In the reported system, projected light patterns interact with an optoelectrowetting (OEW) structure to create virtual electrodes on the microchip surface instead of relying on fixed, lithographically defined metal electrodes. Localized illumination changes the wettability of selected regions, guiding droplets to deform, shrink, and detach in a controlled way as the light pattern evolves. This approach allows the same hardware platform to support different dispensing behaviors simply by reprogramming the illumination pattern.

Droplet based microfluidic systems already play a central role in biochemical assays, diagnostics, and drug discovery because they reduce reagent consumption and improve reaction control compared with traditional tube based methods. However, conventional electrowetting systems depend on rigid electrode layouts, which limit flexibility and require complex fabrication steps. Many optical control methods offer greater spatial freedom but often produce inconsistent droplet sizes and poor reproducibility, largely because droplet necking and pinch off occur randomly, leading to large volume errors especially below hundreds of nanoliters.

To address these limitations, a team from the Southern University of Science and Technology, working with the Aerospace Information Research Institute, designed an OEW based droplet dispensing system that uses programmable light patterns to precisely control droplet formation. Their work, published on November 28, 2025 in the journal Microsystems and Nanoengineering, introduces a dynamic light guided strategy that enables reliable dispensing of nanoliter droplets with tunable volumes. By projecting carefully tailored optical patterns onto a microfluidic chip, the system achieves accurate droplet shaping, separation, and transport while maintaining high precision and strong reproducibility in small volume liquid handling.

The core innovation lies in the dynamic light pattern used to actively manage droplet deformation and pinch off during dispensing. Instead of having the droplet follow a fixed electrode geometry, the system generates virtual electrodes using light, which can be reconfigured in real time. A specially designed necking light pattern stabilizes the liquid bridge that forms between the parent droplet and the emerging daughter droplet, reducing the randomness that typically accompanies droplet breakup.

During operation, the parent droplet first extends under the influence of the illumination pattern, forming a liquid bridge. The system then applies a controlled back pumping step that reshapes the liquid to match the imposed light pattern, effectively slowing down the pinch off process. By moderating the breakup dynamics in this way, the platform suppresses random splitting behavior and significantly improves volume accuracy.

Systematic optimization of light pattern geometry, applied voltage, and necking position allowed the researchers to demonstrate high precision in droplet generation. For droplets around 36 nanoliters in volume, they reported a minimum relative error of 0.45 percent and a coefficient of variation of 2.49 percent. These values indicate that the system can produce nearly identical droplets repeatedly, even at volumes where many existing methods struggle to maintain consistency.

The OEW based platform also proved highly flexible, accurately dispensing droplets over a broad size range while keeping errors below commonly accepted thresholds for microfluidic experiments. This tunability means that a single device can support different biochemical protocols that require distinct droplet volumes without hardware changes, relying only on adjustments to the light patterns and operating conditions.

To demonstrate practical utility, the researchers carried out polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification in droplets generated on the chip. They showed that PCR performance in these on chip droplets matched that of manually pipetted samples, even when the reaction volumes were below 200 nanoliters. This result indicates that the light guided dispensing system can reliably support sensitive biochemical reactions at very small scales without compromising reaction quality.

According to the corresponding author, the work shows that light can be used not only to move droplets but also to precisely define their final volume. By controlling the entire dispensing process with programmable optical patterns, the system removes many sources of randomness that limit conventional microfluidic platforms. The ability to produce uniform nanoliter droplets with such low volume error opens up new opportunities for automated biochemical workflows where consistency and miniaturization are critical.

The light guided droplet dispensing strategy offers a versatile solution for lab on a chip platforms targeting molecular diagnostics, drug screening, and organ on a chip research. Its capability to handle sub 200 nanoliter volumes reliably addresses a long standing gap between conventional pipetting and fully automated microfluidic systems. Because the technique avoids complex electrode fabrication steps, it also simplifies device design and enhances scalability for potential commercial implementation.

