Inspired by a concept for discovering exoplanets with a giant space telescope, a team of researchers is developing holographic lenses that render visible and infrared starlight into either a focused image or a spectrum.

Researchers have developed a new technique for revealing defects in nanostructured vanadium oxide, a widely used transition metal with many potential applications including electrochemical anodes, optical applications, and supercapacitors.

Faculty from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute served as experts in an exchange of information about developments in the field of sustainable energy, large-scale environmental change, and innovative and interdisciplinary research into energy storage and smart systems in the built environment on a recent visit by two members of the U.S. Congress.

With the support of a prestigious $542,813 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant, physicist Trevor David Rhone is turning to artificial intelligence to help determine which combination of elements might form new materials with interesting properties for advancing both scientific understanding and technological applications, such as data storage, spintronics, and quantum computing.

A new research project, headed by Moussa N'Gom, an assistant professor physics, and supported by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, proposes to use the properties of light itself to punch a pathway for data through the clouds.

Since the late 19th century, scientists have understood that, when heated, all materials emit light in a predictable spectrum of wavelengths. Research published today in Nature Scientific Reports presents a material that emits light when heated that appears to exceed the limits set by that natural law.

As a candidate for the qubits — the basic units of quantum information — in quantum computers, photons have one major advantage over the electrons used in all current devices. Unlike electrons, photons, the smallest possible quantity of light, do not easily interact with their surroundings. So, unlike its electron-based counterpart, a photonic quantum device would not need to be cooled to nearly absolute zero to limit unwanted interactions. But such a device does not exist — yet.

A promising semiconductor material could be improved if flaws previously thought irrelevant to performance are reduced, according to research published today in Nature Communications.

A team of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a new microfluidics-assisted technique for developing high-performance macroscopic graphene fibers. Graphene fiber, a recently discovered member of the carbon fiber family, has potential applications in diverse technological areas, from energy storage, electronics and optics, electro-magnetics, thermal conductor and thermal management, to structural applications.

In a discovery that could pave the way for new materials and applications, materials scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that oscillating loads at certain frequencies can lead to several-fold increases in the strength of composites with an interface that is modified by a molecular layer of “nanoglue.”