Most lasers have only one color. All the photons it emits have exactly the same wavelength. However, there are also lasers whose light is more complicated. If it consists of many different frequencies, with equal intervals in between, just like the teeth of a comb, it is referred to as a “frequency comb”. Frequency combs […]
New Antenna Concept Developed for Cars
Telecommunications is becoming ever more important for vehicles. At TU Wien, a new antenna concept has now been developed for cars. Driving without communication technology has now become almost unthinkable. It seems quite normal to us that navigation systems regularly update their maps and shows us the way using satellite data, or that we can […]
Creating String Art with a Robot
Geometric patterns, portraits and images can be created using string art, a method that uses running thread intertwined between pins on a board. Now, scientists at Austria’s Vienna University of Technology have created an algorithm that delegates this tedious string art technique to a robot. In order to make a specific, artistic string image, […]
Unexpected Behaviour Of Atom Clouds Challenges Existing Theories
Experiments with ultra-cold atoms at the TU Wien have shown surprising results: coupled atom clouds synchronize within milliseconds. This effect cannot be explained by standard theories. When atoms are cooled down to almost zero temperature, their properties change completely. They can turn into a Bose-Einstein-Condensate, an ultra-cold state of matter, in which the particles lose their individuality […]
Keeping GPUs Young
Graphics processing units are not only used for displaying graphics. Today, they are frequently used for particularly challenging calculations – for example in scientific research or even Bitcoin-mining. However, their performance usually decreases over time. As the individual cores of the processing unit age, they do not work together perfectly any more. TU Wien and […]
TU Wien Develops New Semiconductor Processing Technology
Extremely fine porous structures with tiny holes – resembling a kind of sponge at nano level – can be generated in semiconductors. This opens up new possibilities for the realization of tiny sensors or unusual optical and electronic components. There have already been experiments in this area with porous structures made from silicon. Now, researchers […]
Using Electricity to Switch Magnetism
Scientists have managed to use electrical fields to control the magnetic oscillations of certain ferrous materials. This has opened up huge potential for computer technology applications, as data is currently transferred in the form of electrical signals but stored magnetically. It’s not exactly a new revelation that electricity and magnetism are closely linked. And yet, […]
Microprocessors Based On a Layer of Just 3 Atoms
Two-dimensional materials, or 2D materials for short, are extremely versatile, although – or often more precisely because – they are made up of just one or a few layers of atoms. Graphene is the best-known 2D material. Molybdenum disulphide (a layer consisting of molybdenum and sulphur atoms that is three-atoms thick) also falls in this […]
3-D-Printed Magnets
Today, manufacturing strong magnets is no problem from a technical perspective. It is, however, difficult to produce a permanent magnet with a magnetic field of a specific pre-determined shape. That is, until now, thanks to the new solution devised at TU Wien: for the first time ever, permanent magnets can be produced using a 3D […]
The Quantum Sniffer Dog
As humans, we sniff out different scents and aromas using chemical receptors in our noses. In technological gas detection, however, there are a whole host of other methods available. One such method is to use infrared lasers, passing a laser beam through the gas to an adjacent separate detector, which measures the degree of light […]