More broadly, the study underscores how optical control can transform digital microfluidics into a flexible, reconfigurable tool for precision chemistry and biology. By decoupling droplet control from fixed hardware layouts and shifting it to software defined light fields, the approach could support rapid reconfiguration of experimental protocols across clinical testing, pharmaceutical development, and high throughput biochemical analysis.

Research Report:A high-precision nanoliter droplet dispensing system based on optoelectrowetting with tunable droplet volume

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Feb 06, 2026 - As conventional silicon chips approach fundamental scaling limits, researchers are intensifying efforts to build electronic components from individual molecules that harness quantum effects instead of classical charge transport. Molecular electronics aims to use carefully designed molecules as switches, diodes and even transistors, enabling ultra-dense and ultra-low-power circuits that move far beyond current semiconductor technologies.

For more than fifty years, the electronics industry has relied on steadily shrinking silicon transistors to deliver faster, cheaper and more capable devices. At nanometer dimensions, however, quantum phenomena start to disrupt the predictable behavior of traditional devices, while fabrication complexity and cost continue to rise sharply. In response, scientists have turned to molecular-scale components whose electronic properties can be tuned by chemical structure rather than lithographic patterning, but early demonstrations suffered from instability, poor reproducibility and limited prospects for large-scale integration.

A 2025 review in the journal Microsystems and Nanoengineering, titled "Molecular electronic devices based on atomic manufacturing methods" (DOI: 10.1038/s41378-025-01037-8), surveys how atomic-level fabrication techniques are reshaping the field and overcoming many of these obstacles. The authors from Xiamen University describe how advances in device construction, interface control and measurement methodology are transforming single-molecule devices from fragile laboratory curiosities into more robust building blocks for future circuit architectures.

At the heart of this research is the molecular junction, a configuration in which a single molecule forms a conductive bridge between two electrodes. In such junctions, electrons do not flow like a conventional current but instead move by quantum tunneling, allowing the molecule to behave as a functional element that can switch, rectify or modulate signals. Realizing these properties in a controlled and repeatable way requires precise control over both the molecular structure and the way it is contacted by the electrodes.

The review explains how new fabrication strategies have improved the stability and reliability of molecular junctions. Static junctions based on carefully engineered nanogaps or self-assembled monolayers provide fixed molecular bridges with enhanced mechanical robustness, while still allowing fine adjustment of the electronic coupling. Complementary dynamic techniques repeatedly form and break molecular contacts, generating large statistical data sets that distinguish intrinsic molecular behavior from artifacts and experimental noise.

Materials beyond traditional metals are also playing a growing role in molecular electronics. Researchers are increasingly turning to carbon-based electrodes such as graphene and carbon nanotubes, which can reduce spurious interactions and offer more controllable molecule-electrode coupling. In parallel, DNA-based positioning methods are emerging as powerful tools for arranging molecules and nanoparticles with near-atomic precision, opening a path to ordered arrays and more complex device geometries built from the bottom up.

According to the review, these technical advances mean that molecular devices are no longer limited to proving that single-molecule functions are possible. The latest junctions can be engineered to respond in predictable ways to external stimuli including light, electric fields, redox conditions and mechanical forces, making it feasible to design specific functions into the molecular backbone. This level of control is essential if single-molecule components are to perform logic operations, store information or act as sensitive detectors in practical systems.

The authors argue that the central question for the field is shifting from whether molecular devices can operate at all to how they can be made to operate reliably and consistently across many junctions. Improved control of interfaces, along with better-defined fabrication conditions, has substantially narrowed device-to-device performance variations that once obscured underlying physics. As a result, the dominant barriers now lie in engineering and system integration rather than in fundamental limitations of molecular transport.

If current trends continue, the review suggests that molecular electronics could enable new generations of computing, memory and sensing systems with unprecedented density and energy efficiency. Single-molecule devices promise extremely low power consumption and a footprint far smaller than even the most advanced silicon transistors, aligning well with the needs of neuromorphic architectures and other emerging computing paradigms. Molecular junctions with tailored chemical functionality could also form the basis of sensors capable of detecting individual chemical or biological species.

