Meeting future computing needs requires new materials and phenomena that can overcome barriers to current technologies that are approaching their fundamental limits. Today’s microelectronics use the electron’s charge to encode and manipulate information, but the electron’s spin degree of freedom is emerging as a source of untapped potential for low-power, high-performance computing.
Following the same paradigm shift that integrated circuits has brought to microelectronics, photonic integration is starting to transform almost every aspects of optics by enabling chip-scale microphotonic systems with performances rivaling their conventional bulk counterparts. New materials, device architectures and system integration approaches combined are defining and expediting the upcoming microphotonic revolution.
The design, testing, and processing of metals is becoming increasingly driven by computation and automation—for instance, gaps in physical models are addressed by machine learning, and additive manufacturing is crossing from prototyping to production. These developments foreshadow a digital transformation in the manufacturing of metal components and structures, optimizing performance across scales, from atoms to meters.
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The evolution of communication technologies over the past 140 years has enabled ubiquitous connectivity with billions of sensors globally. However, today’s technologies still face fundamental obstacles, which prevent them from seamlessly extending to complex domains like the ocean, the human body, or supply chain environments. -------------------------------------------
When radios communicate with each other, the transmitter spreads its signal in all directions. Hence only a small fraction of what is transmitted hits the receiver. Radios with multiple antennas can beamform, i.e., direct their signal so more of it reaches the receiver. How precisely a radio can beamform depends fundamentally on its size; a larger radio with more antennas can direct its signal better than smaller radios. Unfortunately, practical constraints on mobile and IoT devices prevent us from making radios large.