Oxygen vacancies speed up ion conduction, a lipid membrane holds memory and ceramic waveguides target high power
Deliberate oxygen vacancies in lithium titanate accelerate lithium-ion conduction. Separately, an artificial lipid membrane acts as a memory resistor and capacitor, while printed ceramic waveguides aim to carry more power than glass fibre lasers.
Science··Night
Defects accelerate ion conduction
Bernhard Gadermaier and Martin Wilkeling at TU Graz report that individual oxygen vacancies increase ionic conduction in lithium titanate, arguing in Science Advances that the defect structure is a design variable independent of chemical composition. According to the authors, the conduction path is a pre-formed channel in the structure that the defects only activate, meaning two samples of the same composition can behave very differently when their thermal histories differ. The finding represents a materials mechanism, not a full-cell performance measurement.[1]
A lipid membrane holds memory
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory report that a single artificial lipid bilayer shows memristance in one region and memcapacitance in another. The finding rests on evidence assembled over more than five years, following a 2022 outcome in which lipid bilayers were shown to mimic features of long-term memory. The mechanism the group describes is that the bilayer itself rearranges and takes an active part in regulating how ions move through membrane proteins, rather than serving only as a passive wall. These are simplified model membranes rather than brain tissue, and the team presents the work for neuromorphic computing.[2]
Ceramic waveguides target higher power
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has printed all-ceramic channel waveguides by direct ink writing, extruding ytterbium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet cores inside an undoped garnet cladding. The finding published in Optics Letters starts from a nanoparticle paste extruded into a structural shape, which earlier ceramic waveguide methods handled badly by yielding cumbersome, short or poor-quality guides. Ross Osborne, who led the work, says the crystalline architecture could with further development carry more than ten times the output power of glass fibre lasers at a comparable size, though the stated goal of moving from hundreds of milliwatts to kilowatts has not been demonstrated.[3]