Looking ahead, the authors highlight three-dimensional integration as a likely requirement for turning isolated molecular devices into usable circuits. Techniques already being introduced in advanced semiconductor packaging may be adapted to stack and interconnect molecular layers, combining atomic-scale precision with established micro- and nanofabrication platforms. While widespread deployment of molecular electronics remains a long-term goal, the convergence of chemistry, physics and engineering described in the review positions single-molecule devices as a credible pathway beyond the limits of silicon scaling.

Research Report:Molecular electronic devices based on atomic manufacturing methods

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 06, 2026 - The development of compact devices that can precisely control light is central to future systems for sensing, communications and computing. Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) have now demonstrated an ultra thin metasurface chip that converts invisible infrared light into visible light and sends it out as a narrow beam that can be steered without any moving parts.

The metasurface consists of a microscopic chip patterned with structures smaller than the wavelength of light. When an infrared laser illuminates the surface, the design converts the incoming light to a higher color, or frequency, and emits it as a tightly confined beam whose direction is set by the polarization state of the input.

In experiments, the team converted infrared light at about 1530 nanometers, similar to wavelengths used in fiber optic networks, into green light near 510 nanometers. By rotating the polarization of the incoming beam, they steered the generated visible beam to specific output angles on demand.

"Think of it as a flat, microscopic spotlight that not only changes the color of light but also points the beam wherever you want, all on a single chip," said Andrea Alu, founding director of the CUNY ASRC Photonics Initiative and Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center. "By making different parts of the surface work together, we get both very efficient conversion of light and precise control over where that light goes."

Engineers have used metasurfaces for years to bend and shape light using arrays of nanostructures on flat substrates. Traditional designs typically face a tradeoff between flexible, pixel level control of the wavefront, which often yields low nonlinear conversion efficiency, and collective resonances that boost nonlinear signals but limit fine control over the outgoing beam shape.

The new chip overcomes this tradeoff for nonlinear light generation, where one color of light is converted into another. The device supports a special kind of collective resonance known as a quasi bound state in the continuum, which traps and amplifies the incoming infrared field across the entire surface to strongly enhance nonlinear interactions.

At the same time, each nanoscale building block on the metasurface is rotated in a carefully engineered pattern, so the outgoing light acquires a position dependent phase profile. This geometric phase control makes the surface act like a built in lens or prism, enabling the emitted beam to be shaped and steered while benefiting from the collective resonance.

Through this combination of nonlocal resonance and local geometric phase control, the chip generates third harmonic light whose frequency is three times that of the incident infrared beam and directs it into chosen directions in space. Switching the polarization of the input flips the steering direction, providing a simple way to route the visible output without mechanical motion.

Measurements show that the third harmonic signal from the metasurface is about 100 times stronger than in comparable nonlinear beam shaping devices that do not exploit such collective resonances. This large enhancement points to a practical path toward efficient, chip scale frequency converters that also function as agile beam steering elements.

"This platform opens a path to ultra compact light sources and beam steering elements for technologies like LiDAR, quantum light generation, and optical signal processing, all integrated directly on a chip," said lead author Michele Cotrufo, a former CUNY postdoctoral fellow who is now an assistant professor at the University of Rochester. "Because the concept is driven by geometry, not by one specific material, it can be applied to many other nonlinear materials and across different colors of light, including the ultraviolet."

The researchers note that future architectures could stack or laterally combine several metasurfaces, each tuned to slightly different resonances, to maintain high efficiency over a broader range of wavelengths. Such multi band or broadband nonlinear metasurfaces could be engineered for advanced imaging systems, spectroscopy tools or integrated photonic processors that require multiple colors of light.

Beyond immediate device applications, the work illustrates how nonlocal effects in metasurfaces can be harnessed in nonlinear regimes without sacrificing spatial control. The approach could be adapted to generate and manipulate other nonlinear processes, such as second harmonic generation or frequency mixing, in compact photonic platforms.

The study, published in the journal eLight under the title "Nonlinear nonlocal metasurfaces," describes the design principles, fabrication steps and optical measurements that confirm the metasurface operation. The authors also outline routes to further boost performance by optimizing material choices and resonance quality, and by integrating the structures with on chip light sources.

