Chip

Engineers have recently focused on trying to emulate the structure of the brain with artificial synapses. Now, a team of researchers have made a new artificial synapse design that works using a light-based biotechnology technique called optogenetics.

We're growing more accustomed to the idea of talking to our devices, thanks to the success of products like Amazon Echo. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were inspired to create a low-powered chip designed specifically for automatic speech recognition.

With little more than a standard inkjet printer, some silicone, and a sheet of polymer film, Stanford researchers have created a reusable diagnostic "lab on a chip" that costs just 1 cent to make. This new technology could help vastly improve disease detection worldwide.

A new graphene-based sensor has been developed that can quickly and easily detect DNA mutations associated with a range of cancers and other life-threatening illnesses. It is envisaged that the sensor will eventually be implantable, and communicate data wirelessly to mobile devices in real-time.

Scientists have managed to embed miniature supercapacitors within a microchip, using methods compatible with standard electronics manufacturing. The advance could allow future electronics to marry the benefits of batteries and supercapacitors on the same device.

A new chip design could lead to massively parallel, energy efficient computation that handles complex tasks like pattern recognition better and faster than ever before.

Researchers from the University of Bristol and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone claim to have developed a fully-programmable quantum optical chip able to encode and manipulate photons in an infinite number of ways. This breakthrough may pave the way for true quantum optical computing systems.

Researchers at Monash University in Australia claim to have produced nanoscale directional antennas that accurately focus light at the nanoscale and may provide the ultra-narrow beams needed for upcoming nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and the eventual production of lab-on-a-chip devices.

Stanford engineers have pioneered a new scalable 3D computer chip that tightly interconnects logic and memory, with the potential for giant leaps in performance and energy efficiency.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales have each achieved records in processing quantum data with an accuracy above 99 percent and the storage of coherent quantum information for more than thirty seconds, both of which are essential for creating future super-fast quantum computers.

In what is being dubbed as a world first, a quadriplegic man has been given the ability to move his hand and fingers using a device implanted in his brain. Using his own thoughts, the device, dubbed "Neurobridge", effectively bypasses his damaged spinal cord to directly operate his muscles.

Technological advances aren't just about making new devices. Many times it's more a matter of taking an existing device and improving on it. A case in point is Raytheon’s new thermal imaging chip that the company says will be so small and cheap, that it may make the humble flashlight obsolete.