratz said. “We developed Skia to better predict what’s coming next and alleviate that bottleneck.” Skia can not only help better predict future instructions but also improve the throughput of instructions on the system, leading to quicker performance and less power consumption for the data center.

Think of throughput in terms of being a server in a restaurant,” Gratz said. “You have lots and lots of jobs to do. How many tasks can you complete or how many instructions can you execute per unit time? You want high throughput, especially for computing.”

Improving throughput can lead to quicker performance and less power consumption for the data center. In fact, making it up to 10% more efficient means a company previously needing to make 100 data centers around the country now only needs to make 90, which is 10 fewer data centers. That’s pretty significant. These data centers cost millions of dollars, and they consume roughly the equivalent of the entire output of a power plant.

Skia identifies and decodes these shadow branches in unused bytes, storing them in a memory area called the Shadow Branch Buffer, which can be accessed alongside the BTB. What makes this technique interesting is that most of the future instructions were already available, and we demonstrate that Skia, with a minimal hardware budget, can make data centers more efficient, nearly twice the performance improvement versus adding the same amount of storage to the existing hardware as we observe,” Pepi said.

Their findings, “Skia: Exposing Shadow Branches,” were published in one of the leading computer architecture conferences, the ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems. The team also traveled to the Netherlands to present their work to colleagues from around the globe.

Funding for this research is administered by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), the official research agency for Texas A&M Engineering.