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Simons Foundation, and the European Research Council, reflecting broad interest in metasurface based solutions for next generation photonics. The results suggest that flat, resonant structures that both convert and steer light could become key building blocks for LiDAR units, quantum light sources and optical computing elements that fit directly onto semiconductor chips.

Research Report:Nonlinear nonlocal metasurfaces

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 03, 2026 - Northrop Grumman has been selected as one of the companies to receive an award from the US Defense Microelectronics Activity for a new contracting tool intended to accelerate the delivery of American made microelectronics into military systems. The Advanced Technology Support Program V, or ATSP5, is structured as an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract with an award ceiling of 25 billion dollars over ten years.

Under ATSP5, Northrop Grumman can respond to requests for proposals within 30 days, with the overall process from proposal to award typically taking between 80 and 90 days. This accelerated cycle is designed to move newly developed or upgraded semiconductor solutions into operational defense systems much faster than traditional acquisition paths.

The company will use ATSP5 to continue advancing next generation manufacturing and packaging techniques alongside work in emerging semiconductor materials engineering. These efforts are aimed at providing military grade, customer tailored microelectronics that can be integrated into end systems more quickly while meeting stringent reliability and performance requirements.

Program manager Lori Manley said the award validates the companys track record using this process across more than 200 task orders within Northrop Grumman. She said the government demands swift action and that the new ATSP5 contract strengthens the US supply chain by enabling rapid integration of American made microelectronics solutions and ensuring speedy deployment of reliable systems for warfighters.

ATSP5 is intended to ensure that military systems have access to the most advanced microelectronics embedded within them, replacing chips that lag several generations behind commercially available technologies. By using this contract vehicle, defense customers can work with Northrop Grumman to update or redesign electronic subsystems so that weapons and mission systems remain ready and capable.

The award is aligned with the priorities of the US Secretary of War, emphasizing improved responsiveness and clear short and long term goals for microelectronics modernization. The structure of ATSP5 is meant to keep government and industry teams focused on delivering solutions at speed, supporting organizations that develop and field technology for US military forces.

Northrop Grumman designs, manufactures, assembles, tests and packages millions of microelectronics devices annually within the United States for both defense and commercial applications. The company positions this domestic production capability as a way to protect and sustain the American microelectronics supply chain while reinforcing national defense infrastructure.

From initial design and fabrication through to fielded deployment, the companys mission tailored microelectronics are described as the intelligence that powers next generation military and commercial systems. Northrop Grumman says these components are foundational to mission success, forming critical building blocks inside advanced sensors, communications links, weapons, and other high performance platforms.

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST Seoul (AFP) Jan 29, 2026 - South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly profits Thursday, riding massive market demand for the memory chips that power artificial intelligence.

A global frenzy to build AI data centres and develop the fast-evolving technology has sent orders for advanced high?bandwidth memory microchips soaring.

That is also pushing up prices for less flashy chips used in consumer electronics -- threatening higher prices for phones, laptops and other devices worldwide.

In the quarter to December 2025, Samsung said it saw "its highest-ever quarterly consolidated revenue at KRW 93.8 trillion (US$65.5 billion)", a quarter-on-quarter increase of nine percent.

"Operating profit was also an all-time high, at KRW 20.1 trillion," the company said.

The dazzling earnings came a day after a key competitor, South Korean chip giant SK hynix, said operating profit had doubled last year to a record high, also buoyed by the AI boom.

The South Korean government has pledged to become one of the top three AI powers, behind the United States and China, with Samsung and SK hynix among the leading producers of high-performance memory.

Samsung said Thursday it expects "AI and server demand to continue increasing, leading to more opportunities for structural growth".

Annual revenue stood at 333.6 trillion won, while operating profit came in at 43.6 trillion won. Sales for the division that oversees its semiconductor business rose 33 percent quarter-on-quarter.

The company pointed to a $33.2 billion investment in chip production facilities -- pledging to continue spending in "transitioning to advanced manufacturing processes and upgrading existing production lines to meet rising demand".

