To protect graphene from performance-impairing wrinkles and contaminants that mar its surface during device fabrication, MIT researchers have turned to an everyday material: wax. Graphene is an atom-thin material that holds promise for making next-generation… Read More »Smoothing out the wrinkles in graphene
Amid the frenzy of worldwide research on atomically thin materials like graphene, there is one area that has eluded any systematic analysis — even though this information could be crucial to a host of potential… Read More »Researchers catalog defects that give 2-D materials amazing properties
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have recorded, for the first time, the “temporal coherence” of a graphene qubit — meaning how long it can maintain a special state that allows it to represent two logical… Read More »Physicists record “lifetime” of graphene qubits
Three scientific and engineering advances led by researchers in the MIT community have been named to Physics World’s 10 Breakthroughs of 2018. One MIT-led discovery received the magazine’s top honor: 2018 Breakthrough of the Year. Pablo… Read More »MIT research honored with Physics World “Breakthrough of the Year” awards
Tiny robots no bigger than a cell could be mass-produced using a new method developed by researchers at MIT. The microscopic devices, which the team calls “syncells” (short for synthetic cells), might eventually be used… Read More »How to mass produce cell-sized robots
Since the 2003 discovery of the single-atom-thick carbon material known as graphene, there has been significant interest in other types of 2-D materials as well. These materials could be stacked together like Lego bricks to… Read More »Researchers quickly harvest 2-D materials, bringing them closer to commercialization
MIT engineers have found a way to directly “pinprick” microscopic holes into graphene as the material is grown in the lab. With this technique, they have fabricated relatively large sheets of graphene (“large,” meaning roughly… Read More »Stamp-sized graphene sheets riddled with holes could be boon for molecular separation
The vast majority of computing devices today are made from silicon, the second most abundant element on Earth, after oxygen. Silicon can be found in various forms in rocks, clay, sand, and soil. And while… Read More »Study opens route to flexible electronics made from exotic materials
Bolometers, devices that monitor electromagnetic radiation through heating of an absorbing material, are used by astronomers and homeowners alike. But most such devices have limited bandwidth and must be operated at ultralow temperatures. Now, researchers… Read More »A better device for measuring electromagnetic radiation
MIT engineers have developed a continuous manufacturing process that produces long strips of high-quality graphene. The team’s results are the first demonstration of an industrial, scalable method for manufacturing high-quality graphene that is tailored for… Read More »A graphene roll-out