- 'Clearly back' -

Major electronics manufacturers and industry analysts have warned that chipmakers focusing on AI sales will cause higher retail prices for consumer products across the board.

This week US chip firm Micron said it was building a $24 billion plant in Singapore in response to AI-driven demand that has caused a global shortage of memory components.

SK hynix announced Wednesday that its operating profit had doubled last year to a record 47.2 trillion won.

The company's shares have surged some 220 percent over the past six months, while Samsung Electronics has risen about 130 percent, part of a huge global tech rally fuelled by optimism over AI.

Both companies are on the cusp of producing next-generation high-bandwidth "HBM4" chips for AI data centres, with Samsung reportedly due to start making them in February.

American chip giant Nvidia -- now the world's most valuable company -- is expected to be one of Samsung's customers for HBM4 chips.

But Nvidia has reportedly allocated around 70 percent of its HBM4 demand to SK hynix for 2026, up from the market's previous estimate of 50 percent.

"Samsung is clearly back and we are expecting them to show a significant turnaround with HBM4 for Nvidia's new products -- helping them move past last year's quality issues," Hwang Min-seong, research director at market analysis firm Counterpoint, told AFP.

But SK still "maintains a market lead in both quality and supply" of a number of key components, including Dynamic Random Access Memory chips used in AI servers, he said.

SK also this week said it will set up an "AI solutions firm" in the United States, committing $10 billion and weighing investments in US companies.

kjk/oho/kaf

Samsung Electronics

SK Hynix

NVIDIA

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST Washington, United States (AFP) Jan 30, 2026 - A group of US lawmakers issued a warning Thursday over allowing tech giant Nvidia to sell advanced chips in China, alleging that its support to AI startup DeepSeek has helped boost Chinese military capabilities.

"When Nvidia technology ends up powering China's military, that's not innovation; it's a security failure," the Select Committee on China said in an X post.

"Nvidia's products were used by DeepSeek and ended up supporting an AI model used by the PLA," it said, referring to China's People's Liberation Army.

California-based Nvidia is the world's most valuable company because its artificial intelligence chips are in such huge demand.

But it has been caught in a geopolitical tussle between the United States and China as they compete in the fast-moving AI sector.

An Nvidia spokesperson hit back at the claim, saying China "has more than enough domestic chips for all of its military applications, with millions to spare," and "it makes no sense for the Chinese military to depend on American technology."

"The administration's critics are unintentionally promoting the interests of foreign competitors," they added.

The post from the 23-member bipartisan committee included a copy of a letter addressed to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, detailing the allegations.

"Documents provided to the committee reveal Nvidia provided extensive technical support that enabled DeepSeek -- now integrated into People's Liberation Army (PLA) systems and a demonstrated cyber security risk -- to achieve frontier AI capabilities," it said.

Last year, a low-cost generative AI model from China's DeepSeek, on par with US rivals, upended assumptions of American dominance in the fast-moving field.

The committee's letter, dated Wednesday, said Nvidia had treated DeepSeek "as a legitimate commercial partner deserving of standard technical support."

But DeepSeek routes Americans' data to the Chinese government "through infrastructure tied to a US-designated Chinese military company," it said.

The letter also mentioned a Jamestown Foundation report from October, which cited PLA procurement documents to conclude that the Chinese military was using homegrown AI systems including DeepSeek, and planned to integrate it across its operations.

The lawmakers called for "clarifying guidance" on President Donald Trump's move to allow a high-end Nvidia AI chip, the H200 model, to be sold in China, softening restrictions imposed by his predecessor Joe Biden's administration.

Measures should be taken "to prevent prohibited end users from gaining the type of access the PLA gained from DeepSeek," they said.

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST Taipei (AFP) Jan 29, 2026 - Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang expressed optimism Thursday that Beijing will permit the sale to Chinese buyers of a powerful AI chip model made by the US tech giant.

Huang's remarks came a day after the Wall Street Journal and others reported that Beijing had authorised several of Nvidia's Chinese customers to buy the advanced chip.

The chip in question -- the H200 -- can be used to train and run cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems.

It had been barred from sale in China by Washington over national security concerns, but last month President Donald Trump said he had reached an agreement with China's Xi Jinping to soften restrictions on the H200.

However, there has been uncertainty over whether the Chinese government would actually allow firms to buy them, because it has reportedly been encouraging Chinese tech companies to use domestically made chips instead.

"The actual licence for H200 is being finalised," Huang told reporters in Taipei.

"I'm hoping... the Chinese government would allow Nvidia to sell (the) H200, so they have to decide, and I'm looking forward to a favourable decision," he said.

"We're looking forward to returning to China so that we can compete in the market. They have many very strong chip companies, and so we have to compete quite vigorously."

With the United States and China locked in a fierce race for AI supremacy, Trump's decision to allow H200 sales to China marked a significant shift in US export policy for AI chips.

The deal -- under which the US government gets a 25-percent cut of sales -- was confirmed by the US commerce department on January 13.

Nvidia's most top-of-the-range chips, the Blackwell series and forthcoming Rubin processors, were not included in the agreement.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Chinese tech companies, including Alibaba and ByteDance, have been given the green light to receive the first batch of several hundred thousand H200 chips.

More imports were expected to be approved in the coming weeks, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment.

The move came during Huang's recent visit to China, which reportedly included stops in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.

It comes ahead of Trump's planned trip to Beijing in April for talks with Xi that are aimed at resolving trade disputes.

burs-joy/amj/kaf

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST The Hague (AFP) Jan 28, 2026 - Dutch tech giant ASML, which sells cutting-edge machines to make semiconductor chips, reported a significant gain in annual net profit Wednesday and predicted a bright future driven by demand for artificial intelligence.

ASML is a critical cog in the global economy, as the semiconductors crafted with its tools power everything from smartphones to missiles.

After-tax profit for 2025 came in at 9.6 billion euros ($11.5 billion), compared with 7.6 billion euros for 2024.

CEO Christophe Fouquet said ASML customers were bullish on the medium-term outlook "primarily based on more robust expectations of the sustainability of AI-related demand."

Fourth quarter net bookings, the figure traders track most closely, came in at 13.2 billion euros.

This compared with 5.4 billion euros in the third quarter of 2024 and cheered investors, with shares opening around seven percent higher on the Dutch market.

Total 2025 net sales were a record 32.7 billion euros. The firm had previously said it did not expect sales to be below the 28.3 billion euros banked last year.

ASML expects net sales in 2026 to be between 34 and 39 billion euros, it announced in new forecasts.

For the first quarter of this year, the firm predicted it would post between 8.2 billion euros and 8.9 billion euros in sales.

"We expect 2026 to be another growth year for ASML's business," said Fouquet.

ASML also announced an internal organisational shake-up in a bid to speed up working methods that Fouquet said had become "less agile."

The firm expects to cut around 1,700 jobs in the Netherlands and the United States, mostly from leadership roles, Fouquet said.

ASML employs around 44,000 staff worldwide.

- US-China tech war -

The tech giant is caught in the middle of a US-led effort to curb high-tech exports to China over fears they could be used to bolster the country's military.

Beijing has been infuriated by the export curbs, describing them as "technological terrorism."

In a case unrelated to ASML, the Dutch government briefly seized control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned company that makes low-tech semiconductors.

That move sparked a major row between Beijing and the West that threatened to cripple car manufacturers that rely on Nexperia chips.

In late October, following trade talks between China's President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump, Beijing agreed to resume exports of Nexperia chips halted over the row.

ASML already warned when presenting third-quarter results that China sales would "decline significantly" in 2026 compared with "very strong business" in 2024 and 2025.

A breakdown of sales showed 33 percent of sales going to China in 2025, compared to 41 percent in 2024. China was ASML's top customer in both years.

Longer-term, ASML believes that the rapidly expanding AI market will push up its annual sales to between 44 billion and 60 billion euros by 2030.

Turning to the fourth quarter, ASML sales came in at 9.7 billion euros. It had forecast between 9.2 billion and 9.8 billion euros.

Net profit for the fourth quarter was 2.8 billion euros, compared to the 2.1 billion euros booked in the third quarter of last year.

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST Singapore (AFP) Jan 27, 2026 - US chip firm Micron said Tuesday it was building a $24 billion plant in Singapore to help meet soaring AI-driven demand that has caused a global shortage of memory components.

Artificial intelligence data centres worldwide are hoovering up the memory chips used in consumer electronics -- a crunch threatening higher prices for phones, laptops and other devices.

Micron said it had broken ground Tuesday on an "advanced wafer fabrication facility located within the company's existing NAND manufacturing complex in Singapore".

NAND storage components power everyday gadgets but are also needed to help process the vast amounts of data crunched by generative AI.

"This new facility represents a planned investment of approximately US$24 billion (SG$31 billion) over 10 years" with output scheduled for the second half of calendar 2028, Micron said.

It said the plant would "address growing market demand for NAND technology driven by the rapid expansion of AI and data-centric applications".

In 2026, supply chain pressure for memory chips "will be far greater than this year", Lu Weibing, president of Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi, said in November.

"Everyone will likely observe that retail prices for products will see a significant increase," he warned.

Singapore said Saturday it would invest around US$785 million in public research on AI through 2030 to enhance its global competitiveness.

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 19, 2026 - Gold nanorods can act as tiny light powered devices that accumulate electrical charge and drive chemical reactions, according to new work by researchers at the University of Potsdam. The study shows in real time how these nanoscopic structures become electrically charged under illumination and introduces a physical model that describes the process as a form of capacitive photocharging.

In photocatalysis with nanoscale metal particles, light can generate excess charge that strongly affects catalytic performance, but the details of this process have been difficult to access experimentally. In an in situ investigation, the Potsdam team tracked how gold nanorods charge up when they are exposed to light and demonstrated that they behave like photochemical capacitors that store electrons on their surface.

The researchers report that illuminating the nanorods creates electron hole pairs in the metal. The holes transfer to surrounding molecules, such as ethanol, while the electrons remain on the particle, leading to a net negative charge on the nanorod surface. As a result, the particles develop electric potentials relative to their environment using light alone, without any external voltage source.

Because the nanorods have a large surface to volume ratio, a substantial amount of charge can accumulate in a very small volume. This high local charge density produces pronounced changes in the optical and chemical properties of the particles, which in turn influence how efficiently they can catalyze reactions such as carbon dioxide reduction or water splitting.

"We were able to directly demonstrate that light alone is sufficient to generate electric potentials between a single nanoparticle and its environment," says lead author Dr. Felix Stete of the University of Potsdam. When the particle absorbs light, the resulting charge separation drives oxidation reactions in the surrounding ethanol and water, while electrons build up on the gold surface.

According to group leader Dr. Wouter Koopman, the nanorods act in a way that is comparable to miniature electrolyzers that split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity, but here the driving force is the photovoltage created within each particle. "Our particles essentially behave like nanometer-sized electrolyzers, devices that split water into H2 and O2 with the help of electricity," he explains, "except that they do not require an external electric voltage source."

The team developed a model that treats the illuminated nanoparticles as capacitors, linking the observed changes in optical response to the amount of charge stored on their surface. This capacitive description provides a quantitative framework for understanding how light induced charging proceeds and how it can be manipulated through particle geometry, surrounding media and illumination conditions.

The findings open new possibilities for deliberately tuning photocatalytic systems based on metal nanoparticles. By controlling how and where charge accumulates on gold nanorods, researchers aim to steer key steps in reactions such as CO2 conversion to fuels, hydrogen generation from water and other light driven transformations.

In the longer term, capacitive photocharging at nanoscale metals could support solar powered chemical reactors and new concepts for energy storage that rely on storing charge in catalytic particles dispersed in liquids. The work forms part of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1636 "Elementary Processes of Light-Driven Reactions at Nanoscale Metals," funded by the German Research Foundation, which focuses on the fundamental physics of such light induced processes.

Research Report: Capacitive photocharging of gold nanorods

]]> Sat, 07 FEB 2026 10:16:15 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D